When I was a kid, my mom always told me that my biggest decision in life would be when I decide to walk out her front door. She’d even gesture towards the front door as she told me. It wasn’t something she only said once either, she said this multiple times growing up, but the ongoings of our household had me feeling differently about this sentiment.
My household is unsafe, for many reasons. The lack of love, attention and care is obvious in my home. Though we are abundant in arguments, manipulation, and trauma, at the very least. With that being said, I made it my mission to use living on campus as a refuge.
This refuge meant a lot to me, and staying over summer, spring and winter breaks slowly became the norm. I’d find myself feeling lonely most nights, especially when you’re spending Christmas alone on a desolate campus, but I was mostly grateful I had somewhere else to stay. Being lonely was a small price to pay for safety. However, as a graduating senior, my safety was on a timer.
As my second semester of senior year rolled around, I began scrambling for anywhere else to stay. I ran through multiple options, asking my partner’s family, renting a room in a larger house, staying at a homeless shelter, attempting to rent a studio, but many challenges began to arise.
Asking my partner’s family if I could stay with them was a daunting ask, and after a couple months of deliberation, I decided to attempt to make it on my own instead. I didn’t feel right burdening them because of my household situation, so despite the possibilities being there, I just couldn’t bother them with my own life.
Renting a room in a larger house seemed promising, especially considering it was a little more affordable than renting an entire apartment by myself. However, some of the places I was looking at left me questioning my safety as a trans person. Which wasn’t ideal, considering I was already running into other challenges; I hated that my identity was becoming one as well. With that, I shifted my focus to renting an actual apartment.
Apartment hunting was fun for a bit. Fantasizing about my future with my partner, checking out cute apartments, exploring the neighborhoods. The window shopping of it all was fun while it lasted. Though my partner and I realized we didn’t have enough of a paper trail to prove we could make 3x the rent at many of the apartments we checked out. This was frustrating, because logistically we had the money, but our pay stubs didn’t add up for one reason or the other.
Defeated once again, I decided to just focus on graduating and figure out the rest later. I was disappointed, and struggling to imagine a future in my current home. My only option, I felt, was to enjoy the rest of my refuge while I have it, even though there were only a couple months left at this point.
And then out of the blue, an uncle of mine who I haven’t talked to in a while, Uncle Joey, tells me he has two apartments for rent. This was a godsent, but I could not believe it after the many hurdles both my partner and I had to endure. Nevertheless, two weeks after hearing from Uncle Joey, we checked out the apartment, signed the lease and the rest is history.
Now, I’m not going to tell you that we lived happily ever after. We found out shortly after moving in that our upstairs neighbors are loud, food is expensive, our bathroom door doesn’t fit in the doorframe properly, trash cans are more expensive than one might imagine, and we have no idea how much our utilities will cost until May 1st and that’s terrifying.
Additionally, living together with your partner is a little trickier than you’d think. My partner and I have been together for five years, and have slept over each others houses a million times. Though living together has been a learning experience for both of us, but if the love is real, it’s worth the work. We’re just taking it one day at a time, and he’s the only person I can imagine doing this with.
Even though the process of obtaining our apartment was challenging and came with frustrations, I now get to make dinner in a safe kitchen for my boyfriend on quiet evenings in our safe apartment, instead of being somewhere where I feel unsafe. My mom always told me that my biggest decision in life would be when I decide to walk out her door, but now that I’m out, I had no idea this would be both the biggest and best decision of my life. Onward and upwards for here, right?
