#hobocrip

Every night I’ve had a bed, ever since I was a young child, I have always said a silent “thank you” to it before I sleep.

I’ve also said that same thank you to overpasses and bridges, park benches, couches, floors, car seats, the half crumbled foundation of that building I could fit under, trees, snow, ice, green grass, tents, my jacket, my backpack, my friend’s lap, hospital beds, waiting rooms, empty church pews, abandoned buildings, behind stores, alleyways, half flooded basements, bus seats, bus shelters, steps of a homeless shelter, steps of a church.

I’ve slept in so many uncomfortable places and still was grateful. And at the same time, I knew I needed a better situation to get true rest.

When I became seriously ill in 2017, I couldn’t rest. Even when I got an apartment in 2019, I was still in an unsafe environment, still having ER visits every other week. It wasn’t until I got a bed and in home care that I stopped having nearly daily life threatening symptoms and could give my body a break.

⌂ adult / over 25 ⌂ on/off homeless ⌂ disabled ⌂ mad ⌂ neurodivergent ⌂ queer ⌂ trans ⌂ DID system ⌂ currently precariously housed ⌂ multi-marginalized ⌂ writer ⌂ artist ⌂ zero income ⌂ mixed ⌂ community organizer (10+ years) ⌂ abolitionist ⌂ pagan ⌂ extremely exhausted

Essays:

May Your Hands Always Be Loud

Sword Canes Aren’t Badass. I am.

What’s So Wrong With Having Heroes?

Unlucky: Protective Factors and Homelessness

Homeless Delicacies and Finding Unhoused Joy

Internalized Ableism As Means For Unhoused Survival

Let People On Food Stamps Eat Hot Meals

Intelligence Doesn't Equal Morality

Homelessness as Trauma: Transitioning Into Housing

Winter Solstice / Homeless Persons Memorial Day

Guides:

Unhoused Solidarity in Action (how to help out unhoused people outside of just care packs)

Coming into Disability (best for newly disabled people)

Interacting with People with Psychosis

How to Support People

Underrepresentation in Homeless Statistics

Houseism

I'm mentally ill and neurodivergent (I'm autistic with comorbid ADHD, bipolar, depression, anxiety, borderline personality disorder, severely chronic and debilitating OCD, schizophrenia, C-PTSD, dissociative identity disorder (DID/OSDD), antisocial personality disorder, etc.), as well as physically disabled and chronically ill (I have fibromyalgia, epilepsy, chronic fatigue syndrome, tourette's syndrome, ehlos danlers syndrome (EDS), a traumatic brain injury (TBI), pseudobulbar affect, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), etc., and I'm not forgetting about the many intersex variants I have as a result of being born intersex along with anorexia and bulimia which are simultaneously mental illnesses as well as illnesses that affect me physically), and I've been homeless before. My family and I have experienced financial struggles and being broke to the point of living below the poverty line, and we've been homeless and unhoused before, having briefly slept in our car and living in and out of hotels all during the time of moving out of our previous apartment complex and looking for a new place to live. I've had to work a part time job while dealing with being homeless as well as simultaneously dealing with being in the midst of a severe, life altering episode of stress induced psychosis, dissociation, anxiety attacks and back to back nervous breakdowns directly due to stress from moving (and overall unresolved mental health issues and trauma based issues).

Now admittedly at the time my family and I were just beginning our time of living in and out of hotels and hotel rooms, my mom even said to me, "We're effectively homeless." Of course due to both my initial preconceived notions of what homelessness was and looked like and due to the very idea of being homeless being too emotionally and mentally overwhelming for me to swallow at the time due to everything else already being too stressful along with my increasingly fragile and unstable mental, emotional and psychological state, I brushed it off. Now I've since swallowed the pill due to doing more research on the different definitions and degrees of homelessness and looking back at me and my family's situation at the time and acknowledging it for what it was. My parents were homeless and I was homeless. Fast forward years later and my family and I are now in another apartment and have been here for a few years. Granted there's been quite a few issues with said apartment: the rent and cost of living getting too high and becoming increasingly more and more expensive, malfunctions in our apartment i.e. cracks in the ceiling along with plumbing issues that have resulted in multiple water leaks and dripping on numerous occasions, sketchy conditions of some parts of the house (i.e. my mom not being able to sleep in her and dad's bedroom due to the carpet having tons of dust and there being some mildew on the bottom parts of the wall, each of which are dangerous to mom due to her allergies and asthma which make her immunocompromised and which results in mom having to sleep up front in the living room, etc.)--but other than that, there's no complaints. My parents and I are housed now, we have more than plenty of food and drink, clothes and shoes to wear and beds to sleep in, and my mental, emotional and psychological state, even with up and down days and overall challenges, is in a much better and more improved state now than years earlier, so I'm thankful regardless.

Which now brings me to my discovery of gutter punk. I've been into the punk/punk rock subculture and into the alt subculture for many years already though it's just recently that I've found various categories of the punk alt subcultures that fit me: anarcho peace punk, gothic punk, Afro-punk, straight edge punk (heavy emphasis on this due to me being clean and sober from my opioid prescription pill addiction since November 21st, 2023), bohemian punk, cripple punk, weirdpunk, etc. But in context of everything I've shared with my experiences with homelessness, gutter punk jumped out at me for obvious reasons. Because like I said, I've been homeless before and I've been unhoused before, so needless to say I both feel great empathy for others experiencing homelessness even though each experience differs and I identify with gutter punks and gutter punk subculture due to my experiences with homelessness and due to me having my skin in the game of punk rock subculture as a whole. That and due to my growing awareness of the housing and homelessness crisis in California that's only getting worse instead of better. Oh, and also give a raspberry to the system of classism that treats the poor, middle class, lower class, lower middle class and working class like garbage.