A few weeks ago I was texting a close friend of mine about our future plans. I told her about how my boyfriend, Kyle, and I intended to settle down in Pinellas Park, and she asked me why I didn’t, instead, accompany her to California where she wants to pursue a singing career. It was half a joke but it sparked a conversation.
“Now is the time to live life and take risks cuz we won’t necessarily be able to later,” she texted, voicing a live-for-the-moment sentiment that has never applied to me.
“I can’t take risks because I can’t afford any losses,” I explained to her. “If I want to take a risk when I’m 40, I’ll have enough of a safety net to fall back on. I don’t have a safety net right now.”
I’ve lived in transitional housing since I was 18, and slept on my grandmother’s couch for about four years before that.
In other words, I’m homeless.
Although my parents owned a house in Cuba, they immigrated to the U.S. with me in 1999 in search of a “better life.” It was in many ways better, but it wasn’t good. After a divorce that split their below-poverty-line income in half, I went to live with my father in 2006. He and I lived in a succession of places until, in 2010, we were evicted for the last time.
I went to live with my mother (that was the summer before my sophomore year in high school). During the next two and a half years she and I moved five times — from a three-bedroom to a two-bedroom, to an efficiency, to a converted garage, to a bedroom at a friend’s house and, finally, again to an apartment.
My mother and I had a strained relationship back then, often resulting in intermittent migrations between her place and my grandmother’s. By January 2013, the second semester of my senior year, I had landed decisively on my grandmother’s couch. The one-bedroom apartment, part of a 65-and-over housing facility, was OK for my grandmother and my father — who had been her caretaker since 2009 — but a third person wasn’t permissible. Two months into my stay, I received a one-week eviction notice.
It was around this time that my high school noticed all my address changes and a social worker asked for my permanent address. Not knowing what else to do, I explained my situation in full. She promised to get back to me with a solution. I rolled my eyes, nodded and excused myself.
A week later she did, though, and told me about a new program named Starting Right, Now — a private organization that helps promising students facing homelessness. I agreed to let her set up an interview.
Sometime after that, I met the SRN founders, Vicki Sokolik and her husband, Joel Sokolik. They were impressed by my 3.5 GPA and didn’t seem worried that I was behind on my credits. Their program offered me tutoring, transportation, a mentor and housing. They promised to help me graduate, pay for all of my expenses and get me into college.
To qualify, my father had to give his permission so I could be officially declared an “unaccompanied homeless youth;” a week later, I moved into an apartment, which I shared with another SRN student. SRN paid for the apartment, and for the tutoring I attended three to four times a week.
I met the deadline for earning my high school credits and USF St. Petersburg accepted me as a student. In Florida, homeless students receive a Homeless Fee Exemption. A week after I graduated high school, I moved into my dorm for a trial summer session.
I wish I could say I became an exemplary student and aced all my classes. But I can’t. Instead, I let every possible thing that could bring me down do so.
My three suitemates were all private Catholic school graduates, and although I had always known my situation was not in the least bit average, for the first time I had to face just how much it wasn’t. These students all spoke, acted, and dressed differently than I did and, somehow, were always a step ahead.
It was unnerving and displacing, so I secluded myself in the only place I felt secure. “The Stoop,” as we called it, was a patio that belonged to the apartments across from Residency Hall One, before they were demolished for The Salvador condos. It was where the smokers gathered to get away from the dormitory’s cold, white-washed walls. I made good friends but spent more time there that year than in my classes; I passed them by a hair.
Sophomore year arrived with promise; I knew a bit more what to expect, and my best friend from high school joined me on campus. Before spring began, I quit my full-time job to dedicate myself wholeheartedly to my studies. It went well for quite a while, but unfortunately, my dissociative tendencies and unresolved anger caught up with me when the relationship with my best-friend-turned-partner came to an end. I ditched school one month before final exams and spent a week at Gracepoint, a mental health care center in Tampa.
I had questioned my sanity and my worth, but somehow a week at Gracepoint set me straight — like falling and hitting your head really hard, but having the impact knock some goddamn sense into you.
That summer I moved back to Tampa, again to my grandmother’s couch, and began working at a dive bar on Florida Avenue. There I met a kind-eyed man named Kyle who’d learned to move on from a life that made mine look dreamy. A month later we started dating.
In the meantime, USF St. Petersburg kicked me out (I’d ditched my finals). With a letter from the mental health care facility in hand, I chased down my teachers, who agreed to change my grades from Fs to incompletes, and USF accepted me back. The fall of 2015, my junior year, was spent finishing the four incomplete classes along with my four new ones.
I couldn’t get into Journalism (my G.P.A. wasn’t high enough), so I went for English and discovered a new enjoyment: editing.
I made a point to fight against self-sabotage: I quit all substances, I gave everything my all and I began to challenge myself. Then I took a shot at something I’d always been too scared to do — I reached out to the editor-in-chief of the university’s student newspaper, The Crow’s Nest, and asked if I could volunteer as a copy editor.
After a trial run during the last issue of the semester, I was asked to come back for spring 2017. When I did, I was offered the position of online/social media manager. Throughout this semester I contributed 13 stories, copy edited every Sunday and started my own advice column, in addition to keeping our online site and Facebook page updated.
I also kept up with classes, built a relationship with my professors and worked 30 hours a week. Despite all the hecticness, I attained stability.
I do not plan on letting it go.
“How do you do it?” my English professor, Thomas Hallock (who would later refer me to Cathy Salustri as an intern), once asked me. I told him “I make sure to get enough sleep,” which sounds slightly silly, but the question, really, rests more on the “why.”
Lis Casanova spent her summer interning as the A&E editorial assistant, in addition to working and taking a class at USF St. Petersburg. She will graduate in December.
This article appears in Aug 10-17, 2017.