This is going to be a bit personal here, I am currently facing homelessness due to circumstances beyond my control, I am busy trying to get a brand new job, figure out how to keep myself clean while living on the street and working out a way to get some kind of shelter by any legal means possible. Sadly, this isn't the first time this had happened to me thanks to my strong trust in my parents, in fact I am in this current situation because I trusted my mom to help get an apartment, only to get hit with a surprise fee from the agency that wiped out the bank account, leaving nothing for the security deposit or the first month's rent.
Going back a long time, I wound up being trapped in a very, very rural area in Texas because my father was a wannabe survivalist and an abuser on many fronts, I had tried to escape a few times only to get scared of dying in the middle of the desert or being homeless in Texas because honestly I had nothing so I kept coming back and worked hard on survival. It was a very under the table "shop" that basically dug out junk, did the best to repair it and tried to sell it through free ads in the paper (this was years and years ago), there was times I was scared of becoming homeless anyway just to barely scrape by.
I had gone through a lot of shit, moving into a tiny rv with my dad, made my own section out of the front and lived nearly a decade in that and becoming his caretaker, and a caretaker to several people of the town as I would go around take out trash, dump piss and do oddjobs.
He died, he owned the small lot but I was unable to make a living due to a dozens of things like not having a work history on paper, tried to apply for work at a place I was good friends with the owners only to get rejected for one of their family member.
I broke down, and called my mom who I hadn't talked to for years due to a misunderstanding and my dad trying to keep me isolated, she came out with my step-father and took me to Baltimore, where we stayed in a hotel for a long while because they had just lost their apartment due to my step-father losing his job because he had health problems and a heavy, heavy drinking problem.
I stayed with them, even as we were homeless in Baltimore searching for a new home. I was naïve and just flat out stupid of how the world worked, kind of like a prisoner being released for the first time in decades.
We lived on the street, I found life without an ID, social security or anything is impossible. My step-father just kept getting drunk and my mom get hit by a car, which lead to the city cleaning up our homeless camp but placing us into a drug-rehab house near Wabash, this lead into my first on paper job, Assistant house manager.
They became house mangers, stuff happened and we all got kicked out, but fell into a gold ingot of a payout for my mom that allowed her to buy a house.
I stayed with them, unsure of what I was doing and slowly getting things like my ID and social security card, had major clashes with my stepfather over being a "failure to launch", which hurt deeply.
Eventually I worked hard to get my GED, as in going to class every day on a bicycle to get to class, as I was told that I needed a high school diploma/GED only to have the pandemic hit hard, which caused my step-father to spiral into literally laying in his piss, puke and box wine.
I would dump his piss/puke bucket, mop up his mess the best I can and help manage money, go get his wine, grocery shop and do a lot of the cooking.
Oddly for the first time despite the problems of life it was the first time in a long time I was out of survival mode during that time, with an id I could visit strip clubs or the library, bicycle around the city pretty easily.
My step father died during the height the pandemic, just right before state began closing their boarders, I know this because my mom sold the house and moved to Missouri because my mother fell apart, dealing with his death and her health falling apart due to the medication she was taking at the time, we wound up with my aunt, who was apart of a very strict Christian group, as in ones with a compound that they later moved to.
Again, back to the rural area I started my webcomic Nakamura Rex there and put a lot of effort into it trying to take my mind off of things as I was on edge, fearing my aunt or uncle would come bursting in at any second.
Mom depended on my aunt to help house hunt, but instead my aunt was always so busy, and my mom tend to buy things and gave them money for things like the lawyer to keep my cousin out of prison over some kind of major charge, she was hoping he could help out at the new house, or buying very expensive stuff for my second cousin's birthday.
But mom did manage to buy a house, which caused a fight because it was taking a long, long time for the house to close and we were almost out of money at that point.
Eventually there was some kind of fight between my mom and aunt, to the point we had to gather up our stuff and shove it into a U-haul and ran to the new house, which didn't have any electricity turned on for a solid week.
So, in Springfield Missouri everything was kind of dire again, I did get my second on paper job, Manager of a charity laundromat, it was a temp job that was suppose to last the summer but the higher ups ended it early, and try to stiff me out of my pay that I had to fight for.
During this time our power was going to be turned off, and mom decided to take a loan my aunt, they return to speaking terms by now, took out to cover said power. Instead of paying for the power, she spent it on the phone bill, which I try to argue it would had been better to used it on the electric, as our net was covered, and use a Voip phone instead but she just fought me and made me feel like I didn't know what I was doing.
I took another temp job, janitor at the University of Missouri's dorms which was hard because my boss was a goldbricking yahoo that wanted to stretch the job out for years, his boss wanted it done before school started and I wanted to get the rooms cleaned ASAP but he just stood over us, had each member do every inch of half a room before moving onto the next.
During this time my mom was having horrible depression and health problems, her epileptic pills was doing far more hard then good and I worried so much each time I called to check on her, it was so bad I had a full meltdown and left the job early and just quit because of the stress.
