On homelessness and why I think it’s important to share.
I have been homeless twice in my life.
Once, when I was in 6th grade, and my family had just moved from California to Colorado. We lived in a Motel 6 for about 4 months and ate at Village Inn every day for breakfast and Ruby Tuesdays every day for dinner. I still can’t look at Eggs Benedict without feeling a little queasy about the hollandaise sauce that I’d eat every morning before school that semester.
I was young at the time and it felt cool to say that we lived in a hotel. I never had friends over but it felt like a novelty to have someone clean our room every day and we eventually moved into a home. It didn’t and still doesn’t, feel like a huge deal.
The second was much more brief, much more impactful, and a lot less fun. It was the summer before my senior year of high school, and my mother was moving the family to Vermont. It had been a complicated summer and ultimately, I found myself on a cross-country road trip to Vermont with my mother.
When we landed, it was clear that there was no home for us, and we ended up at a campsite by the lake just outside of Enosburg Falls, Vermont. At first, it was just the two of us- my sister would come later and my father would move later that fall. Looking back, my mother had packed the tent with us, so she must have known what we were driving towards.
The thing about homelessness is that it can look like many things.
I often say that my case wasn’t so severe as begging in the streets for money, but the difficult thing for me in adult life has been figuring out if we were homeless because we were poor, because of a lack of planning, or (the most probable) a combination of the two.
The other thing about homelessness is that people who haven’t had proximity to it often don’t think about how it complicates the little details. Where do you use the bathroom, where do you store food if at all? How do you form relationships with friends, how do you explain your family’s situation, and how do you register for school in a school district where you don’t have an address?
We lived in a tent that my parents bought from Big 5 Sporting Goods when I was in elementary school for a school trip, and every single belonging we had was either in the old silver Honda Accord my mother drove, or in the tent itself. When my sister joined us we slept next to her rat, Squeakers, who rattled in his cage at night.
The last time I had been camping in this tent, the whole family had gone to Sweetwater Campground in Colorado, and it was a favorite memory of mine. All of us and the dogs, sleeping side by side, completely losing track of time, eating chili in diners on the side of winding dirt roads, and just being together. It had rained most of the weekend so it smelled like wet dog and we actually didn’t do much, but it was still one of the happiest weekends of my childhood.
This time, in Vermont, was much different. It was August in Vermont and it was humid. Occasionally my mother would take our clothes to the laundromat but I was 17 and I had a favorite outfit that I wore every day and it stank. A tank top, sports bra, and Dickies shorts, in case you were curious. It may come as no surprise but organization was not exactly a priority. Our clothing and belongings spilled out of suitcases in the corner of the tent. It was impossible to find anything, even after rummaging through piles and piles of clothes and everything smelled like hot tarp.
The showers at the campsite were operated by quarters. Every quarter bought you an extra 5 minutes or so and we’d stack the quarters up on the wet, wooden boards in case the water stopped running mid-lather. I would carefully fold my glasses and balance them next to the quarters, blurring my sight of the mesh windows that let in the light high above my head, near where the spider webs were. After each shower, the trick was walking carefully in flip-flops so as to not get any dirt or dust on your ankles.
The worst part, perhaps, was the isolation. My mother would leave every morning to go find an apartment or a job or who knows what, leaving for hours at a time, and often only returning after dark. I had a cell phone but could only charge it in the car when she came home and service was spotty, so I often had no idea what time she’d be back. We were living at a campsite in rural Vermont- far from any towns, and so I would wander the walking trails by day. The woods were dense and blocked the sun in some areas of the trail and in others you were exposed to the hot sun, surrounded by tall grasses the height of my shoulders. I remember the sun, the heat, the dust, the bugs, and the endless wandering in loops throughout the day, trying to pass the time. While there may have been more to explore, I didn’t like to go too far from the campsite, and I’d circle back often, hoping to see her silver car parked outside.
There was a lake, but without a boat, getting into the water felt like an activity that would only require another quarter shower afterward, which I tried to avoid as much as possible. I also had strict orders not to swim alone, and I was never much one for breaking rules. This was the time in my life when I began running because I had an iPod and listening to Nelly Furtado and Coldplay and whatever else I had downloaded provided an escape. It was an activity away from the campsite, and I could pretend that I was just a normal person out for a run.
In terms of other activities, I have a vivid memory of being asked to move campsites- alone and without a car. Before she left that morning, my mother told me that we had to move from one lot to another and that it needed to be done before the end of the day. And then she left, and I remember the particularly demeaning feeling of hauling all of our belongings past other families, up the road, by myself. In an act of anger or laziness, I ended up dragging the tarp underneath the tent by a corner, bringing the tent and all of our belongings inside it, with me. What a sight that must have been- a skinny, angry, teenager in flip-flops dragging an entire, upright tent up the road.
