Making Me Smaller

Ever since I was little I wanted to be big. I wanted to be someone, a name people would recognize, have a big house, and drive a nice car. I wanted to be a movie star, a singer, then a Broadway star, then that turned into wanting to be a prima ballerina. I wanted to do it all and then some. 

At times these dreams were encouraged, but there were always caveats. If I was going to become rich and famous then I better pay my mom back for the money she spent on classes and buy her a nice car and a nice big house. I owed her. It became a weight that I carried around everywhere I went. I owed someone everything for every opportunity I was given. 

When it came to me trying to be myself nothing ever felt right. If I was quiet I couldn't be heard above the loudness of my four brothers. I had to constantly smile and be pretty. I had to people please and create a big personality that made me appear constantly happy and larger than life. I was constantly told I had a beautiful smile and adorable dimples. They were such a constantly commented on feature that my ASL sign name became the letter R combined with the sign for dimple. That was my signature smile. 

All I wanted was to break out of the hell that was my childhood and grow into my adulthood dreams. I married too young thanks to the endoctrination of the high demand religion I was forced to live. I thought this will free me and together we'll achieve our dreams and that big house. Fuck was I wrong. 

Our first apartment was a decent one bedroom. The walls were paper thin thanks to shitty '90s building codes, so you could hear the neighbors coughing, fucking in the middle of the night, and their music playing. It was sensory hell, which I didn't have a word for until much later in life. We soon moved to a townhouse with a lovely fireplace. I accidentally closed the fireplace flew too early the first night we used it, which filled our place with smoke. It was not a mistake I'd make again. That place was lovely. It had a basement and was two stories. The kitchen was the largest I'd ever get to cook in. 

I was pregnant and we decided for the duration of the time he was in school we would purchase a manufactured home. It was brand spankin new. Three whole bedrooms and two full baths. This would be the largest place I'd ever live. We'd been able to purchase what we thought were two decent cars by then, but then shit happens, as shit often does. He lost his job and we left the church we were raised in. Money was tight. Eventually one of the cars broke down and the decision that was made, not by me of coarse, was that we could only afford one car payment, so we traded in both cars for one new car. This would begin nearly eight years of hellish isolation in the name of not being able to afford two car payments. 

In this time my health became much worse and I was expected to raise our child and take care of the home, as any good housewife naturally would do. There was little time for my interests. I attempted to claw my way back into performing and teaching and as soon as I was making progress it was decided for me that we would be moving to another state in the middle of recital season. I spent my entire childhood having choices made for me only to become a prisoner of marriage and have my choices made for me. My feelings, my job, and my hobbies were of no importance. They were non comparable to his desires. This made me even smaller. We left a three bedroom house for a tiny two bedroom apartment. We had to donate or throw things away. It wasn't what I was expecting. We sold our beautiful little home at a great loss and had to take out a personal loan to cover the loss. It took us years to get out from under it. 

Eventually we moved from one two bedroom to another two bedroom to another two bedroom. I spent five years wanting to throw myself off the balcony to the concrete below the second apartment because of the severe isolation and abuse. 

We divorced and my son and I moved from a two bedroom into a one bedroom apartment. Once again I had to donate so many items. The dining room became his "bedroom" enclosed with Ikea divider walls, so the dining room table was donated along with several other pieces of furniture. My son and I lived there a whole nine years. It really felt like home, even though it was small. We made it work with what we had. But then the maintenance (alimony) ran out. My son was able to move in with his girlfriend, and me? I've downsized once again. Everything I own has been smashed into a small storage locker, once again getting rid of even more things being careful of what I kept and didn't keep. I've now been relegated to the confines of my car. The government keeps trying to tell me the best they can do is maybe a bedroom, a small box to fit a few remnants of my life, because that's all that I deserve at this point. 

All I do is cry when I think about how little I have and how small of a space I'm allowed to take up both physically and emotionally. If I complain about it I'm ungrateful, I should be thankful for the tiny space in this parking lot I've been allocated. If I complain that I need more space then I'm a bitch and I'm greedy. How dare I ask for more space than I should be allowed to have. There are better people that deserve a full one bedroom apartment. And don't even think about ever wanting a home. A disabled American will NEVER EVER have the right to take up that much space.