What’s your address? This seems like a simple question but, for me, it caused so much anxiety as a child.

“Please don’t ask me where I live.” I thought.

“Please don’t ask me if you can come over…”

Let’s walk back for a moment to tell you why this anxiety started.

We lived in that little apartment on Oak Street until things got out of hand financially. I do not know or remember all of the details but I know we lost the apartment on Oak Street. It was around this time that all of our belongings were stored in a large box and secured it with a lock.

If I remember correctly, we stayed with my mom’s mother (our grandmother) for a few days as she was in and out looking for jobs and a place to live. Eventually my grandmother kicked us out. We would end up driving around forever. I don’t remember if there was an agenda during these drives or if we were just occupying time.

During many of these drives is when we would end up in many car accidents/incidents. Many of these would affect me further into my life. The car is where we spent most of our time. In fact…the car became our home. We were now homeless. My brothers, myself, my mother and now…this baby. We didn’t have a home.

Where’s our bedroom that we shared laughter in? Where was our bedroom that we needed to clean? How do we cook? What about our toys? There were so many things wandering our minds but then a glimpse of excitement for a short time. “How cool to live in a car!” “It’s like camping.” Those thoughts were fleeting as we came to realize that this was going to be the new normal.

Where did we live? What was our address? We couldn’t tell you….