Acquainted with Suffering.

I just went through a very quiet fear, in a small office across a desk. Our property manager had just said no to the community action agency that had come to our aid and decided to help us with emergency rent. The social worker had sat across from our children, my husband and I, helping us fill out some paperwork for the application. She had said that we were eligible for a thousand dollars and the rest we would copay. We were ok with that because a thousand dollars would go a very long way.

She explained that she said no because signing would have meant agreeing not to evict us while the assistance processed, and she was not willing to make that promise.

When she hung up the phone, I looked at my children and my mind started doing something it classically does. It wandered away from that room. It went back to the summer of 2023 when we had nothing, and were homeless. I had hoped never to find myself in that kind of situation again and yet here I was, with a four month old and three year old watching everything we have built quietly shake. It felt so surreal.

After what felt like an eternity down memory lane, I suddenly came out of my trance and turned to the social worker, smiled and thanked her for trying. I meant every single word I said.

I have survived a lot of things in my life and one thing that survival has done is that it has made me acquainted with suffering. Our previous experience of homelessness was so fresh that I still recognized the threat like a close companion. The recognition doesn't numb the pain but I think it has vastly changed what I do with it.

We have never been late even once since we started living here. This was an emergency as my husband is going through very difficult medical and legal circumstances. We are not people who just woke up and suddenly decided that we didn't care. We were people who needed one month of grace.

I still can't believe that the agency was willing to help and we couldn't get the help we needed because of a single signature. I am also having a very hard time accepting that systems designed to help people can be blocked by one person's unwillingness to extend a temporary mercy. I cannot accept that someone could see a four month old baby and choose to leave them out in the cold just because of a single clause on a lease. There is absolutely no way this is moral.

As I have moved through institutions in my lifetime, I have learned that they are designed around what is predictable and manageable and when you fail to fit a description on a lease agreement or a policy manual, you become a problem to be processed and not a person in need of help.

What saves you, when institutions fail, is never the institution but the person inside it who decides to be human anyway.

We walked out of that office with our children in tow. I could see them looking at us like their heroes, oblivious that they were so close to sleeping in the streets. We sat in the car in silence. For some reason, it was ice cold and there was no sound, not even from the cars passing by. I looked at my phone and called my family. I was afraid and embarrassed but the person on the other end didn't make me feel that way. It was a conversation like we had any other Tuesday.

We are grateful and blessed to have a family that shows up for us without announcing and I don't take them for granted.