We tried to work on the house, we did. Redid the sink plumbing, replaced the drainage pipe, tried to replace the toilet only to find out it was impossible due to the previous owner was just taking parts out of RVs and other houses over the years, the whole house was just falling apart and we found out the hard way if the property taxes lapse even for a day anyone could come in and scoop up the place for cheap.
One thing I use to do for dad was run quit/quick claim deeds back and forth for my dad as he bought real estate off of ebay, so I wound up with a lot of junk property. One of them turned out to be worth something, and I manage to sell it off to save our bacon when mom was selling the house.
We piled into the U-haul this time, three cats, one dog and head to Phoenix from Missouri.
We arrived, I was promised a new life of being able to branch out on my own, get my own apartment because there was dirt cheap places to rent out, even with a minimal wage job and I believed it. We spent the first few months in an apartment like hotel with a kitchenette, our stuff in storage and we had separate rooms. I was busy trying to find a job, open to doing anything while my mom was off looking for an apartment, once falling for a scam that took 2000 from us, and took time from a job search to all the way to San Tan to look at a fake listing while I was looking at places that could be considered drug ravaged battlefields, but they were real and affordable.
We couldn't to afford to stay at the hotel, gave up the dog first during this time, later on we had to give up my cat as he was getting very sick, and the cat we saved from my aunts, but kept the kitten, and had to move to a place near the airport. Which lead into my job as a baggage handler at American Airlines, which I jeopardized with my idiocy and worrying about mom, to be honest I was still feeling heavy guilt over my step father dying and blamed myself over his death, even after I found out he took medically subscribed meth that dealt in his youth, and didn't want to see anyone else die. We moved from the hotel to hotel because they had a rule about needing to leave for two days, but we had to find a new place after the cats destroyed the room with the special litter. We wound up at the Extend a Stay in Biltmore.
I had been injured on that job, so badly I thought I was going to lose my arm. I went to the ER, went got told I pulled a muscle and re-opened an old fracture at the same time. I switched over my job to being a Passenger Assistant after my arm healed, a job I gotten on my own, and I even manage to get my mother a job there too.
It was rough going as I gotten the graveyard shift, and the first month was a bit difficult but eventually I gotten a bit into groove, it was scary and each week our paychecks was burned on covering rent and little bit on food but eventually the "rent" went down, and we gotten, sort of stable.
I wouldn't say I lived, I couldn't go anywhere I really wanted, mom is obsessed with driving, I gave up my bicycle back in Missouri as she talked me into trying for my driver's license, but even if I did have a bicycle it would be too dangerous as the drivers there are homicidal and reckless.
Honestly living in Baltimore, I did get jumped, and almost murdered but I never felt the fear I felt in Phoenix, the guy with a camping hatchet arguing with the bus driver then seeing me called the cops and coming after me, causing me to run away screaming, or the guy on the train following me around trying to sexually assault me, after the incidences I called mom and she said, "well, you should had been more calmer in the situation," and later one when I try to take the train into work so I wouldn't be late she told me, "I don't to hear you calling to scream help on the phone."
I just took lyft into work, which she got mad about because we were suppose to be saving money to move at that point, even though on nights I couldn't get in I would call in sick so I would avoid getting a "no show", which made her mad at me.
Oh, she spent a thousand dollars on both a Christmas dinner, and a Thanksgiving dinner, getting the food together for all the shifts at work. And dropped another thousand playing match maker taking her co-workers out to the Cheese Cake factory, I did partake so I really can't complain that much but still paying for everyone, and all to get two people together in a relationship that kind of fell apart within the first week we left.
I know this is exhausting but I need to get this stuff out.
We were pushed hard to move out of Phoenix because of the Superbowl, the prices were already going up and we wouldn't be able to stay there as is, and the idea that Florida was more doable on our salaries.
So, towards the end my leg suffered a horrible, horrible injury due to pushing so many fat passengers with tons of luggage over time. I was in screaming, nightmarish pain, but I try to tough it out, laying awake and crying in pain wishing to die. In the morning I just called for an ambulance, it was so bad I thought I needed surgery on my way to the ER.
The doctor there looked it over, and said nothing was bleeding, torn or busted so just stay off of it.
By next week I forced myself to walk on the leg, ignoring the pain so I could help with the packing and moving. It was slow, and it was hell, and I think I did some serious damage but I kept my promise and help with moving things.
Speaking of moving, we were suppose to move everything out of the hotel room, but only moved the huge and expensive stuff, there was a lot of left over food, junk and trash. Oh and damage from the cat too, which made me worried about since we moved in there for months.
The original plan was to have everything cleaned up, moved into storage on our weekend since she rented a car. What happened instead was she spent those days with her coworker getting drunk on German beer, all to play match maker, they made me go get some more and spend a lot of money on them, and had to do the packing all of it in one day before having out stuff picked up and shipped out after her shift and I had to call off.
It did some damage, because I couldn't walk very well and had to carry my suitcases down while in more pain, and needed a wheelchair myself at the airport. I did wheel myself around a little so I wasn't completely useless. Hell it has been over a month now and my leg is still hurting bad.
