Mother threw me out of the house on Tuesday night.

I’ve stopped and stared at that sentence for at least a minute now. It still doesn’t make any sense. She woke me up at about 10pm, screaming at me – demanding to know what my problem was before telling me that I should leave. Earlier that day she’d left me a packet of cigarettes and told me to make sure I had something to eat from the fridge.

I grabbed the items most important to me – my laptop and my diary – and threw them into a bag with some clothes and a toothbrush. Five minutes later I was closing the front door, not looking back. I was still half asleep. My head was racing, trying to understand what was happening. My heart was still pounding from being woken up by someone shouting at me. I called three of my friends in London with places to stay in varying states of emotion – logical and calm; confused and increasingly in shock; on the verge of tears.

My former flatmates let me stay with them at their flat in Northwest London, which is easy enough to get to from Chiswick. It was about half eleven when I got here. I passed a homeless man under Kilburn station bridge on the way up the hill. I gave him 50p. I would have given him more but didn’t know if I’d now be needing every penny left on me.

It’s now Thursday morning, and hasn’t been a full two days since it happened. I have heard nothing from her since and been back to the house only once, yesterday morning, when I knew she wouldn’t be in. I packed a suitcase, tidied my room (I should say her room – it was never mine) of my things and stripped the bed, leaving quickly before she came home from work in the mood for another argument. I still don’t understand. This is something I never thought could happen to me. This is something I didn’t think my mother would do to her son. Am I a drug addict? Have I murdered someone? Has she become devoutly, psychotically religious overnight? What exactly was it I’ve done that made her a spontaneously different person – one who wants to throw me out of the house?

Since it happened, and I’ve been living off the charity of friends (oh yet again), I’ve realised two important aspects of being suddenly of No Fixed Abode, one bad, one good: you can’t get a job without an address, anymore than you can get an address without a job; and there is no greater luxury than clean clothes on a hot summer day.

Having proven myself completely incapable of getting a job in the past few months, I’m not sure how my current situation will help matters. I will also need to find a bedsit (rather than a flatshare again) longterm, which means more money going out that I was supposed to be saving rather than spending. So much for being able to afford to go to Canada next year. Looks like I’m stuck here, sleeping on friends’ sofas and living off their generosity until I’m able to get myself back into the rat race – desperately kicking my legs just to keep my head above water.

• This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 10:02 am and is filed under babble. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.