American Dreams

I dreamed too.

I dreamed of owning a home and being a dad. I dreamed of a family and friends and long summer evenings catching fireflies with my daughter in our front yard.

I dreamed of snowmen and Christmas lights and homemade soup on cold winter Saturdays.

I worked hard for that dream. I learned a business that I had no previous experience in. I studied, and toiled, and busted my butt and became one of the best there was in the business.

In 2004, at 41 years of age, with a 7-year-old daughter, I bought my dream home.

It was basic. A 2200 square foot, three-bedroom ranch in rural Williamson County TN, where I lived at the time. It was just her and I. Her mom and I had divorced several years prior. I didn’t remarry, choosing instead to focus on my little girl and being her dad. My house became my refuge. It was my safe place. It was where I could shut the door on the burdens of the day, and find peace and quiet. I bought it. I didn't sneak into it under the cover of darkness and then claim some right to stay there. I did it right.

I lived there for almost four years, until 2008. That’s when the dreaming stopped.

The economy collapsed in 2008, taking out the entire industry I worked in. I lost my job, then I lost my home.

Then I lost my dignity, and my sense of pride, and the only thing I had left was a storage unit full of belongings, and my fatherhood.

From May of 2008, until May of 2014, apart from about 7 months when I stayed at a friend’s condo while it was listed for sale, I was homeless.

I lived in my car, showered at the county Rec center, took every ignoble odd job and menial task I could find, and survived. I often made a meal out of the sample stands at the grocery store, the embarrassment of getting back in the line again after a few minutes, to get "seconds" of cheese spread on a single cracker, or a tiny piece of deli meat, turning my face to crimson. 

I was at the mercy of public restrooms. I tried to hide my plight.

I never panhandled. I never made my homelessness an issue. I worked as much as I could. I stayed in Nashville because my daughter was in danger at her mother’s house. Her mom had remarried and the man was a monster. I stayed to show him where the boundaries were. To remind him that even though I was a homeless man, I was still a man. If he went too far with his cruelty toward my daughter, I would be there, in all my fury.

It was two years before I could even drive down the twisting country road where my former home sits. The first time I drove past it, I had to pull off the road. The sobs were racking my sides and I couldn’t see to drive. I have tears in my eyes right now as I write this and it’s been nine years. It was my home. My dream.

I didn’t sneak in here. My grandparents came here legally, did things legally, became citizens, and honored the laws. They did it right.

For weeks now, all I hear about are “dreamers.” People Obama let off the hook. People who weren’t here legally, didn’t come in through the front door, didn’t play by the rules.

I hear about their dreams. Their hopes. Their contribution. I hear how many voices champion their causes and care for their needs.

But when I was destitute, living in a Volvo 850, showering at a gym, and eating dollar hotdogs at Sam’s club –often paid for in pennies- nobody even noticed.

Barack Obama has come out to criticize President Trump over his ending the “DACA” act. Obama. The man who caused this wreck. The man who talks of “dreamers” and their dreams.

I wrote to the former president while he was still in office. When I was homeless. I let him know about my plight. I told him what had happened. I told him about my daughter, and the harsh reality she faced with a homeless daddy. I compared my fatherhood to his and asked him to consider how my life hurts, and how it would be painful for him if he had to put his precious daughters through what mine was going through.

I never heard a word in reply. Not an email. Not an autographed 8x10 glossy, signed by some intern and stuffed hastily in a manila envelope, and mailed out to “some homeless guy in Tennessee.”
I know he read my letter, because not long after that, the White House started reading my blogs. (I have stat counter on them so I can see when someone checks them out)
I know they knew I was out there. Out there in my car, shivering in the cold and sweltering in the heat.

My dreams became nightmares. The nightmare of over 350 job applications without an offer. The nightmare of three job offers rescinded because of the high cost of the Obamacare mandate. The nightmare of nowhere to go, and nowhere to call home. No rest when I was weary. No shelter from the elements.

No shelter for my soul. No place for my dreams.

I hear them crying out from every rooftop these days, talking about “The Dreamers” and how their dreams need to be protected. But those same voices were silent while my dreams –and the dreams of my little girl- were crushed. Squeezed in the slow, vice-like grip of hopelessness. Choked out by the stifling lack of oxygen in the Obama years. Squeezed to death, by the sheer insignificance of my life in their eyes.

So, when I hear Obama and his minions bemoaning the fate of “dreamers” and I know those people aren’t even American citizens, and I know they broke the law just getting here, and I know they have a champion in their corner that was supposed to be working for me…well, forgive my callous bitterness.

I think of the Vets who died, literally in their cars in the parking lots of the V.A. clinics. I think of the coal miners and the home builders and the small business owners who shuttered their buildings and watched their dreams die over the last nine years. I listen for the same outcry I’m hearing now for illegals. I get nothing in response.

The same nothing I got when I was homeless, and broken, and desperate.

Unless and until the voices start calling out in defense of the fate of Americans and our dreams… nothing else they say will matter to me.

We’ve waited long enough. We’ve watched while you threw trillions at foreign countries and passed laws that favored foreign trespassers while American citizens were ravaged.

You’ve failed us. You ignored our voices and our dreams for nine years now.

And now when you finally talk about dreams…it’s the dreams of those who broke the law. All the while, law abiding Americans watch as their hopes take a beating, and their dreams burn to the ground.

I still dream of my yellow ranch house. I still dream of my garden and my workshop and cutting my grass. I still dream of owning a home again one day. But my dreams only matter to me. Those we elected to help us achieve those dreams are too concerned with the dreams of people who can’t even legally vote for them!

They champion their dreams in full view and bold colors, while my dreams fade and turn gray.

What about us? What about our dreams?

I fear my dream home will only be that…a dream. These professional politicians are too busy defending this non-constituency to worry about their constituents. If I ever do achieve my dreams again, it will be in spite of them…not because of them.