Sable Monroe

I Couldn’t Leave at 12. So I Started Preparing for 18.

I started planning to leave my mother’s house when I was about twelve years old.

Not planning the way an adult plans to move.

I wasn’t comparing apartment prices. I didn’t have credit. I didn’t have real money. I couldn’t sign a lease. I couldn’t decide where I lived. I couldn’t do most of the things required to actually leave.

I was twelve.

But I knew one thing.

When I turned eighteen, I was getting the fuck out.

I told my mother, too.

This wasn’t a secret plan I invented years later after our relationship fell apart. From around twelve years old, I was telling her that when I turned eighteen, I was leaving.

Six years is a long fucking time when you’re twelve.

So I started preparing.

I Started With a Pillowcase

My mother knew how to sew, and sometimes there would be scraps of fabric left over.

I knew how to hand-stitch because I used to make clothes for my dolls. I could also repair little rips and tears.

So I took some scraps and made myself a pillowcase.

It wasn’t some beautiful piece of craftsmanship.

I was twelve.

But that pillowcase meant something to me that nobody else looking at it would have understood.

It belonged to my future.

I knew that when I became an adult and moved out, I was going to need things.

A pillow needs a pillowcase.

So I made one.

Looking back, the practical value of one homemade pillowcase was almost beside the point.

I was giving myself physical evidence that eighteen was coming.

That mattered.

Because when you’re a child living in a situation you desperately want to escape, sometimes the hardest part is feeling like your present life is the only life there will ever be.

Mine wasn’t.

I knew that.

I needed to keep reminding myself of it.

This is temporary.

This isn’t my whole life.

I’m only here for a few more years.

I Couldn’t Do Adult Things. But I Could Learn Adulthood.

There were plenty of things I couldn’t control.

But I could learn.

By twelve, I already knew how to cook quite a few things.

Rice gave me trouble for a while. I didn’t get really good at making rice until I was about fifteen or sixteen.

But I could make chicken. I could cook Jamaican dishes. I learned more as I got older.

Of course, I got bitched at while I was learning because apparently a child learning to cook should emerge from the womb knowing exactly how to season and prepare everything.

But eventually I got good at it.

I could do laundry.

I knew how to iron.

I knew how to clean.

I could sew enough to make simple things and repair clothes.

None of this was glamorous.

But I knew something that I think more young people should understand:

If you’re planning to leave home as soon as you’re legally able to, eighteen is a terrible time to start learning how to take care of yourself.

Learn before then.

My Mother Taught Me About Bills Whether She Meant To or Not

My mother also had me pay household bills sometimes.

She worked, and occasionally something needed to be paid while she was at work.

And sometimes that something was dangerously close to getting cut the fuck off.

She would write a check and try to line everything up with when her direct deposit was going into the bank.

Then she’d send me.

I’d take the bill and the check and go to a payment location, sometimes Con Edison itself, and pay it.

And I had to get there before they closed.

There wasn’t always room for:

Oops. I’ll do it tomorrow.

Tomorrow might mean something got disconnected.

So I learned.

I learned that bills had deadlines.

I learned that businesses closed whether you had finished solving your problem or not.

I learned that having money coming doesn’t necessarily mean you have money available right now.

I learned that households require somebody to keep track of a thousand boring little things.

My mother didn’t just budget the little bit of money I had.

She budgeted my time too.

I didn’t particularly appreciate that.

But I was paying attention.

I Learned From What Went Wrong Too

Not everything I learned about adulthood came from somebody showing me the correct way to do something.

Some lessons came from watching adults fuck things up.

I learned about landlords young.

I learned about housing court.

I learned about eviction.

As I remember my childhood in New York, I don’t think we ever left an apartment without my mother owing the landlord something.

We would stay until eviction was getting very close and then move.

I remember being in housing court once while a landlord yelled and called my mother a fucking thief.

That was embarrassing as hell for me as a child.

But it was also information.

I was watching what happened when housing became unstable.

I was watching adults fight over money.

I was watching what happened when relationships with landlords went bad.

And somewhere in all of that, I made another decision about my future:

I’m not fucking doing this.

When I became an adult, I wanted good references from my landlords.

