3 lessons I’ve learned while homeless

1. Homelessness isn’t just living on the streets or out of a car.

It also looks like couch surfing and staying in spare rooms.

It looks like renting pet-friendly Airbnbs and staying in hotels (both are expensive, by the way), because they don’t run credit or require income checks.

It looks like choosing to go to a women’s shelter instead of staying with your abusive family.

It looks like staying with your abusive family so you don’t have to give up your cat, because you can’t live without her.

You’ve probably crossed paths with a homeless person and didn’t even realize it — in the grocery store, at the library, or in your circle of friends. If you have kids, your child may know someone who is affected by homelessness.

There is no one look.

2. The reason why isn’t important.

Anytime homeless people are brought up, there’s always someone who makes one of the following points:

• It’s their fault.
• Their family probably tried to help them and got tired of it.

Where empathy exists, shame does not. But where empathy is lacking, shame thrives.

Lonely people are prone to depression and suicidal thoughts.

Two things:

1. It’s none of your business why someone is homeless.
2. Shaming a homeless person doesn’t help them.

I remember seeing this story somewhere about a homeless guy who wouldn’t take someone’s last dollar.

“If you give and you give all you have, you don’t have any way to take care of you.”

If you want to know why, or how you might one day fall homeless, perhaps you should stop thinking ill of everyone who is. Stop assuming it’s always addiction. It’s not always criminal activity.

Sometimes, it’s violating your own boundaries because your family has convinced you that you are disrespectful, ungrateful and “crazy” for telling them no.

Sometimes, it’s finding yourself isolated because you listened to your family, because insisted they know what’s best for you.

Sometimes, it’s your family learning how to use your autism and C-PTSD against you, and creating situations you will react “crazy” to.

Sometimes, it’s a partner fleeing an abusive partner with children.

But it’s always none of your business unless they want to share their why with you.

3. When you have nothing to offer, people show who they truly are.

I didn’t realize my family’s love and kindness was offered on a conditional basis. Actually, I didn’t realize a lot of things.

The Baader–Meinhof phenomenon, or frequency bias, is the bane of my existence. I learned about gaslighting and manipulative behavior, and I began recognizing it everywhere.

And I called it out.

Thanks to the curse of knowledge, I recognized the behavior in these patterns and decided I didn’t want to put up with it anymore. I learned about boundaries — but not consequences of violating them — and set them.

I stopped saying yes to everything and started saying no to things and people that didn’t bring me joy.

People show you who they truly are, and say what they truly think of you, when you have nothing to offer them. Some people want only the recognition of “being there” for someone when they don’t actually have to do anything.

But an amazing, beautiful thing happens in the midst of losing seemingly everyone who claimed they loved you in the dumpster fire that is your life: You start meeting people who are there when you have nothing to give them in return.

I cried when I realized I’d met someone like this. Then, I cried again when I realized I had someone else like this.

That’s it. That’s how homeless people “pull themselves” out of it — at least I hope so. We need people who reach down into the pit of despair and help us climb back to the surface.

But that’s just another way of showing this little thing called empathy.

I’ve been homeless since October 2022. I claimed I needed mental help, but I really just needed to distance myself so as to break away from the trauma bond.

This chapter isn’t one I’m proud of. I’d love for it to end quickly. But it’s the one I’m one and the one I’m working to climb out of despite mental exhaustion, severe stress, and the desire to relax and stop worrying.

59% of all Americans are one paycheck away from homelessness, but it seems the ones closest to it are the most critical.

Autistic people are considered “more likely to experience homelessness” due to lack of social supports.

Homelessness is one of the most humbling, traumatic things I’ve experienced — and I was physically and sexually abused as a child.

I’ve learned

• who is there for me,
• who uses my weakness for their own gain,
• who uses my skills against me, and
• who I want to remove from my life permanently because most people don’t change (and those who do only change because they themselves want to).

I often wonder how different my life would be at present if, instead of constantly criticizing and manipulating me because my family disagreed with my decision to run my own business, they chose to support me.

It costs nothing to share a small business owner’s posts, refer your friends to them, brag about them to people you meet the same way you brag about your employed (grand)son’s workplace achievements.

Kindness costs much less energy than all the hate will when it piles up. Love grows. Shame festers.