Having done this a few times, I think of it as decompression from life on the streets. Nine days ago, I was fully homeless. I slept on a sidewalk each night, in front of a business building that had been undergoing renovation for months. My every day living situation wasn't much different than the person in the photo above. Much to my surprise, the freelancer-type unemployment I signed up for back in July actually, finally, came through. I'd totally given up on it. But it happened, and that has allowed me to rent an expensive "cheap" motel room, for the time being, and get off the streets. How I came to be homeless is a really long and crazy story, and not one I really want to go into. I've been in and out of homelessness over the last 21 years, most of that time I was working full time. I'm not an alcoholic, I don't do drugs, legal or illegal, I don't fit all the typical "homeless person" stereotypes. I just haven't been able to make a decent living since working as a taxi driver several years ago. That's the short story.
While everyone who lives in any major city sees homeless people daily, the vast majority of people really have very little understanding of the homelessness issue, and what life is like on the streets, and how hard it is to get back to "normal" life. I once wrote an entire blog, a pretty popular blog actually, (over 60,000 page views) on this subject. I deleted that blog, with all my other blogs, in 2012. But the point today is that there's a big transition that happens when you find a place to live after an extended period of homelessness. The deeper and more intense the homeless experience, the tougher the transition back to regular life. There's a psychological, and a physical transition.
The best analogy I've found is that of a scuba diver who dives really deep. If they dive to 120 feet, and stay there a while, they can't just jet back up to the surface. If they do, the nitrogen level in their blood rises to a dangerous level, and the get "the bends," a painful, and potentially fatal, condition. So that scuba diver has to rise up a ways, and then stay at a certain depth for a while, then they rise a bit more, and hang at the level for a period of time. They come up slowly, in stages, and let their body (and blood nitrogen level) acclimate to each level, before moving a little higher. After a really deep dive, divers will have to enter a decompression chamber for a period of time, where the pressure is slowly decreased until their body is back to normal. Homeless people, when coming out of a homeless situation, need to do a similar thing.
The mentality that keeps you alive on the streets, a state of continuous paranoia, where every person and thing is a potential threat, isn't the state that gets you back to normal life. Having done this a several times now, I know it's best to be able to just chill out in a room for several days, and start getting back to a more typical mindset. In my case, I've been living on the streets (though working as an artist and blogger the whole time) for 16 of the last 18 months. I've spent most of that time sleeping alone, unarmed, on the streets of the Los Angeles area. Getting woke up in the night, and occasionally harassed or threatened by "street zombies," crackheads, tweekers, and wandering drunks, has been a nightly thing. Ever wake up, look around, and seen a coyote walk by? I have. A month ago. It's not a great way to live.
So, like I said, it takes a few days to decompress, to catch up on sleep, to eat a bit better, and to just be able to actually relax a bit. That's what I've been doing the last week or so. My Thanksgiving day, which I was incredibly thankful for, consisted of sitting in a tiny motel room, watching three or four movies on TV, and scarfing down a pizza from 7-11. Actually, it was one of my best Thanksgiving days ever.
During these few days, I've thought through my options, and found a new direction for my life. While my Sharpie art has kept me alive through five crazy years, it's not going to make me a living anytime soon. It does make me a little money, so I'll keep doing it. But I have some other options open now, that look more promising. So I'm getting my day to day things worked out, and starting to work more on some new ideas. More on those soon. That's where I'm at right now.
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