I wanted good credit.

I wanted to pay my rent.

Housing became one of those things I took extremely seriously.

Later, when I lived in Texas and Maryland, I remember appreciating the experience of being able to show up looking like myself, meet the financial requirements, and get the apartment.

After my experiences in New York, including feeling like I had to dress up and present myself a certain way as a Black applicant just to be considered, being evaluated on whether I could actually afford the place felt like a gift.

I wasn’t going to fuck that up.

I’d rather not eat than not pay my rent.

Keep the roof.

Protect your housing.

Pay the rent.

Some adults teach you by giving you a good example.

Other adults teach you by making you determined never to live like them.

I learned from both.

Sometimes You Can’t Leave Yet

This is the part I want young people living in dysfunctional homes to understand.

I see teenagers and very young adults online who know something is wrong at home.

They know they want out.

And people tell them:

Just leave.

With what?

If you’re fourteen years old, where the fuck are you going?

You may not have money.

You may not have transportation.

You may not have credit.

You may not understand leases.

You may not know how to feed yourself.

You may be legally dependent on the very people you eventually need to get away from.

You may not be able to leave today.

That doesn’t mean today is useless.

Learn something.

Learn how to cook enough food that you won’t starve.

Learn how to wash your clothes.

Learn how to clean.

Learn how to use public transportation if that’s what you’ll have available.

Learn what rent costs.

Learn what utilities are.

Learn how bank accounts work.

Learn what documents belong to you and what you may eventually need access to.

Learn how appointments work.

Learn how to fill out forms.

Learn how to get somewhere on time.

Learn how to make a dollar stretch.

Learn adulthood.

You shouldn’t have to grow up early because the adults around you failed to create a safe, stable home.

But sometimes “you shouldn’t have to” and “you don’t have to” are two completely different things.

Deal with the reality you actually have.

Preparing Kept Me Sane

This is the part that mattered most.

I wasn’t only preparing because I wanted to know how to cook chicken and pay Con Edison.

Preparing gave me hope.

Every skill I learned was connected to a future version of myself.

Every birthday brought her closer.

Twelve became thirteen.

Thirteen became fourteen.

By fifteen, I could smell freedom.

I couldn’t make time move faster.

I couldn’t argue myself into adulthood.

I couldn’t make the adults around me become different people.

But nobody could make the calendar run backward either.

Every day that passed was one day closer.

That became something I could hold onto.

When things were bad, there was an expiration date in my head.

This isn’t forever.

I’m not going to live like this forever.

One day I get to decide.

One day I can leave.

I think that psychological part of preparing gets overlooked.

Sometimes preparing to leave isn’t about whether the thing you’re doing today will materially change your circumstances tomorrow.

Sometimes you need to do something that reminds you there is a tomorrow.

My Pillowcase Couldn’t Save Me

That little hand-sewn pillowcase wasn’t going to rescue me.

It couldn’t get me an apartment.

It couldn’t establish credit.

It couldn’t pay a security deposit.

It couldn’t fix my immigration situation.

It couldn’t turn twelve into eighteen.

That wasn’t its job.

Its job was much smaller.

And maybe much bigger.

It reminded me that I was going somewhere.

Nobody else had to understand what I was doing.

To somebody else, it was a child sewing together scraps of fabric.

To me, it belonged in a home I hadn’t lived in yet.

A home where I made the decisions.

A home where I controlled who came through the door.

A home where my life belonged to me.

At twelve, I couldn’t have any of that yet.

So I did what I could.

I learned to cook.

I learned to clean.

I learned to sew.

I learned to do laundry.

I learned to iron.

I learned about bills.

I learned about landlords.

I learned about housing.

I learned from adults when they got things right.

And I learned just as much from watching them get things terribly wrong.

Then I waited.

Six more years.

Five more years.

Four more years.

Three.

Two.

One.

Until eventually the little girl who kept saying she was leaving at eighteen turned eighteen.

And she left.

I couldn’t do adult things at twelve.

But I could learn adulthood.

And sometimes preparing to leave isn’t only about what you’ll need when you get out.

It’s how you remind yourself that you’re getting out.