What is the first night of being homeless like? r/AskReddit | Reddit Jar

people who are have been homeless what was the first night without a home like and how did you adapt to your new situation slept in my vehicle couch surfed with a friend squatted in an unused trailer all while still working at a Walmart saved enough to get a crappy apartment and just kept going from there I didn't really realize what was going on I was about 6-7 at a time dad said we were going to go for a drive and to pack my backpack with all the clothes I could fit and one toy mum was just crying me and my brother sat in the backseat he was a little elder and was holding our Sega Genesis and looking scared we drove for a little while it was already getting dark and we parked in front of a Walmart and dad said he had to rest for a while was the first of many many nights we slept in the car I remember one of my parents was always awake with their hand in their coat pocket looking back it was obvious they had a gun for protection sleeping in shifts edit Jesus this blew up and thanks for the gold trying to respond to all but my poor inbox edit - WTF guys three gold thank you I was homeless for a couple of months a year or two ago I had a car and a low-paying job so I lived in the woods in a tent for a bit the first night was miserable I ended up sleeping really uncomfortably in the passenger seat of my car and it was a really cold night after that I got a tent and slept on an old climbing pad I had the first night was held but the next several weeks were actually not so bad I had a spot in the woods where I was well hidden and would cook over a fire I really didn't have it that bad but it gave me quite a bit of sympathy for people who really do end up on the streets in a much more desperate situation tea is not easy I kept waking up in the middle of the night and would start walking home I'd get a few steps then stop and realize I had nowhere to go and turn and walk back over and lay on the ground the ground is very cold and I felt a lot of shame when I was a teenager I had lots of problems with my mom I pretty much chose to be homeless I slept at a Catholic Church across from my high school so I could still make it to school and graduate early I remember feeling really sad because I slept where they put people's ashes and I remember being so sad that those people could comfort me in death more than anybody alive I used to talk to them if there's camera footage I look insane I never realized how alone I was in the world until I was homeless and I never realized how cold the concrete can be it shows you right to your bones and is painful sleeping in my car wasn't that bad it was summer so it was pretty warm which was my biggest issue showered in the gym and spent most of my day at the library before going to work for the first few nights it wasn't bad however one night police found me sleeping in my car and escorted me to the local homeless shelter which was one of the most terrifying nights of my life since I'm lying there in a top bunk when a huge argument breaks out because one guy breaks out some meth wouldn't share it with a second then a third got pissed and started screaming at them to be quite because he needed to sleep edit since this is coming up a lot people keep asking how it was legal that the police escorted me to the shelter I don't know the legality of the issue what I can say is that I was woken up by a knock on my window to see four cops two cop cars they were singing those super bright flashlights through my window at me and I didn't even think of arguing with them it was terrifying and cold and hungry I didn't sleep a wink I adapted over time extremely steep learning curve to surviving homelessness nothing really prepares you for it I was kicked out by my mother at sixteen and spent two months homeless before the local authority placed me in foster care I think what hit me first was how my own mother could make one of her own children homeless I felt like the least favorite of her children it all came out of nowhere I racked my brain for years after trying to think of what I might have done in particular also the crippling loneliness you feel when you are trying to get hold of people to ask for a place to sleep for the night I could not feel more alone in the world when someone would either not answer my message or tell me they were busy I'm pretty sure I camped out in a park that night didn't sleep at all I was about nine years old and my mom said we were going on a camping trip I didn't really suspect anything as it was summertime and we went camping a lot when I was younger although I did wonder why we were packing so much stuff after a few weeks of camping I started to complain but my mom kept insisting that it was good for us to get in touch with nature etc then school started and we were still camping and we kept camping for another six months when we finally got a house my mom cried with joy and we don't camp anymore I was getting high so it really didn't truly sink and until I was broken down sick then the desperation started going to gas stations jumping karthik are asking for money stealing what I had to it was a miserable existence there are so many things you don't think about when you're not homeless taking a shower washing your clothes and the boredom hours upon hours of nothing to do and the constant noise there was nowhere to go where it was truly quiet fortunately I eventually got arrested for