By Hilary Chapple
Part 1
I guess nobody wants to be homeless, right? Including me. But you guessed it, it happened to me. I was hidden and forced to couch-surf. Even though I had place to stay some nights, I was still homeless. What did I know? That wasn’t homelessness, right? Wrong. It was.
There was a lot that happened to get me to that point: An abusive marriage, severe rejection by my friends, some family members and my ex-wife. Fortunately, I did not have an alcohol or drug addiction problem. Thank Goodness. But, I was suffering from severe trauma, stress and mild chronic depression, which is called dysthymia. I suffered a mental breakdown at the end of 2012 before my marriage was over.
I had separated from my abusive wife in September of 2014 and I did not realize at the time why I just could not hold down a good job. I could not pay the rent on our townhouse; my car payment and utilities were so far behind. And I was hungry. What to do, what to do?
Finally, it was decision time. I had a long-time friend in Edmonton who had told me, after finding out about my unhappy marriage, that I could come up north and get my act together. So, I left Calgary. However, I made arrangements for the unpaid rent and also sold everything possible that I could on Kijiji to raise much-needed funds and gave a ton of my stuff away just to downsize. I dropped off the rest of my belongings at my late sister’s place.
I said to myself, “Edmonton, here I come.” Was it a mistake? No. Did it relieve my stress and trauma? No.
But I was warm and most of the time I ate okay and had hot showers and clean towels. But, in two years, I lived in a bed bug infested hole and at several rentals, which included sleeping on a concrete basement floor to a bedroom with no room for my personal belongings except in tote bags. I lived in nine separate places on 12 separate occasions while homeless.
And yes, I was still stressed and in extreme trauma.
In May of 2014, I came back home to Calgary for a month to a place I’d call a secondary suite, which I know now is illegal. Still is, I checked. No receipts of rent or damage deposit paid, no job, barely enough food and I had to ‘borrow’ from my two roommates to eat a little. There was a two-piece cooking unit and a laundry sink to wash dishes. As it turns out my landlady was snooping through my mail, her three kids were rude, lazy and violent and I was called a thief (I am not). If given the opportunity I would have paid back the ‘borrowed’ food as soon as I could have.
I explained I could not pay the last half of that month’s rent on time and she made me feel so uncomfortable, it was time to go, again.
I packed, but I had nowhere to go. I stayed for two nights at a casual friend’s mom’s condo in a ritzy area of Calgary. I ate and managed to contact EI to get my back money released. Not in time, however. I tried to get a free truck to move my belongings to their garage and a place to live until my EI was back paid (no luck) and I scrambled for bus tickets. I had $40 dollars to my name and nowhere to go, ending up in a Tim Horton’s in Midnapore buying cheap time for my cell phone and trying to get help. That night I found my way to an all-night restaurant staying awake, crushed and in extreme panic. A sympathetic waitress took pity on me with free coffee and snack. By this time, I knew all of my belongings except the clothes I had on, were gone. About $10,000 worth.
Finally, a friend in Red Deer felt sorry for me and, after scrambling for some kind of breakfast, she picked me up and I was in Red Deer. Then my EI came through and I had to go back to Edmonton again. Long story short, I was in four separate homes in a three-month period with an abusive employer and I was homeless again.
By this time, I was a complete mess. It was time to come home to Calgary and I begged for help. My sister got me an interview at Mary Dover House Shelter and I left Edmonton for good. The end of this part of my story is I was home again. I did live at Mary Dover House for 16 months and I finally had the help I needed, and I knew what I had to do. By the time I had my own home, I had been living 755 days homeless not including the bed bug stint in Edmonton.
Now it’s time for the good stuff…