I'm Panicked About Moving Again

After bankruptcy, I now know what it’s like to be viewed as lesser than

All I’ve ever wanted was a cabin in the woods. A haven of solitude and quiet where my life can finally be simple and complete. Yet, people and their paperwork and judgment and Credit Karma requests stand in my way. I used to be the woman who had a 750+ credit score and biweekly paychecks. Now, I’m climbing my way out of bankruptcy. Two years in and I’m paying back $1800 a month to creditors. Taking responsibility and doing the work. Finally, I’ve become fiscally responsible and the irony that I now struggle to secure a new home doesn’t escape me. Back when I was subsisting on four credit cards and living a life beyond my means was I considered a hot commodity.

Now, I’m an uncomfortable silence over a telephone line. I’ve been reduced to something inhuman, a walking liability.

It doesn’t matter that I make a six-figure income, which is a rare form of economic privilege in this country. No one cares that I pay my bills on time or that I’ve offered to pay a higher deposit and months of advance rent. No one listens when I try to explain the extenuating circumstances surrounding my bankruptcy and how I viewed it as the one responsible decision I made in decades. And if you believe that my filing for bankruptcy was a mistake, believe when I say that I have no interest in hearing your opinion.

Experian and Trans Union have already defined the content of my character.

It’s shocking how people are open with their distaste of other’s mistakes and socio-economic conditions. Yesterday, I listened to a real estate agent prattle on about Section 8 recipients as if they were subhuman. I have tremendous economic, educational, and racial privilege, and those who don’t have an Ivy League education or my skin color aren’t parasites gaming the system — they’re decent people looking for a clean, safe place to live.

I listen for the tone shift. How I’m coddled and cared for until my credit report arrives in their inbox. Apparently, you are defined by the mistakes you’ve made even if you no longer make them. Calls don’t get returned or they route directly to voice mail. Emails are surreptitiously deleted.

I spend weeks researching homes in small towns in Southern and Northern California. I offer to write letters explaining the situation. I offer to share letters of recommendation from my current leasing company and previous employers and clients. I offer to pay hefty deposits and advance rent, but I might as well be a cipher, a negative integer.

There goes the tumbleweed again. Rolling past my window.

Over the past week, I joke with my friends that maybe I should live in AirBNBs. And it scares me how much that privileged joke is a harbinger for a possible reality.

I’m on my own. I don’t have parents who can buy me a condo or consign a lease and at my age, I would never expect them to. I don’t have a trust that provides the kind of security only the monied understand. I don’t have a husband who can be the financial face of the family and even that would irritate me beyond measure.

It’s just me and Felix the cat. Just us two. Trying to live out our lives in a country that vilifies missteps and mistakes. Although I’m struggling, I can’t even imagine the plight of so many others who have it worse off than me.

I had this beautiful vision of packing light and fleeing into the night. To a home beyond a vast forest, wedded to the idea of inconvenience. A place where I can work and write and cook and bake and weed and garden and be content with my company. And now, less than two months from my lease expiration date, I wonder if my cat and I will be peripatetic.

Constant wanderers. In search of a place to call home.