Hope Among the Ruins

The day we moved in, I was beside myself with excitement. Finally, a place to call our own. It wasn't much, a modest 1 bedroom in an old school that had been converted into apartments, and rather crudely at that. But after 4 months of living hand to mouth in one motel after another, barely scraping by, it seemed like heaven.

Actually, it seemed like more than heaven. It was a slice of normal, something I hadn't had a taste of in 3 years. Jack and I weren't losers, we weren't stupid or lazy. But we did hit a patch of bad luck. Okay, full disclosure, bad luck and bad choices. Either way, we ended up homeless, pretty much run out of town and completely broken. No home, no car and no friends.

We chose a life of love. We chose to be together. We were punished for it. When you're in the public eye, especially in a small town, reputation and word of mouth is everything, and our respective exes saw to it ours were ruined. The money quickly dried up and there we were. I hated that they were winning. I think I hated that more than near homelessness. I could just picture them, smugly sneering about our fate. Well, if they had known. I'm sure they didn't. It wasn't like I was advertising.

This new place was the key. After scouring the ads for weeks, something we could afford came up. And even better, the landlord messaged us and invited us to view the place! He didn't ask many questions, just really if we had the income to pay the rent. We lied and said we did. Well, we had the required first month and deposit and we'd figure the rest out. Bing, bang, boom, we were in!

It didn't take long after we moved in to feel like we'd made a mistake. The pristine unit we'd seen started to show signs of decay. Dysfunctional plumbing, windows that let wind, rain and snow in, and a leaking ceiling. Complaints went unanswered, or were put off.

We were fresh out of money, and again, without hope. We couldn't move, we were spending every sent we could gather to pay the rent and keep ourselves fed, albeit marginally. Starting over is tough business.

Months turned into years and we resigned ourselves to our fate. We became tenants at the Loser Lodge and we were losers too. There was no other way to look at it. Education, intelligence, talent, looks, none of that mattered. Whatever choices we made, and whatever misdeeds the gods wanted to punish us for, relegated us to the discard pile of life.

We made a few friends in the building, fellow losers. There was Guy, the alcoholic maintenance man who did no actual maintenance, but did manage to mop the floors every couple of weeks and banged on our door at all hours in a strange mix of drunken rage and tearful self-loathing. There were "the Betty's" a mother and daughter pair, one a cranky gossipmonger with an excuse for everything, the other a feisty 80 year old with a sharp, xenophobic tongue. Eddie and Noreen, an elderly couple with a whole host of health issues, lived down the hall. Noreen, who was in the obvious early states of dementia came to my door often, confused or having hurt herself.

Right across the hall, another mother-daughter duo, Carrie and Alanna. Carrie was a brilliant woman, a former teacher who life beat in the ass twice, first with a debilitating disease, and then a car accident. She'd been a high school teacher, cute, active and full of piss and vinegar. She became who I met, wheelchair bound, depressed, and a hoarder who kept her doors closed to everyone. Her daughter was a 30 year old woman-child. Spoiled, and caught somewhere between a duty to remain home and care for her mother and enjoying the comfort and convenience of not having to work a day in her life. She was a big girl, with a beautiful face, gorgeous black wavy hair and an impressive mind.

Then there was Clive. He lived next door and of the bunch, he became our closest friend. He was an enormous man with red hair and shockingly beautiful blue eyes. A former self-described con man, poor health left him wheelchair bound and reliant on disability payments. But, he had a heart of gold and a quick intelligence that drew me to him. Sure, he was full of shit a lot of the time, but he was also a loyal and decent friend that never did us wrong, and that was something new. I had to go to "the hood" to make a real friend.

Speaking of the hood. Here's how our days went. After coffee, some work, to try and reinvent ourselves and our reputations (and hopefully make some money), petty gossip and the various disputes among the tenants. Each week, someone was either on the outs, or best friends with someone else.

That's the thing about being one of the powerless people, you find your power where you can, in teeny, tiny doses. Little things become huge things, matters of life and death, because it's all you've got. Carrie's dog shits in front of your window? You gotta deal with that and let her know. And you have to do it so that everyone else in the building knows you're the queen or king bee. Having no money, no prospects and even less hope turns a person into that, into something not nice, into something that will stomp on your head to get the upper hand. When victory is such a foreign concept, you take what you can.

It was a miserable time, but we muddled along, mixing in and often allowing ourselves to get caught up in the drama.

I hated it there, it smelled like death. Like an institution. And the fact that it had been a school didn't help the institutional vibe. It was little more than a warehouse for people who knew their next stop, death. But we weren't ready for death yet. The depression, at least for me, became crushingly overwhelming.

Until one day, out in the front of the building, Clive, told me about the pear trees. He asked me if I liked pears. "Yeah, they're okay," I told him, not getting too excited, thinking he'd gotten yet another of his free food boxes (he was always able to get free stuff), and I was about to be saddled with 10 pounds of pears.

He motioned over to the middle part of the building, a small patch of grass with 2 trees on it. One tree was a perfect representation of the building, diseased, blighted and sad. Hell, it was perfect representation of me, though you'd never have known it to look at me. The other was almost bare, aside from 2 pears. One hung low, and I picked it easily. The other was higher up. I couldn't reach it.

Clive rolled his motorized wheelchair over and told me to stand on the armrests. I hesitated, that didn't seem safe, and I was sure he wanted a good peek at my bum. He assured me it was safe, his chair and all it's components were reinforced and designed specifically to accommodate his statute. So I did, and I grabbed the other pear.

I brought them inside. I'm not sure why. Jack doesn't even like pears. But they were important somehow. A symbol, 2 small affirmations of life among the ruins. They grew, they flourished, even though they were surrounded by nothing but decay and disease. They were us. It sounds so stupid to say, but those pears gave me, gave us the hope we needed. Oh and they were also delicious!

It's been 3 years now since we left Gee Street and although life hasn't been easy, it's been good. We've recovered our reputations and then some. People forget quite quickly, as it turns out. And really, what crime is there in walking away from a relationship to be your true self? We have our little place, our little car and we have each other, and in some ways, we owe them all to that pear tree that managed to give me 2 pears.