How am I gonna know I'm letting you down
Who let it end up on the ground
How did he end up on the ground
Face down on the ground
Glass Ceiling, Emily Haines from Metric
In my case, I went through a very rough breakup with a long-term girlfriend, had a falling out with my family and some close friends, found myself repeatedly laid off, or terminated from employment, and, finally, was evicted from a room I was renting from a friend that had his own battle with alcoholism and loneliness, but had enough money somehow to cover the rent on a three bedroom condo by himself.
I found out months after this man evicted me, that he had been emailing, calling, and sending text messages to my friends and family, and even my ex-girlfriend, belittling me, and making my struggle to sustain these long-standing, healthy relationships much more difficult than it should have been. I am still confused in my mind, even now, whether to despise him for this, or just pity him for the very small, petty individual he turned out to be.
I had no idea this ex-roommate of mine was gossipping behind my back, and therefore had no way to defend myself from the kind of judgement of peers he was helping to shape about me. I also, (this may be in large part to a rigid stubbornness I had developed in my early twenties) was extremely fed up with people denying that my personal economic status was, at least a little bit, due in part to outside factors. When I complained about lack of employment, and the fact of how difficult it was for me to sustain a job, I had numerous people tell me to my face that blaming the economy for my unemployment was a kind of cop-out excuse.
It disgusted me earlier this year to hear outgoing Vice-President Dick Cheney say that, "No one could have predicted how bad the economic crisis was going to be."
A statement like that from a powerful political entity that he was, is just a slap in the face to people like me, and, much more notably, numerous economists and successful business people outside of the government elite, that had been predicting worldwide economic turmoil if the United States kept pouring money into the Iraq war machine, continued to borrow money from countries like China or Saudi Arabia in amounts that seemed impossible to ever pay back, and kept devaluing the U.S. dollar by outsourcing, and pushing manufacturing jobs overseas.
These kinds of naysayer predictions had been going on the entire 2nd term of the Bush Administration, but were repeated more direly late in 2006 and early to mid-2007. As it turned out, the same dumbshit people that were trying to save us from Global Warming were also meddling with people's heads by warning us about a global economic meltdown. Assholes!
Part of my stubbornness concerning my peers ignorance of my financial status was not to immediately tell anyone that I was living in my car. Immediately, after being evicted from my roommates condo, I went to a neighborhood I felt familiar and safe in, bought a few items of food, water, and personal hygiene products at a pharmacy, and, as odd as this may seem to other people, scraped off my upper layer of clothing and took a bird's bath.
I suppose, what I was doing was publicly declaring I was homeless by washing my hair, face, and upper torso in a parking lot in the middle of the day. I was fully aware that anyone observing me doing this probably did not give a rat's ass why I was there, or why it was I broke out my shampoo and soap so quickly after purchasing them.
It was not long after this, I began collecting CRV, and scouting areas safe to sleep in, and whatnot. It was very interesting to me, and I have been trying to stress this to people when they are willing to listen to long enough, that I did not contract any illness, be it the flu, or any other sickness, while I was out digging in trash for CRV, or sleeping on the ground on city streets, or in city parks.
This fact, more than any other, about my homeless experience still constantly amazes me. And, even more interesting to me, is that I did not contract any cold or flu until this year, while working for a telemarketing company where us employees shared telephones and computer keyboards.
Next time you are at work, or at the library, or any other place there is a personal computer keyboard sitting on a desk that has been in use for more than a few months, look down between the buttons of the keypad and please observe the amount of lint, gunk, and visible bacteria your little typist fingers call home before and after lunchtime.
Then, walk out front of whatever building you are in and attempt to find that much bacteria laden crap on even an entire block of pavement, or asphalt. Even most sewer gutters have less communicable spreading substance in them than the common household, or office space keypad.
You can't just hose off, or sink an electronic device into soapy, hot water. Think of that next time you see someone you believe is extremely dirty sleeping on the street.
All a brother has to do is wash his hands before eating, and pray his food is cooked properly, and most likely he will consume on a daily basis far less germs than the everyday office employee.
