My Plan Not My Purpose

The apartment is gravely positioned down a stretch of road littered with trash on both sides. On any given night it would not be safe to walk alone. Weeds have overgrown with a wilderness that mimics the very people that lived there. The apartment buildings exhibit an exhausted appearance of a woman once pretty but now worn and ugly from the men that have run through and in her.

The stairwell that leads to an upstairs apartment is dark, damp, and dingy.

My plan, not my purpose led me up the stairs to one of the darkest seasons of my life. At no specific time, the smell of burnt plastic would fill the air. I soon learned this was the smell of crack cocaine.

My plan to be independent led me to sleep on an old mattress laid on the scuffed wooden floor of an apartment void of life. No furniture. No family portraits. No groceries to fix and sit around the table. Some days no water. Other days no electricity.

All by choice not by force.

My plan.

Not my purpose.

Was taking me to nowhere.

To be continued…

© 2016-2021 All words & images by Tanya Graham unless otherwise noted.