I have been paying rent since I was 17 years old. Dank share houses, dodgy landlords, and many dollars have gone towards keeping a roof – barely – over my head these past 15 years.

I had always heard that renting was a trap, but my young self wasn’t quite aware of how trapped I would later become. The idea of owning a home, for me, seemed far too adult and (quite frankly) boring. I was too busy with my badly-paid hospo job and deciding which new high street wine bar was best to frequent, and I wasn’t financially literate because I was too busy reading Anaïs Nin novels and practising which way I wanted to hold my cigarette in order to achieve an effortlessly cool demeanour.

Fast forward to right now, and it’s not the price of a pouch of champion Ruby that kills me, it's how grossly unaffordable the Australian housing market has become, and it’s basically all I think about.

I seethe whenever I get an email from my real estate informing me someone will be trespassing  through my home for a routine inspection, making me feel like I’m some kind of unhinged, out of control animal that needs checking up on regularly.

I could become almost murderous with rage when my rent is nearly doubled come time to re-sign the lease, knowing full well the owners paid the mortgage off long ago and are laughing all the way to the bank thanks to negative gearing and other government initiatives that feed the cycle so many of us suffer in.

Dealing with warped cupboards, leaking taps, running toilets, mould (is it even a rental if it doesn’t have mould?), cracked tiles, scuffed walls that haven’t been graced with a new lick of paint since the place was built and, of course, the hallmark of a rental: those dreaded vertical blinds.

You know the ones, they are that depressing shade of some kind of beige that just screams “I was the cheapest option,” and the little beaded strings that join them together at the bottom have spent decades deteriorating in the sun, leaving them brittle and ready to crack so you can sit and watch each individual vertical beige blind dance in the breeze that runs through your shitty rental.

These are just the problems I experience while stuck inside my rental.

What about when I go outside, into the world and walk among the homeowners?

Hearing mums at playgroup talk about their recent renovations (or their plans to) and – I struggle to even type this – buy an investment property, maybe even their second or third, I just want to vomit all over the play kitchen that's kind of better quality than the real one in my rental.

Surely there should be a jail sentence for that kind of house hoarding behaviour!?

I grit my teeth when I see a SOLD sticker on a picket sign in any neighbourhood and every boomer I see in the grocery store represents all the things I don’t have. An affordable home and free education.

(I place curses on them and wish them ill and then later feel guilty for it.)

It’s gotten so bad I can no longer bring myself to visit friends who own their home, or interact with anyone in the homeownership category for fear of black out level rage over my renter status. I can no longer muster a smile for anyone who lands their feet on the property ladder, even a close relative. I have become a completely irrational, disgruntled, renting monster and the only antidote is to own a fucking home!

In this current economic state, and without the bank of mum and dad, I just don’t see it happening… and It’s starting to depress me.

Please send help or – more preferably – a home of my own.

See more of Lucy Lumen's work by popping by her personal website or Instagram page.