J. Friedman Fast

If you’d like to hear a narrated version of this, in my own voice, check out my Podcast.

The mid-90’s. Seattle’s Capital Hill neighborhood. In an apartment building that, in the 70’s, was known as “Heroin Flats,” (though they didn’t put that in the brochure when we rented the place). In fact, the only way my first husband and I found out about it was after our apartment had been burglarized on Christmas Day. When we reported the break-in to the live-in apartment manager, he simply shrugged and said, “The building may not be ‘Heroin Flats’ any more, but the neighborhood still hasn’t changed.”

What. The. Actual.

At least he moved us up to a top floor one-bedroom unit, rather than the ground floor studio we had been occupying. But of course, that cost more. And when you’re a newly married couple in your early twenties, each working one full time job or two part-time jobs, there was no such thing as discretionary income. Still, we managed to squeak by, paycheck to paycheck. At least until I was laid off.

I know! It felt like my luck was going from bad to worse. I was called in to a manager’s office at the home security company where I was working, and told the news. It was the first (though it wouldn’t be the last) time I had ever lost a job, involuntarily. Of course I cried in the manager’s office, lamenting aloud that I didn’t know how we were going to get by.

I drove home through the Seattle rain to inform my husband what had happened, but he was not yet home from his second job. However, Jack Daniels was home, and so I drowned my sorrows. By the time my poor spouse got there, he found a dark apartment, with a drunk wife on the couch, still weeping. He simply took the bottle away from me and told me we’d figure something out.

Which of course meant that the man expected *me* to figure something out. He couldn’t make a plan or decision to save his life, or mine. As time passed and I applied to every job within driving distance, the end of the month crept closer. I was dreading “rent” day, as there was not enough cash in our account to cover it. We had zero savings. And we had nothing left to sell after the Christmas break-in.

He was too proud to borrow from his family, which was understandable since he was the oldest of six children in a one-income household. That left us with only two options: live in our car or call my father.

You have no idea how appealing the idea of homelessness was, compared to the dread of calling my father. I had already previously spent a few weeks living out of my car when I first moved to Washington State the year before, so at least I knew what that was like. But in order to leave New York, I had had to cut ties with my family. Although I was twenty when I moved, my Filipino mother (to this very day) still tells everyone I “ran away from home.”

My parents predicted that I would never make it on my own, of course. So the idea of calling to ask for money was mortifying. I was expecting the “I told you so” and lecture that would follow. And there was no guarantee they would even help. But for the sake of my husband, I swallowed my own pride and made the call.

To his credit, my father did not lecture. He simply asked how much. Then he asked me if I was sure $500 would be enough. He actually wanted to make sure I was able to not only cover rent, but have something left over for gas and food. I was so relieved, and so touched, and so humiliated, all at the same time, that when I hung up the phone I broke down in tears again, and collapsed rather dramatically to the floor. Not my shining moment, to be sure.

At that very moment, I made myself the vow that *someday* I was going to look back at this day and laugh.

It only took me 20 years to do so.

Fast forward through two decades, two divorces, two kids, and two college degrees. I was now living on the East side, in what is known as an affluent suburban neighborhood. I was engaged for the third time to a very generous, hard-working man who (I thought – different story for another time) adored me. When I first said yes, we only had my grandmother’s ring as a placeholder, with it’s tiny speck of a diamond, but I loved it. My new fiancée did not. He *said* I deserved a ring representative of who I was, but in reality he just wanted something flashy he could show off, much like his younger, pretty bride.

He had previously seen something suitable at the local Costco, of all places. So he took me to see it, as he wanted my approval before making the purchase. As we were pulling into a parking space at the store, a Mercedes Benz cut him off and shot into the space ahead of us. Horn honking, yelling, swearing, and rude hand gestures ensued.

And I burst out into peals of belly laughter.

My fiancée glared at me incredulously. After all, what the HELL could be so funny about almost getting into both an accident and a fight???

But with tears rolling down my face, and still doubled over in hiccupping laughter, I tried to explain: “We almost got into an accident with a Mercedes on our way to buy diamonds!”

Of course, he didn’t get it, because he didn’t know anything about the day, twenty years before, when I was a useless puddle on the floor of my Capital Hill apartment, after just having begged my father for money to make rent. And the vow to myself that some day I was going to be able to look back at that moment and laugh.

Time has a way of doing that to you.

You get so busy trying to survive that sometimes you don’t realize you had stopped merely surviving and begun to thrive. And before you know it, you’ve gone from Heroin Flats to buying diamonds with the love of your life.

I think about those moments now, another decade later, when things feel especially hopeless. I remind myself that “this, too, shall pass.” I also try to remember that everybody around me is going through something I may know nothing about. All they may need to get through the day is a little bit of kindness. I often remember the saying, “If you’re going through something, keep going.”

And I remember the day I finally laughed.