17-year-old me. Peep the suitcases inside the tent. Also- pretty sure I cut those bangs myself.
Food was also an issue because where would you store it? I don’t quite remember if we kept snacks in the tent, but i do remember the excitement of my mother coming home with sweet onion teriyaki subs from Subway. I would peel that thin paper off the sandwich and savor every bite.
After a childhood of poverty, my relationship with food is one of the things that I’ve had to work on the most. When you don’t have it- the longing, the hunger, the uncertainty, and when you do- the luxury, the joy, the shame that someone will notice how excited you are to eat.
All of these things culminated in intense shame. Sometimes, my mother would come back with people in the car. People who I knew and sometimes people who I didn’t know, and my mother would invite them to our campsite with an ease that always made me think- are you crazy? Why do you want them to see us like this? It made me feel as if I was alone in the despair of our situation and forced to play a part in the absurdity that was telling people that we were living an enviable adventure.
People would tell me- you’re so lucky. I love camping. I wish I could live here too. While my preference would have been not to have been homeless, if I’d had the option, perhaps I would have chosen to live through this chapter of my life in privacy, a quiet secret that only my family and I knew about, that reinforced our understanding of struggling and overcoming together. How nice that would have been.
Instead, I was faced with the impossible dilemma. Should I feel relieved that no one saw our situation as homelessness and play into the delusion? Or was I angry that no one saw our situation for what it was, and no one was offering to save me? I’ll remind you, I was 17. My delusions of “being saved” ran pretty rampant during this time.
A blurry picture at the campsite. Off to the right, you can see clothes hanging to dry. On the left, the corner of my mother’s silver car.
Whatever my feelings, our campsite became a hang-out spot of sorts, with my mother bringing people my age by to hang out. I don’t quite remember where she found these kids or why on earth she’d bring them back with her, but eventually, I’d get tired and say goodnight, unzipping the front flap and crawling into the tent as if to highlight that what we were doing wasn’t normal. At the time it felt like my bedtime routine must have been so different from those other kids. In reality, the kids hanging out with us probably didn’t have a much different situation at home.
All told, we probably only lived in that tent for a little over a month. My mother eventually found an apartment above a downtown restaurant and I can’t remember if I started my senior year of high school living in the tent or in the apartment. I ran away from home not long after, and so some of the last memories I have of living with my family are riddled with memories of being alone and living in the woods.
I have been camping twice since then, not wanting to miss out on fun experiences with friends simply because of past traumas. While I am proud of myself for trying,
I have since concluded that camping for fun is not really for me, as both times I have been unable to shake the memories of camping out of necessity.
Not wanting to divulge the entire story, I have simply told people that I am not “outdoorsy” and have left it at that. This has, at times, earned me a reputation for being slightly high-maintenance and for hating things like hikes.
Strangely, I have a love of s’mores to this day. Perhaps it reminds me of what camping could be, sitting around a fire, enjoying the simple luxuries in life. The decadence of dessert at a campsite, the feeling of warmth with family and friends.
Now, later in life, I think about those kids who used to hang out with us and where they must be now. The self-centered nature with which I viewed that time, thinking only of myself, while now I wonder if perhaps a campsite in the middle of the woods with a random family was way better than whatever they had going on at home. I feel a tenderness for all of us and hope that life has extended them grace and kindness as it has to me in subsequent years.
In the past, I’ve been quite selective about who I share these intimate stories with. I have thought that I’d never share them publicly because 1. I’m generally a fairly private person, and 2. it cheapens it. The significance of these stories, and how foundational they are to who I am today, means something to me. For other people, it may be a cute quip about a “conocida’s” life, a fact that is shared over drinks but quickly forgotten, losing impact and weight over time.
When I have chosen to share, sometimes the reaction has been- you don’t look like what you’ve been through. While I’m not quite sure what that means (white?), it’s something that I try to be conscious of. When I’m in a group setting and I hear someone talking about poverty and struggle, I often feel a sense of camaraderie. In the past, I have assumed closeness with people who wear struggle on their sleeve and have been met with a who the f do you think you are? attitude.
The reality is that because I don’t “look like what I’ve been through”, if I want to seek connection with others who have also known struggle, it is important for me to open up and be vulnerable. In the past, I’ve thought these stories earned me a ticket to entry into the communities that I most identified with, but I’m learning that you still have to earn trust. If I hope to find others who might connect with the monumental weight of my journey, I also have to be honest about where I started.
So here you have it. One of the stories I thought I would never share. I hope I’ve done this story justice, and that 17-year-old me would feel satisfied (albeit mortified) by the way this was conveyed.
Here’s to putting yourself out there,
Ariana
