This blog was started for NaNo06 but as many of my StarLog readers know, NaNo06 was interupted by life in a town run by tyrants, and thus I was offline only days after starting this blog. As many of you know, our family became homeless that day.
Well, I signed up for NaNo07 and my first day back the question was asked of me: What was it like to be homeless?
I senced that this question was asked with great awe and a tone of excitment and joy at the “romance of being homeless”. Well, I am here to clear up any rumors there are about how being homeless can be either exciting or romantic, for it is neigther.
Last year, as many of you may remember, halfway through NaNo06 I disapeared off the contest and forums and was not heard of again for nearly 6 months later. Here’s why:
We suffered a flood/fire that destroied everything and left us homeless. It also left my dad in a coma, leaving our family of 7 without an income. We lost our house, our cloths, everything. All we had left was what we were wearing when it happened.
We turned to family who due to regilgious convictions said that “god was punishing us” and they than refused to help us because they “would not get in the way of god’s plan”; they continued by saying that “god intended man to be self-sufficiant”, meaning that we had to help ourselves. sheesh. our friends (of the same religon) said the same. We went to the bishop for help, and was given this same answer yet again.
In the end, we stuck out Maine’s 2006 record breaking sub-zero winter, by living for 8 months in a “tent” we built out of a tarp and some cinderblocks. We kept warm during the day by staying in the Main Mall from 9 AM to 10PM. We ate about 4 meals per week at the Salvation Army (they don’t serve food every day). The rest of the days were spent in search of wood, leaves, and paper that we could burn at night to keep warm.
Thankfully, 2 months in, I was able to get a job at the Mall, and was able to afford to buy enough food so we could eat every day again.
Our time was spent mostly trying to find scraps of food to eat and anything we could burn to keep warm. Never once did we “panhandle” or “beg for money”. Belive me, when you are starving and cold, money is the farthest thing from your mind. I know. All of your time is spent worrying how many days (not hours, but days) it’ll be before your next meal, or worrying that the snow will collapse your tent while you are asleep.
Being homeless is very, very scary, you worry about not living to see tommorow more than anything else.
You learn to pick trash for food, and to pick up bottles and cans to turn in for money to buy food.
Also, you have to deal with a lot of stuck up snobby people throwing things at you (rocks and tin cans mostly), tearing your tent apart while you are away so that you have to keep rebuilding it, and wild animals attacking you at night. (fishers, martans, bobcat, and bear, in our case)
Also, you lose lots of weight (I lost 30 lbs) and you get used to walking miles and miles a day.
You learn that asking to take a shower at a friends house is taboo, and so must go month after month without washing… best you can do is to wash your face in the restroom of a store, but don’t keep going to the same store or they’ll call the police on you.
You also learn that not taking a shower well cause people to tease you, throw things at you, and go around saying bad things about you to every one.
You well feel unloved, unwanted, hated, and become deeply depressed. There well be nights when you lay awake staring at the blackness of the tarp above you and wishing tonights snowstorm will collapse it on you and smother you in your sleep so that you won’t have to wake up and suffer another day in this world where humans you once called family and friend are now your worst enimeies and hate you, simplyy because you no longer have a house to live in.
It’s that time of year again. Have you signed up for NaNoWriMo 2007 yet? Sign up today and let the world’s #1 writing contest begin!
https://www.nanowrimo.org/
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