20Everythings

On Homelessness

On the range of really pathetic days I have had since coming to the city, this one is somewhere near the top of the list. It’s 3pm and I have literally done nothing of substance yet…and I was awake at 8am. That’s 7 hours of nothingness that I just accomplished. To top it off, I finally left the apartment and I am sitting at…wait for it…STARBUCKS. The place I loathe (except for their generous contribution of bathrooms to the city.) I am of the not-drinking-corporate-coffee variety so it pains me a little to sit here, using their wi-fi and paying for their exorbitantly priced coffee. As it turns out though, the weather is really shitty and there are no other coffee shops anywhere near my new abode.

But that’s the good news! I have an abode! I am no longer couchhopping my way through life! My brief stint with homelessness is over! Woot!

It’s been a strange couple of months, starting with living in a camper on a farm, then in a room is West Harlem and finally on a cheap pull out “futon” in the Upper West Side. (I put futon in quotes because calling it a futon would be misleading. In reality it’s a cheap loveseat from Ikea that happens to fold out into something that resembles a bed as long as you are not looking for support or comfort from your knees down.) I have been lugging my belongings with me from place to place, which gets exhausting. At one point I had one bag of shit in Astoria, one in Harlem and another in the UWS. I accused my new roommate of stealing my shoes. In response, she lovingly suggested they might just be in another location. She was right.

It’s been emotionally draining, actually, this nomadic life. When filling out some paperwork one day, I got to the part where they wanted me to list my address. It was in that moment that I realized I didn’t have an address. I didn’t have a home. I fought with everything I had to not loose my shit right then and there. My body almost betrayed me as a few little tears appeared in my eyes, but I somehow managed to hold it together. I can make jokes about it all day long but it’s fucking exhausting.

I don’t use the term “homeless” lightly. Having spent the last two years working with the homeless of Boulder County I’ve seen homelessness up close and personal. (Sometimes a little too personal when someone overshares about their personal life or cleans their ears right in front of you.) Sure, I have been known to make a joke or two about it, but I know with my whole heart that it is not a laughing matter. Not surprisingly though, these last couple of months have taught me things about homelessness that I never knew. Or maybe I knew on that liberal, bleeding-heart, heady sort of level, but didn’t understand. I had a roof over my head every single night and I was never in danger of not being sheltered. Even so, it was emotionally and physically exhausting. I would never think that after a few short months of being transient I understand the plight of the homeless, but maybe, just maybe, I have a better understanding.

So for now I am not homeless anymore, that is, assuming that I can find some way to consistently pay rent. Maybe I’ll give Seeking Arrangement a try?  Better yet, maybe I will actually get a job. A real one. With big kid things like health insurance and a salary.

Here’s hoping.

How to be a big kid

I landed an interview! Woot woot! First interview in the city! I got my (brand new) big kid business suit out, ironed everything with a miniature iron using a kitchen chair for a ironing board (only one big kid step at a time, people) and studied up on my youth development. I was ready to go. Showered, makeuped, hair done-ed and my phone rang… the interview has been rescheduled for next week on account of someone in their office being sick. Fuck.

So instead I sat in bed and watched The Bachelorette. That’s the big kid thing to do, right?

Don’t get me wrong, I am still super grateful that I have an interview. I just would have really liked it to be over with. Then I could have gone out, drank a beer, felt accomplished…instead I just feel lazy because I sat in bed watching trashy TV, willfully letting my brain rot inside my skull. Not exactly a welcome alternative for my day.

I knew this whole, moving-to-the-city-with-no-job thing was going to be difficult but so far its been pretty smooth sailing. I found a way to make some money (being a companion to an 87 year old British woman. I sit and read the NYTimes and watch old movies. She makes me tea and tells the same story 4 times in an hour. Its rough.) but I have a feeling that now will be when I start to feel the pressure. My friend who’s room I am staying in returns to the city this weekend so I am out of a place to call my own for the next couple weeks. Decisions about housing and leases have to be made in the next week. Shit’s gettin real.

I suppose that means its time to really show what I am made of. This is what I want. Only I can make that happen. So here I am, in the New York Public Library reading room, trying to work myself towards sending out more applications even though its the last thing I want to be doing today. That’s what a big kid would do, right?

And no beer for me until I apply for at least 5 new jobs. That’s the rule. Let’s see what kind of motivator that is. Will this take me hours or days?

Knee Deep

Here I am, knee deep in chicken poo and I have no idea how to begin the story of how I got here, or why I am here at all. Nevertheless, here I am on a farm in Hurley, New York, busy wading through chicken shit, making friends with the spiders that terrify me, living in an old trailer and running from bees that burrow into my hair.

If only I knew how I got here.

The extraordinarily vague explanation (and also the only one I really have) would be that something pulled me here, something lead me here. I don’t know a damn thing about farming and it’s unbelievably out of my comfort zone. Why in the world would I choose this path? Strangely enough, I think its because I don’t know a damn thing about it and its out of my comfort zone. Confusing? It doesn’t make sense to me either.

You could say it’s like my own personal Rumspringa, my time to pretend like I’m Amish, forgoing my social responsibilities in order to experiment with life before settling down but with less cocaine and meth and more gardening and yoga.

Plenty of people look at me with confusion and blame, shocked at the level of my irresponsibility because I venture out into the wide world periodically. As I sit here in my trailer with the rain pounding on the metal roof and the thunder rumbling in the not so distant skies, I am acutely aware that this is not escapism in the slightest. In fact, this is me, facing the world and myself head on. It’s different than the world of paychecks, overtime, boyfriends, appointments, and OKCupid, but smelling the rain, the trees, the nasty poopy chickens…that’s real life, my friends. This is our world. I think I’ll get to know it.