I spent too many restless nights in a hot, wood-paneled room in my parents’ double-wide, taking self-soothing shots of five-buck Paul Masson brandy, and wondering how in the hell I ended up there.

My financial stability took a hit when I walked away from six years of workplace bullying in 2013. Soon after, I lost everything. I went from being a Navy crypto technician to making about $80K as a cybersecurity contractor to the unemployment line.

Homelessness for me wasn’t sleeping on a sidewalk or living in a makeshift tent in the woods. It was couch-surfing after I was denied housing assistance. Or failing to find gender-specific transitional facilities, which forced me to choose between living in fear at homeless shelters or sleeping in my car.

Of course, I never planned to be homeless. When the money and options ran out, I assumed it would be easy to find a lifeline in the sea of homeless assistance programs for veterans. But I ran aground in a system of homeless triage that was not designed with women veterans in mind.

Once, I contemplated panhandling in front of the Piggly Wiggly supermarket, crying as I looked at a cup on the sidewalk while I rehearsed my speech: “Hello. I am a U.S. Navy veteran and I’m in need of assistance right now. Is there any way you could spare some money so I could buy some food?”

I rethought my strategy after recalling the countless times I was mistaken for a veteran’s spouse at the Department of Veterans Affairs. I never forgot the shrinking feeling of being asked, “What branch did your husband serve in?” followed by a feeling of embarrassed anger toward people who refused to believe I served on a Navy ship.

Yes, I served. But past experiences had taught me that I, a Black woman who served honorably, still risked being accused of stolen valor if I played up my veteran status.

I served in the Navy for a decade before working as a defense contractor. Afterward, I found a job related to video on demand streaming services and worked there a year and half before the company slashed its workforce by a third in 2014. That left me unemployed and facing eviction.

When my unemployment benefits expired and I failed to qualify for government assistance, I slept on an air mattress in the back of a friend’s studio until their landlord found out I was staying there.

With nowhere else to go, I had no choice but to move back to Texas with my parents.

Two weeks of living with my family reminded me of why I left home at 18. My ability to shower daily was restricted, reducing me to taking bird baths in the sink. I had to wash my underwear by hand because I was prohibited from using the washer and dryer.

To feel some level of safety, I locked myself in that hot, wood-paneled room, drinking rot-gut liquor. The isolation made me relapse into the depression I experienced after surviving sexual trauma in the Navy.

I started to have nightmares about the time I fell asleep in a shipmate’s bed, believing I was safe.

But he began fondling me. My mind raced when I felt my shorts getting pushed to my knees, my shirt lifted to my neck. As he steadied himself on top of me, readying the full weight of his submersion, I tried to create a barrier with my hands and arms while begging, “Please, don’t do this.”

He wasn’t the first nor the last.

Crippled by the fear of reliving this pain, I felt uncomfortable around men. Which is why I refused the co-ed homeless shelters that veterans service organizations kept pushing me toward. The women-only shelter the VSO representative recommended was for domestic violence survivors, which I wasn’t. It didn’t matter anyway; no beds were available.

Eventually, I found a women-only shelter called The Villa Guadalupe in Houston. But even with the blessings of getting assigned a single-occupancy room with my own bathroom and shower, I felt unsafe.

Men often hung around the Villa’s gates waiting for the soup kitchen next door to open. One night, I kept hearing a car behind me that never passed. My heart nearly stopped beating, and the curly hairs on my neck stood straight up as I realized I was being followed. Dragging my rolling bag across gravel to the grounds, I hurriedly punched in my security code, shutting the gate behind me.

My residency at the Villa eventually qualified me for a federal housing voucher that helped me secure a one-bedroom apartment while I attended Texas Southern University. After graduation, I ported my housing voucher to California, one of the most expensive places in the U.S.

Moving to the Bay Area allowed me to pursue my passion for cinema. As a kid, I would memorize lines in blockbuster movies, rewriting the scripts and casting myself as the lead and family and friends in supporting roles. So I studied for a master’s degree in creative writing at Mills College in Oakland while also using a veterans retraining program to pursue a professional certificate at the San Francisco Film School.

I wasn’t worried about my military education assistance being temporary; I was more focused on how I could break into film. Sure, Hollywood was six hours away from my college, but I didn’t let that discourage me.

I bit the bullet and found veteran transitional housing in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Unfortunately, I learned upon arrival that it was a co-ed shelter on a retrofitted Navy air base.

After being there for a year, I was required to pay $800 a month, about 30% of my monthly VA disability stipend.

While the Bay Area’s educational programs were a good fit, the housing was not. My neighbors included male veterans suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder. I filed a grievance against the alcoholic veteran in the unit above me, who would wake up from his regularly scheduled blackouts by 5 p.m. and blast his iTunes concerts until 6 a.m.

County Section 8 recipients also resided within the complex, along with people living in their vehicles nearby. My unit was on the first floor in a suite easily accessible by a kitchen sliding glass door. When a housemate showed me that our individual room keys opened every door, I lost it!

I spiraled after that, plunging back into depression. When a veteran told me about the Road Home Program, I checked myself into their two-week mental health program in Chicago.

The care helped, and I returned to California to finish my master’s degree in creative writing. Landlords weren’t eager to accept my housing voucher when other renters could pay direct cash, so I used what was left of my savings to fly to Maryland, where I moved in with friends.

There, I attended a job fair hosted by Military Veterans in Journalism and ultimately landed a job as a visual journalist with the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky.

I’m no longer homeless, but I’m still close to the issue. I’m now working on a documentary about a shelter that specifically houses homeless women veterans, just like I once was. Their struggles are my own, and I understand them all too well.

This Reflection from The War Horse was edited by Kim Vo, fact-checked by Trey Strange, and copy-edited by Mollie Turnbull.