It can be difficult to regard one's self according to "profiles" or stereotypes. Just so, as it's turning out, I am among the "chronic homeless" apparently, although the reality - my real life experience - has all the unique, individual elements and aspects that comprise my daily experience ... yet the upshot is that I am "homeless" .... again. And that qualifies as "chronically homeless" by now. This is the fourth year since the fiasco that displaced me and drove me to the streets then.
Last year, I'd managed to rent a "cottage" (converted garage) in the backyard of a private home, largely due to finally obtaining a very modest, but reliable, income and as a result of some personal networking. Meanwhile, I finally lost half or more of my earthly possessions that I'd been keeping in a commercial storage unit for almost three years.
That, too, is a painful passage that's so common to "the homeless" that it's as painful to watch your self suffer the very same stereotypical losses and indignations, despite the custom particulars of one's own version, as it is to suffer the actual losses. One steadily becomes a "type", including the "typical" sequential demises and vagaries.
For me, this was compounded by the rawer fact that I'd gone to such real lengths, extreme efforts and true deprivations so many times, in so many ways, and for so long ... fighting to stave off that loss. Only to then fail after having done so - as happens to so many others.
I didn't fail completely, nor as badly as many others have, in that I was able to salvage and keep my most precious and valuable of belongings, plus some. Again, perhaps a little less than half of all that remained (after having progressively sold off quite a lot of the more expensive and luxurious stuff through those same years). But it was a major relief to finally get my treasured and most basic of usefully valuable things out of the clutches of those predatorial storage vultures' grip, at long last.
And then I lost the little RV van that had become my "lifeboat" while still "out there". It had gotten me, literally, "off the streets" and was an invaluable refuge from the worst of all that. Then, gone. It's hard to describe the sensation, after having so intimately relied upon that resource. In the circumstances, it's far more than just a "resource" -- it's a much more personal, significant thing. It's more a "lifestyle" or something. A sanctuary. Retreat. Bastion. Precious.
I felt rather naked and vulnerable without it, despite having a key and rights of entry/occupancy to a little building in which I could yet more "comfortably" live. And, as it eventually turned out, that somewhat insecure sense of risk proved to herald the underlying truth it foresaw .... when things increasingly "didn't work out" with The Landlord (over-emphasize LORD, actually) and I, again, made fairly hasty departure into the netherworld of The Displaced.
BUT (and, yes, it's a major but), this time I'm truly far better prepared, equipped and enabled to do so in a much different manner. To whit - I now have another RV. A somewhat larger one, and with more "systems" of functionality and relative "luxury" -- within the context and scale of living inside a vehicle, that is. AND, rather than get my stuff back into one of those storage dens of usurious thievery, I've taken a different, and so far much better, tack on this.
I used to feel so frustrated having to regularly empty my pockets of virtually all of my hard-won cash and sleep on sidewalks in storms, in order to fork everything over to pay to have all I owned safely indoors within a heated unit ... and mostly inaccessible to me. Many a time I fantasized being able to somehow sneak in there and just nest inside to enjoy the same comforts and benefits I paid for my inanimate objects. But it wasn't allowed.
THIS time, I can. Because instead of renting a "storage unit", I've rented an "office" -- one which I also am purchasing "24 hour access" rights/privileges. MUCH better. AND I've arranged to be able to park my RV in an almost adjacent lot, escaping all the vagaries and risks of having to play the parking/meter/ticketing game, etc. and/or "residing" in noisy, bothersome places with only public places to spend the rest of my time.
What's more, I've got free heat and electricity here. AND nice, clean bathrooms. AND use of a "kitchenette" down the hall, with refrigeration and microwaves, etc. AND I pick up a free, 'round the clock wifi signal. AND I have a stunning view!
Yes, it costs more than twice what I was paying for only storage, and all told (I also had to obtain a commercial insurance policy in order to rent), it's monthly rivaling what that cottage deal was costing me. But at the cottage, I had to "share" the bathroom and kitchen with the landlord, in the house. In HER house (it became clearer just how much it was NOT at all to be my "home" in any way, shape or form). And that's exactly what went haywire, as she got more and more haywire, and in more and more ways, too.
Thus far, this is much, much better. While it's seriously short of "being at home" to be sleeping on a camping mat surrounded by a stacked jumble of all my remaining possessions in just one modest room (organizing furniture, like even just reasonable shelving, was lost), and having to maintain appearances once I step out into the hallways and other common areas of this office building, I'm finding it refreshingly better than having to do similarly walking into someone else's home and, indeed, being perched within their backyard and constantly surrounded by them, their animals and all their activities. Here, I'm on somewhat egalitarian and far less interpersonal basis with others. And that makes an important difference. Plus, a maintenance crew well cleans the halls, bathrooms, and kitchenette, five days a week.
[to be continued...]