So this brings me to sort of now, where she hired the apartment agency that was suppose to get us the apartment for when we arrived, only to screw up the application and we lost out on the first one, the second one somebody in the apartment building was just hellbent of keeping her out for some reason, this one we got excepted, only to have all of our money drained by the agency and it was all legal so now I face the street on Monday. She has our stuff in a u-haul box that might have been claimed by the company by now, so I lost nearly everything I had of value except for the suitcase that holds some clothes and very personal items of mine.
But what happened four days ago caused me to just feel like just giving up and walking away, I woke up to see my mom sitting there on her bed, just staring at me and saying, "I am not going to live forever, you know?"
My brain wasn't fully working at the time, but I know she was looking at me like I had been just a solid worthless lump like some sitcom manchild that lives in the basement.
I broke right there, and started to look for advice on surviving my own for the first time in my 40's. Which surprising I gotten a lot of great responses about how I wasn't a loser because I was trying to push forward, and to look for roommates.
When we wound up at Hotel 6 I decided I needed to talk to a professional, I got a counselor who helped me out, we talked for hours about what I just talked about in this forum, the plan of if shit just bottoms out to just collect cans and try to get a tax deed property in the future. What I hear was surprising, that because I had a drive to want, an actual goal of having a home I wasn't a lost cause as my step-father had said or my mom thinks.
Also I was a giver, just in my nature to try to take care of everyone in my family and I was suffering sever caretaker fatigue.
What she, and the other counselor said as well, is while it is good to focus on survival but to remember to find a way to take a break, to have a reason to live. And it put a lot into perspective, and caused me to take a step back and just rethink my life.
Right now, I don't know what is going to happen or how rough things are going to be. I just know I have a goal of getting a job, getting a small home and work on my comics.
I thank you for letting me create this long, long vent.
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Comic Talk and General Discussion *
Homelessness, the rough life and creating comics on the street.[A vent.]
Dude, you have my most sincere and heartfelt sympathy, because I've been in this situation a number of times myself growing up . . . hell, I can tell you that my family and I moved over 20 times when I was growing - there have even been some times when we moved two or three times in less than a year! Much of that time was also spent in homelessness: the housing market has never been that great in my state anyway (mainly because we're an uber-red state that loves to making rich people richer and poor people poorer), not even for renting, so there have been a number of years of my life growing up where we practically lived in hotel rooms for months on end . . . all of this has seriously screwed me up, even in my adult life: just the sight of empty cardboard boxes gives me complexes; I have nightmares all the time that we have to move all over again; and as economic uncertainty continues to linger for everybody (seriously, what the hell is Sleepy Joe even doing to fix any of the mess that Don the Con left behind?!), I'm always fearful of a situation in which have a negative impact on us. My mother is elderly and disabled, so I live with her as her fulltime caretaker, but all we have to live on right now is her Social Security (I'm planning to apply for Disability, since my worsening physical problems are hindering my work ethic) . . . at least for over a year, our local government had an assistance program that actually paid for people's rent for those who qualified for such, which we thankfully were . . . but their funds have now run out, so we're back to paying our own rent again, which puts us back into a position of what are we going to do this month: pay rent, or buy groceries?
Like I said, I really do feel for you, this isn't anything that I would wish on anybody else, and I can see that you've certainly been through hell yourself. I really do wish you the best of luck in your efforts to improve your situation - I know how hard it is to find a decent-paying job, let alone a decent place to live right now; hopefully, there's something out there with your name on it, you just need the right signs to point you in the right direction.
Damn dude! I read that whole thing. That is a fucking saga. Think about writing it as a screenplay.That would make an interesting movie.
I've been having a rough few years but nothing even close to what you have been through. Hope you can get a small house or a stealth camper or something and a stable chill job that leaves you time for your art.
lothar wrote:
Damn dude! I read that whole thing. That is a fucking saga. Think about writing it as a screenplay.That would make an interesting movie.
I've been having a rough few years but nothing even close to what you have been through. Hope you can get a small house or a stealth camper or something and a stable chill job that leaves you time for your art.
I am honestly wondering if I shouldn't do an autobiographical comic.
What's funny, in a darkly way, is I left a lot of stuff out due to being too personal or seemingly outlandish to talk about.
And thank you for the kind words.
That's a hard, hard life man… This is why we need escapism and fantasy.
So many scummy systems and grasping people take advantage of the desperate and poor, it's revolting.
Agencies that are supposed to help people find housing are some of the worst.
—
You should definitely try something autobiographical, your experiences are valuable and interesting and I'm grateful that you've shared them here.
[UPDATE: I deleted the previous post as I made it in a state of mental distress.
So sorry about this everyone.]
{Another UPDATE: It is not looking very good, after a bout of sever depression, as in threatening suicide and wanting to die. I just silently sat here, before she just got so mad at her old coworkers and seem to get better. I went out for twinkies, and came back to find out our last bit of money was drained and she's on the phone arguing with whoever is doing it, because it feels like a fraud.}
Reading all this, I don't know what to say. I could give all kinds of advice but it's probably nothing you haven't heard from the health care people you've seen because they're what I follow to keep functioning.
Please just take one day at a time amd don't let it all overwhelm you. It is overwhelming but take one step at a time. Little steps.
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