If you are homeless, you almost certainly have some kind of social drama happening in your life. Generally speaking, you only wind up on the street if your personal social safety net comes completely unraveled and there are no friends or family both willing and able to take you in anymore.
Additionally, some people wind up on the street because they are fleeing an abusive situation, either family or an abusive relationship (spouse or domestic partnership). There may also be an element of being cross-ways with someone in a position of power. This can be a significant obstacle even if they aren't specifically trying to block you or hassle you.
It gets worse if there is active malicious intent on their part. While I was on the street, I knew a homeless woman who told me her abusive ex was a cop. This was a huge factor in her inability to make her life really work.
Malicious actors can seriously compound your problems. I once read about a very poor single mom who sought help from some agency and they tracked down her abusive ex to try to get money out of him I guess. This allowed him to show up and rape her and get her pregnant again and also forced her to move again to try to escape him.
The good news is that being homeless can be a means to help you start untangling yourself from this mess.
I had no phone at all for over a year and being homeless basically ended a lot of my social connections. In some instances, that was very much a case of "Good riddance!" No, I have no plans to get back in contact now that I am off the street.
If you are homeless, you may find yourself living a lot like someone "on the lamb" anyway simply because you don't have a fixed address. For example, you may not have a checking account, so you may be dependent on cash and gift cards.
A side benefit of that can be that you wind up cutting ties sort of incidentally, without really planning it per se. If you do have serious social drama in your life, let me suggest you actively analyze such elements and thoroughly think about both the ties you would like cut and how being homeless is helping or could help you cut them, as well as what needs to happen to keep them cut.
If you don't, you might find they come back after you get back into housing and this can contribute to a cycle of repeat homelessness. You want to figure out how to make sure such ties really die and are not merely temporarily disconnected by happenstance. This tends to take some planning and effort.
If you have serious social problems, let me recommend that you mostly not talk about it online. Talking trash about people who don't care about you, are causing problems for you and are perfectly willing to harm you can come back to bite you. You may never know they were reading that same forum and recognized you and that you meant them and this is why your life is now more miserable again.
Many people online act kind of like they are talking with a limited circle of friends in a local pub and it's "just between you and me." This easily goes bad places.
When I was lead moderator for a group of online email lists, we told people "Don't say anything on the list you wouldn't want on the front page of your local newspaper." Pretend that "local newspaper" is being read by everyone you personally know, especially those folks you don't get along with, even if they aren't all in the same town.
Keep in mind that just because you didn't use their actual name doesn't mean you didn't identify them. Descriptions, such as "my mom" or "my only brother," can identify a specific person.
When I was homeless, my focus was on trying to create the future I wanted. I was trying to get healthier, pay down debt, develop an online income, and do research to figure out a town I wanted to live in. I was also quietly trying to kill off some problematic social stuff.
I was a homemaker for a lot of years. Me and the world both ended up with excessive expectations concerning how much of my time, energy and life belonged to other people for free. Getting shed of both external and internal expectations in that regard was a key detail in solving my problems.
If you have anything similar going on in your life in terms of abusive or simply unhealthy social connections, now is the time to start sorting it out in your mind and then fixing it in practical terms.
I wrote about such things more than I realized on my old homeless blog:
Additionally, some people wind up on the street because they are fleeing an abusive situation, either family or an abusive relationship (spouse or domestic partnership). There may also be an element of being cross-ways with someone in a position of power. This can be a significant obstacle even if they aren't specifically trying to block you or hassle you.
It gets worse if there is active malicious intent on their part. While I was on the street, I knew a homeless woman who told me her abusive ex was a cop. This was a huge factor in her inability to make her life really work.
Malicious actors can seriously compound your problems. I once read about a very poor single mom who sought help from some agency and they tracked down her abusive ex to try to get money out of him I guess. This allowed him to show up and rape her and get her pregnant again and also forced her to move again to try to escape him.
So, the kinds of social problems that tend to be part and parcel of winding up homeless tend to be thorny and intractable. They aren't readily resolved by, say, just moving per se.
If you are an individual or agency looking to help the homeless, keep this in mind and please try to First, Do No Harm.
The good news is that being homeless can be a means to help you start untangling yourself from this mess.
I had no phone at all for over a year and being homeless basically ended a lot of my social connections. In some instances, that was very much a case of "Good riddance!" No, I have no plans to get back in contact now that I am off the street.
If you are homeless, you may find yourself living a lot like someone "on the lamb" anyway simply because you don't have a fixed address. For example, you may not have a checking account, so you may be dependent on cash and gift cards.
A side benefit of that can be that you wind up cutting ties sort of incidentally, without really planning it per se. If you do have serious social drama in your life, let me suggest you actively analyze such elements and thoroughly think about both the ties you would like cut and how being homeless is helping or could help you cut them, as well as what needs to happen to keep them cut.
If you don't, you might find they come back after you get back into housing and this can contribute to a cycle of repeat homelessness. You want to figure out how to make sure such ties really die and are not merely temporarily disconnected by happenstance. This tends to take some planning and effort.
If you have serious social problems, let me recommend that you mostly not talk about it online. Talking trash about people who don't care about you, are causing problems for you and are perfectly willing to harm you can come back to bite you. You may never know they were reading that same forum and recognized you and that you meant them and this is why your life is now more miserable again.
Many people online act kind of like they are talking with a limited circle of friends in a local pub and it's "just between you and me." This easily goes bad places.
When I was lead moderator for a group of online email lists, we told people "Don't say anything on the list you wouldn't want on the front page of your local newspaper." Pretend that "local newspaper" is being read by everyone you personally know, especially those folks you don't get along with, even if they aren't all in the same town.
Keep in mind that just because you didn't use their actual name doesn't mean you didn't identify them. Descriptions, such as "my mom" or "my only brother," can identify a specific person.
When I was homeless, my focus was on trying to create the future I wanted. I was trying to get healthier, pay down debt, develop an online income, and do research to figure out a town I wanted to live in. I was also quietly trying to kill off some problematic social stuff.
I was a homemaker for a lot of years. Me and the world both ended up with excessive expectations concerning how much of my time, energy and life belonged to other people for free. Getting shed of both external and internal expectations in that regard was a key detail in solving my problems.
If you have anything similar going on in your life in terms of abusive or simply unhealthy social connections, now is the time to start sorting it out in your mind and then fixing it in practical terms.
I wrote about such things more than I realized on my old homeless blog:
- Creating a Future for Yourself from the Street
- Building a Better Future for Yourself
- Picking a place to stay, making plans, making progress
- Lessons Borrowed from Intentional Disappearances
- Cutting Ties to Bad Relationships
- Keeping Your Sanity in the Face of Social Isolation and Boredom
- Online forums and social needs
- Buddies
- Homelessness, The Law and Pragmatic Personal Choices