I had left on a backpacking trip to Europe and was going to relocate out of Baltimore, so I relocated to Florida three weeks and didn’t know where I wanted to relocate to. My best friend had family that lived in Florida—but Florida was horrible, I had no idea how bad it would be. It was really horrible.

It was hot as hell and we had three hurricanes in three weeks. We boarded up my friend’s aunt and uncle’s house twice while we were there. And I had gotten into car accident. It was just a fender bender. I sideswiped someone.

I didn’t want to come back to Baltimore, was planning on moving to Philly with my cousin. I ended up coming back. I was not moving back to Pennsylvania to live with my parents. I had a guy friend who I asked kindly if I could live there temporarily. I said 6 weeks, but it ended up being six months, out in the county, in Phoenix, Maryland. I’m living out there waiting for my cousin to get her shit together so I can move to Philly.

I got a contract position at a Nursing home in Essex. There was a family whose mother was living at Riverview Care Center who parked their car in the lot all day, every day and used the public bathrooms inside, all day, every day.

I was doing occupational therapy

My cousin meets her now husband and no longer wants to move to Philly with me. So now, I’m like, “I’m already back in Baltimore” and decided I want to live in the city, because “That’s where the action is, the bright lights, nothing like Baltimore at Night,” [laughter]

I was younger and thought it would be nice to live in close proximity to things, which is nice except for Bolton Hill is kind of a dead zone and if you are a female you can’t walk anywhere anyway.

After I realized my cousin wasn’t going to move with me, I started looking for fulltime jobs and began working in a hospital. To be completely honest, I did not think about danger and how criminal it would be. I was from a very small town. I knew enough to know I couldn’t just walk around by myself. I took it for an aesthetically pleasing place that looked like an area where people with a lot of money lived. I assumed that those people would live in a relatively safe area.