im.roberto

From 2nd of September until the 7th I was homeless. Of course this story goes way back nearly a year ago in late October. My parents went through countless calls and visits with a nameless bank trying to do something to keep their house. The house of which we worked hard for ten years a house for which I worked hard since I was 16 and legally able to work. Countless hours of back breaking or mental straining labor that I went through for nearly ten years of my life. Unfortunately the bank was not flexible at that moment to help work something out. As other Americans in this country we took it upon ourselves to accept defeat, the loss of a ten year struggle. We decided to put the property on sale, knowingly it wouldn’t sell due to the type of Real Estate Market we were in.

Fast forward to July and we received the letter we were waiting for, the notice of an auction due to default on the note or what not. Come August and we had made arrangements to move out but unfortunately the apartment we had decided on moving to was not yet available because the previous tenants had not yet moved out. At this point we had a notice to vacate the property by August 28. Come the 28th and our apartment was not yet ready and we had not yet moved anything. The agent that was working for the bank gave us until the 2nd of September to leave the property.

We finally moved all of our belongings into a family friends garage, but also with the expectations of staying there for a couple of days because the property had not been occupied for over 6 months. That same weekend that we ended up moving our things into the garage of our friends house we get the bad news that the house had been rented by another family. Leaving us with no roof over our heads. That night was the longest night in my life, I had never suffered from High Blood Pressure or had stress nausea in my life until then. My whole body was shaky, nervous, and fatigued. By far I must say that it was the worst night of my life, and frankly I have gone through situations before, but never nothing of this category.

The following day my parents and my self drove away from Palmdale, the city that had brought hope and dreams, and later brought nothing but shame and pain. While driving around desperately seeking an apartment because the one we had applied for was not going to be ready until September 7th. My mom calls a distant aunt of mine (my dad’s cousin), who is retired and lives alone in her one bedroom apartment. She took us in with her doors wide open, and went out of her way in offering us nothing but what little she had to offer, of which to us was a true blessing. Never in my life had I been so grateful of having a little spot on the floor to sleep in. For a couple of days after I still suffered from the same symptoms I had from stress but they slowly fade away as my aunt comforted us, and gave us hope again. I will never find a way to ever repay our debt to her but deep inside me I will never forget how important family and our bond is to me.