shoplifting reached out to a family who helped me get back on my feet I remember being really hungry and acting weird because of the low blood sugar almost delirious this was when I made a futile attempt to run away from an abusive home with no money I ended up going back because of that I was homeless for a little while in the 80s it's terrifying at first you feel so unsafe I was a teenager and wasn't willing to close my eyes and sleep on a park bench alone so I went to a local shelter and lied about my age the forced me to shower and do a pee test it turns out the women and that shelter were scarier than the street so the next night I didn't go back I slept in a park but ultimately made squatter friends and stayed with them it was very much a community and I felt safe and loved there the biggest problem with being homeless in the city is no one wants to let you use the bathroom even park bathrooms are locked squat peeing in between cars can be done quickly and under cover but when you get your period it's a nightmare these days I have stability so I never pass a homeless person without buying them some food or giving them a little money and if they use it for drugs or alcohol I don't care living on the streets is hard drink if you need to my friend the first time I had to live in a motel for half a year each night was the same as the last cramped up setting but dry and safe the second time I got lucky and was already staying at my grandparents house the night when I became homeless again thankfully they allowed me to stay until I eventually got a new home the first night there was blissful peace and ignorance first thing I realized at 18 when leaving home and finding myself stranded straight away is that I wasn't as and lucky as I had always thought female young and normal-looking God supports from loads of random people who deemed me very brave it hit me really hard that if I was fat or a guy I would have been screwed I lived in Spain by then and a couple of nights at a park was quite exciting just a couple of nights is what it took to get emergency accommodation and nobody bothered me then jumped from sh t job to sh t job for a few weeks ended up getting a year long apprenticeship selling shoes second I learned that hitchhiking is very cheap and pretty safe in Europe just kept clean looks did loads of work away placements and slowly got on my feet I am 28 now and settling down in Cornwall UK which is the nicest place where I could ever imagine living equals I was only 13 the first night I had to just turn the fear into strength it got easier and easier every day I figured out how to get clean where to sleep where to eat it was easier to get used to then when I got a home again and had to get used to staying in a house again I don't recall my very first time exactly I do remember looking for a friend that was homeless and his friends ended up watching over me everyone was drunk except me I didn't sleep more recently less than a month ago I lost my housing and everything I own I'm alone this time I sleep during the day and browserand 8:00 at night I was homeless for ten years the first time and I am terrified now I feel like I'm too late to the party but I was actually born homeless my mom put newborn me into a small laundry basket filled with blankets she'd been gifted I spent the first year of my life living out of a car with my family my mom had my five-year-old brother and four-year-old sister with her too all living out of a grand caravan in the early 90s she taken us to Wyoming to hide in the Rocky Mountains so at least I got to sleep under the stars at night I've been homeless most of my life I have stories about it if anyone finds this and is interested the extremes most people here are describing or actually only the pointed end of homelessness far more people lack their own personal private safe space but do have places to crash maybe it's on a family member or friend's couch not roughing it but not necessarily super secure or their own this applies to massive numbers of people and it's good when we have such charity and support networks but it helps to mask the scope of the issue which is far larger than it usually appears earlier this summer we spent a month sleeping in my boyfriend's car it was freeing not to be around people I hate but I could only say that because I had the luxury of his car with the windows covered at night versus a shelter it got very hot though so we'd spend all day up until 10:00 or 11:00 outside of the car showering at the gym and going to sleep in the hospital parking garage he was working then so we ate a ton of fast food there were nights where he did sleep at the house and I slept in the car not being welcome so I begged for a blade for self-defense thinking I was going to try to take some would-be attacker down with me we are back on his parents property now but in the garage instead of the house honestly though I still feel like I haven't had a home in the six years I've been living here and my boyfriend hates it here too because of the aftermath of the conflict between myself and his brother brother's girlfriend I get food and shelter but I still feel kind of homeless it didn't really occur to me that I was homeless for a couple weeks I was 16 and my mom and I were in a domestic abuse situation she fled to a friend's house and I fled to my friend's house and then from there sofa surfed for a few weeks until my boyfriend's mom caught on that something wasn't