My 20s were quite the adventure and very much a full spectrum of experiences. On one end, I lived on Wall Street— I paid a lot of rent but got the marble bathroom, the doormen, the concierge, the gym, the massage room, the rooftop you could see the Statue of Liberty from, etc. I loved my roommate and couldn't wait to move out of that apartment, but that's a story for another post.
The story for this post is, that this video made me think about, is on the other end of that spectrum, back to that time I was homeless at 24 in New York City.
I had recently graduated college, and I didn't have anywhere to live for 2 weeks because I messed up my housing plans between one apt and the next— things that happen when you're a young adult figuring life out I guess (especially as a foreign immigrant and all the extra baggage that adds). Man, it sucked.
Finding somewhere to stay temporarily in NYC is very expensive, especially last minute like I had to. I found this one little hotel at a reasonable price but they didn't have space for a single 2-week stay (again, very last minute) so I had to hop between a couple of different options for a few days in the middle of it. No biggie I thought, I had just done a spring break trip to Europe senior year of college and we had hopped between plenty of hotels and hostels then, right? I thought it'd be the same, but it wasn't. Just like it's not the same to camp out when you're on vacation vs living off a tent, it's not the same to hotel/hostel-hop on Spring Break vs when you're working full time, and are supposed to have your life together.
Mind you I was working at Meta. I had a great job with an office building where I could keep most my things (kept them in a couple bags under my desk) and yes, I was just getting started so I didn't have huge savings, but by no means was I constrained economically. I was also a new-grad, so my social circles didn't think much of it, at most they just found it funny and amusing. I didn't perceive any of the judgement that I think is common with homelessness in other contexts. I had it relatively good.
But the sense of instability and stress, the hit to your security, the bad sleep, not having a space for your things, your activities— it flips your habits, rifts your mood and even trivial things of the day-to-day one doesn't think of are suddenly out of reach.
My grandma was actually homeless once upon a time in Mexico. She stayed with whomever would house her family. She told me stories about sleeping without a roof on her head out on a hill, walking from one town to the next. Or about this one-room-house they built out of boards once and how the wind of a storm ripped the roof away one night. Homeless, broke and even hungry if they weren't lucky finding food.
I think about that sometimes. My experience very much just briefly dipping my toes on "easy-mode" homelessness gave me newfound appreciation for how impossible is to ask people going through the thick of it to find their way back to a normality. It's like asking someone who is sad to just stop being sad. It's impossible —it just doesn't work that way— and inhumane.
It also gave me deep appreciation for the laws, systems and protections available in Mexico for those struggling. They're not perfect I'm sure, but my grandma owns a house now, and saw her 4 kids go to college. She saw me go to the USA to study at the Ivy League too. Humanist public policy works.
And it makes me appreciate what a home really is too. The next apartment I moved into after that brief stint with homelessness was that Wall Street apartment I was talking about earlier. It was of course so much better than living in hotels and hostels— I paid a lot of rent but got the marble bathroom, the doormen, the concierge, the gym, the massage room, the rooftop you could see the Statue of Liberty from, etc. I didn't get a home though, but that's a story for another post.