Two Years

Nearly a decade of bad coping skills don't just go away overnight. All of my preconceived ideas about how the world was and what to expect soon proved to be off base. Way off base. I was certain that my fight was only beginning, that everything could only get worse, and for good reason.
Up until that point I had always been in an environment where I knew my surroundings and always had a way around. Even during the most horrifying experiences, I always knew there was somewhere I could go. Now I was alone.
Now I had no family, no home, no life, no identity. And for the first time in my life I really and truly felt afraid.
My first impression of this family I found myself temporarily living with wasn't exactly positive (and perhaps not particularly fair). What I saw was a rather old-school couple who always had to have the last say and resisted change and their along-for-the-ride son. To be fair, they seemed old school because they were. These were people who had the better part of forty years on me and from an entirely different country to boot. Their son, 'Brit' was somewhat along for the ride, but did have quite a bit of responsibility and say-so in the business.
I was swiftly put to work, much to the chagrin of his father. I first learned how to treat and clean swimming pools, how to brush and vacuum them and clean filters. Five days a week I cleaned pools.
Up until this point Brit and I had been living at his parents' house. An arrangement that only made tensions worse. I was thought of (and it was often vocalized) as ungrateful and immature and, depending on the done-wrong, American (which I learned stood for rude).
Four months after coming to live with them, I moved into Brit's house and stayed there full-time and walked to a nearby job. This doesn't mean that Brit also moved there, he still stayed at his parents from Monday morning until Friday evening. I spent most of my time alone.
One perspective on my plight at the time was that I was living in this wonderful, big house rent-free and should be thankful. That wasn't how I saw it.
In May I managed to get my car down from Illinois and shortly thereafter I got a job with 'The Mouse' and.... dare I say it.... moved back in with his parents. (In my defense, they live like ten miles from the place.)
All of this time I was also either pitching in with the business cleaning houses, handling clients, or doing random other stuff, or being bitched at because I wasn't contributing. The advantage to staying there was that I got to see Brit every day.
I had one other temporary and short-lived job after that and then spent the entire next summer unemployed. And my debt to the business grew.
If I didn't help, then I was lazy and if I did, then I was a controlling bitch. There were many times where I reached my boiling point with his dad and told him off. I got enlisted to travel up to Daytona three days a week (where our other office is) in a car with no air to babysit an employee I would have just fired. Oh, and that vehicle didn't have air either.
By the time fall rolled around and I started another job and re-moved out of his parents' house, it dawned on me I had been in Florida two years. Of which I had lived all but about four months in his parents' house.

To be absolutely fair to them, their feelings toward me were a bit justifiable. Brit hadn't discussed anything with them before moving me in. They hadn't had a good track record with being able to trust Americans and I was only nineteen.
After I moved out of their house for the second time, things began to improve. My relationship with his mother changed drastically, to one a bit more civil, and his dad began to ease up just a bit. At the same time, I also began to attend college. (That's another story.)