Settling into my new apartment, the 6th difficult move in the past couple years, after being homeless on and off the past 5yrs, I realized I’m certainly not the 48yr old that had started this new phase of my life—Midlife!

I didn’t celebrate the big Five O, like I had thought and read about in my Menopause awareness books and had no idea my life would be totally turned inside out; busted, broken and beyond anything I could have imagined.

I had managed Menopause being homeless, grateful not to have followed my Mother’s hysterectomy, had navigated the awfulness of sleeping rough, and had survived the trauma of putting my life back together after finding out my Exhusband had lied our entire 20yr marriage, had never loved me, and basically set out to destroy me—the whole marriage a fraud! It seemed surreal and yet here I was at 62yrs, “Divorced, Unemployed, & Overweight,” and starting over yet again!

I knew then if I didn’t make a change I would suffocate and fade away, but I had no idea it would almost cost me my life. I had thought living separately like Artists often do. The old 1970s version, I had thought of Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, an Artists life. It was another omen.

In many ways it did cost me my life—my old life! An old version of me, the married woman; who I thought I was, the structures in place that grid that life, and the love I had prayed about and had been so grateful for each day was gone and never to return and so was the woman that had believed so many lies, so many deceptions and had now endured so many betrayals.

I had moved into the attic that had been converted to what could have been an apartment and at times had been. I had made into a small Art studio the last couple of years we had been trying to find the right Nursing Care facility for my Ex-husband’s Aunt and getting ready to either sell the house or live there. Things were unraveling as I cleaned the house from top to bottom; sorting, packing and trying to make sense of the whirlwind move. I had felt rushed, shaken and unsure. I didn’t know it had been another omen of things to come.

My home of 20yrs was just about done. We had done so much renovation to the old Victorian and I had fallen in love with it even if it was small, old and not the one-family everyone else had. Surrounded by large Mansions in the neighborhood, I had been talked into a “fixer-upper,” and it was all about “location,” my Ex had said when buying real-estate. I was new to buying and selling property and trusted his constant assurances “it would all pay off!”

The garden was in full bloom the Spring day he announced we were moving. He would often make these kinds of pronouncements—demands even, ways of telling me what would go on. I had become accustomed to this, but had not fully questioned, although lately I was extremely fatigued, exhausted even, not sleeping as usual and tired in a way that even when I got a little sleep didn’t help, plus I had anxiety most of the time now. I was also tired of trying to figure out why I felt so out of sorts all the time in spite of seemingly having so much and yet having no fun, no real pleasure and spending hardly nothing on myself.

I had been promoted in a field I loved and my “Day job,” had turned into something successful as my skills were in-demand, and my Art was thriving in my spare time. I was certainly not living the romantic “Starving Artist” life I had dreamed in college. I had just bought a new car with cash I had saved and with a couple properties paid for; including vacation property, I felt I would finally be okay. The past was finally over! I could be safe, secure and holding my head up. The shame and humiliation of my childhood and those years were finally over and behind me, or so I had thought!

I had longed for a safe place my whole life; to create, to paint, to write, to live in peace. It was the most important personal goal of mine since I was a child. Finding time to just be! To create and to read! I would stay home to do all the house cleaning just to have a few precious hours after all the chores to create and write in my little journals, which was fine with my Mother that preferred to be out all the time. She hated being home; hated to cook, clean, or do anything domestic. She loved to be “ramming around,” she often said.

I didn’t really want to move. We had been in our home 20yrs. It had been my first real home. We moved constantly throughout my childhood. I really didn’t like his Aunts home. We had taken care of her for 20yrs and my Ex had often mentioned an upstairs at the end of our marriage. I never saw the staircase and I often entertained her and my Mother-n-law in my home, so I had forgotten about an upstairs until going through her things and packing up everything and being told to put it all in the attic, which she wanted. The door to the attic was next to the cellar door, which made it somewhat hidden in plain sight. This is what they called “the upstairs,” which was confusing.

As I approached the stairs that first day, I felt like I had opened a door into a secret tucked away because how could the attic be the upstairs? He had told me the door to the upstairs was next to the cellar door. I thought this odd at the time, but I had become accustomed to his directives without questioning them. I had learned to deal with his demands because to ask questions only made things worse. There is an upstairs through the attic door? I had thought, perplexed, but I would often be made to feel stupid and the constant insinuations that I was crazy were becoming more violent.

Where do you get these things?” he would ask with such incredulous distain, it would take my breath away, if I questioned things. I had stopped asking questions, and realized now for the first time, how often my intuition had been correct. That still small voice that I would so often dismiss, “the Red flags,” would eventually come to save me, and I would finally take it seriously and listen. A God send all along—my intuition.

If you weren’t looking you wouldn’t see the door as it seemed part of the back porch entry-way next to the door to the old 1970s finished cellar door that had another kitchen and her husbands carpenter work bench area.

Dark, old wood that reeked of old smells and grime from the large parties, family get-togethers and Polish food his Aunt oftentimes cooked. The stove emitting old pierogi and kielbasa smells now from so much cooking and decay that had been piling up by this time. The last few years we had been helping her in and out of Assisted-living homes as she demanded and argued to be in her home!

His cousin came to stay for a week at the end of the marriage and had told me after I had washed the walls they had kept his uncle up there at one time dealing with the DT’s from Alcoholism and I had washed away the words he scrawled on the wall above the entry doorway. I shuddered to think he was up there, as I looked at the locks on the outside of all the doors, of which there were many and got a bad feeling from the insinuation it was some kind of secret curse to have washed it away.

Once you ascended the stairs, curving around to a second set, that made it even more intriguing this was an upstairs, a large antique wardrobe stood almost in front of the door to the full space of the attic, which was rather large, but seemed small as it was hidden by the rows of old clothes, old boxes and wardrobes. I had thought of the books I had read as a child, “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” favorites of mine as a girl—“The Chronicles of Narnia,” I loved to read.

The light spilled in from the two windows in the second room after I entered the first, smaller room, which was the bathroom. I imagined a studio in the second room. It then went through a small hallway with another round of old doors and locks to what was the bedroom to the front of the house. It all was so expertly hidden it seemed. A secret place.

I thought how it would make a wonderful “Art studio,” it would be a dream come true. I would finally have a room all of my own in spite of having a home, vacation property and now after all the promises of this house in exchange for her care, along with the promise of my MILs large Victorian 2-family, things would finally be okay!

I had never had my own space for a “Room of One’s Own,” by Virginia Woolf, I had read as a girl and had dreamed ever since.

I never thought it could have ended up being my prison!

I sit here today looking at ways to decorate on a budget, basically back to thrifting, but grateful today that I didn’t end up taking care of my MIL and her Mentally-ill sister full-time in that horrible house.

I know today that the awfulness of living the rest of my life as a “Servant,” was not what God had intended. The pretty light that day flowing through the windows was the only real beauty in those rooms along with the Art supplies I had saved up for all those years—some never even opened, sable brushes from college. I had no idea the slurs about being a “Polish Maid,” were in fact more true than I had known.

My MIL and her sisters, there were 4 sisters, one had passed, were extremely demanding and liked things just so! as they say, but I had thought it just being around Nuns, as they all were very involved in the “Rosary Society,” and other social groups in the community. Orthodox Roman Catholic and old school, I had no idea the attitudes belied a much more sinister goal and the nightmare that was unfolding all around me had only just started.

Namaste Dear Readers!

Thank you all for being here, reading me, and following me along on my journey!

Rhonda