happened to me too, right at my 18th. crashed at a friends for the first night but didn’t want to make it other people’s problem so i lived in my car for months until i could find a job. showered at the local ymca and got my water by filling bottles in their water fountain. only ate off brand peanut butter and bread so i could afford to keep my car running with what i had saved up. i wouldn’t have been so angry if they would have at least told me that they planned on kicking me out at 18. i would’ve saved money and found a place to go but it was just “happy birthday get the fuck out and be an adult.”

what’s worse is all that made my depression unimaginably worse. the shit job i finally got started forcing me to work nights and then i couldn’t sleep in the day because the car was so hot and couldn’t block the sun to make it dark. eventually i just couldn’t take it anymore and crashed, losing my job in the process. i had some money saved up but only enough to go back to living in my car and i was ready to kill myself. i think this was around the time my parents realized their “sink or swim” plan wasn’t really working like they thought it would and my mom put down ~$500 on a duplex for me and i moved in there. i can’t tell you have incredible it was to have a bed again but having a feeling a privacy again was almost ethereal. i started to slowly get back on my feet and eventually got another job that i actually didn’t hate. it wasn’t ideal but i didn’t dread going to bed every night because of work the next day.

those couple of years took a serious toll on me and i’ve never really felt the same about the world since. i’ve had more ups and downs and some of the downs were worse than i ever thought possible but at least this time my parents didn’t allow me to go homeless. i’m 23 now and still don’t know exactly how i feel about the way my parents treated me. i’m 1 of more than 5 kids and none of my siblings were ever treated that way. i’ll never feel like i’m part of the same group as my siblings and it makes my relationship with my parents difficult. they all were helped into their lives like they should’ve been but for some reason my parents just didn’t help me. there must’ve been a reason and i know i wasn’t the greatest kid to be around but i don’t think i deserved what happened. maybe i’m wrong, maybe i’m not. i’ve mostly decided to ignore the past and focus on keeping what relationship i have with my parents before they die. they’ve shown regret for what they did and so it’s easier not to feel hate but i’d be lying if i said there was none. since then they’ve helped me through countless things but i can’t help but feel that i’d by on my feet and into my own life by now if what happened hadn’t happened.