Only a few days after getting settled into my new place, I went down to the dank basement to do a load of laundry. When I unlocked the door and stepped inside I was hit in the face with thick cigarette smoke. I assumed at first that the other tenant had been smoking in there and closed the door, trapping the smoke inside. I figured out though, that it was seeping through the unfinished walls from the top apartment. This would never do! I have mentioned previously, my intolerance for cigarette smoke. My lungs begin to close up immediately and if I do not promptly remove myself from it, it will send me into a full blown asthma attack.
I decided that I might be better off doing my laundry at a laundromat. This proved to be quite inconvenient, time consuming, and expensive. Even though smoking is not allowed inside laundromats, smokers stand just outside the doors indulging in their nasty habit, or they sit in their cars smoking with the windows open and the smoke pouring out of them. I have been deeply grateful that smoking bans have been instituted in public places all around the country. I find it disturbing; however, that so many people continue to smoke and an alarming number of them are children and teenagers.
After discovering the smoke in the laundry room, I began to notice it in my bedroom. This was alarming to me since I could not open the window. Turning on the ac unit only made it worse. Each day it grew stronger. I didn’t understand why it was not noticeable immediately upon moving in. I think they had recently painted the walls, which may have blocked it for a short time, but the walls were thin. The man who lived upstairs worked an afternoon/night shift and when he came home after midnight, his footsteps and voice were as loud as though he were standing in my bedroom.
After a few more days, the smoke became unbearable for me. The following Sunday night, knowing I had to be at work at 6:30 am, I attempted to sleep in a small recliner in the kitchen, near a window that I could open. After a few hours, I knew I would not be getting any sleep that way, so I drug my mattress and box springs down the 4 steps to the living room. I had signed a 1-year lease and I knew that I would have to find a way to get out of the lease and find another place to live.
A coworker had told me about a 4-plex that was about ¼ mile from work. I left on my lunch break that next day to see it. It was awful. It had not been lived in for a year. There had been a flood. It had never been cleaned and there were hundreds of spider eggs and mold everywhere. It had concrete floors. There was no bathtub and no laundry facility. I was desperate to get out of the smoke-filled duplex, knowing that if I did not, I would have ended up in an emergency room. I reluctantly took the spider infested place that was near my work and I moved in that afternoon. I called the previous landlord and explained the situation, asking if he would tear up the lease that I had signed. He was completely understanding and agreed to return my damage deposit. He was going to mail it to me at the new address, but a few days later he was walking with his wife in the gardens where I work and stopped to say hello. He went out to his car and wrote me a check and brought it back to me.
Sometimes, it seems that the challenges just keep rolling at me fast and furiously. I have learned to roll with them. I have learned to remain centered in that place of peace within me, no matter what is going on. In this way, problems have a way of being sorted out for the highest good of all concerned. Call it what you will – divine intervention, guardian angel, staying present in the now, or simply the power of prayer – but there is no doubt in my mind that when we get out of our own way, miracles happen and they happen frequently.