quite right I had spent random nights at their house prior in the spare room but during that two weeks I had stayed three times with them and at dinner she gently put down a fork and goes Sahra something is going on tell me about it it wasn't a question so I started bawling at the dinner table and realized I didn't have a home and in the next five minutes me huh my boyfriend and his dad all had our shoes on and in the car on our way to my the abusive house to grab my things then they made the spare room my real room for a year before I could go to university and get an apartment I was 18 and had depression only had to do the final exams and I would have been good to go but I panicked and didn't attend which caused me to fail of course me failing made my depression even worse my parents couldn't take it anymore packed my clothes in a case and set me on the street I had no idea where to go and didn't want to sleep in the city like most homeless do because I was too afraid of something happening to me or the few things I had while I sleep so I went deep into the woods opened the case with my clothes and curled up in there to sleep needless to say I didn't sleep much that night I was just a disappointed in myself for being such a failure and cried a lot thank God I wasn't homeless long before my grandparents took me in until I found a job when I had a job my parents took me back in and I went to therapy I'm good now but getting abandoned by my parents when I needed them the most still hurts to this day my ex-wife made up a bunch of sh t to get a restraining order I got served at work while she simultaneously shut off my phone service and locked me out of our shared bank account this was the 7th of January 2016 I had a t-shirt and slacks to wear for clothes and nowhere to sleep my car didn't have working heat thank God for my parents who got me a hotel new phone and some money for clothes I ended up living in an extended-stay hotel for two months while I looked for an apartment and got my affairs in order the restraining order was dismissed the divorce went to trial and I got the house and the kids slept in the backseat of my friend's broken-down VW Beetle used the light from the streetlight to study and get my homework done on time later on that same friend would sneak me into his dad's camper at night so I could actually lay out flat and get a good night's sleep that works for a while until I got caught and his dad kicked us both out went back to sleeping in the bug got by using old airline toiletries and washing up into public restrooms by the beach and nearby Burger King still made the Dean's List though I think people have this idea in their head that homeless means you're out on the streets under a bridge or an attempt but there are many facets of it we were homeless for about ten days after my mom left my dad I was younger and it didn't click with me until I got older mum told me and my sisters and told us to pack up our stuff we then just did what we needed to got those 10 days until she could secure some housing for us I remember eating corn and rice for a meal but that's the only real thing that sticks out to me from their time honestly it wasn't too bad for me I got kicked out but lived in a good area I had a car so I just parked it in parks and stuff and it was only about 2 weeks before I found a new place to stay it was also just me at the time so I really didn't mind too much not all cases are like this though it was temporary and I was lucky enough to have a car a job where I could shower and spent most my days and nights at work I worked at a kennel and theater so I generally didn't get off until 2:00 and was at work by 6:00 so I wasn't in my car much anyways it was also the early spring so it wasn't too hot and wasn't too cold I was lucky I was 17 I hit a car with my dad's Corvette it wasn't that big of a deal it was just a little damage to the front well the guy I hit called my dad before I got home and told him a bunch of BS said his bumper fell off of his car and read my dad the riot act when I got home I walked through the front door my dad hit me in the chest and knocked me back through the doorway he screamed at me and told me to get out of his life I went to the Redondo Beach Pier where I hung out and stared sleeping under the pier the first night and most nights after that were a series of moments of having no idea what to do I was lost after seven months I called my maternal grandparents and asked them for help they moved me back to Arizona and got me into college Edit man I haven't thought of that in years a sudden wave of emotion just washed over me I miss my grandma and grandpa they were so good to me I lived in a minivan for half a year while I worked full-time at an airport the trick was not to actually leave when the shift ended or if I left I wouldn't go super far I could afford to eat a couple times a day and I had a cheap gym membership so that I could shower the boredom was mind-numbing but if it got too bad I would just go back to the air court and people watch Oprah and like I was about to fly somewhere never missed my family so much eventually gave up and moved back home I've been homeless twice but both times I managed to secure a temporary place to sleep after a couple of days those days though were among the worst I've ever experienced it's just a sense of panic and feeling exposed and and safe and every time you go inside you tell yourself to enjoy it for as long as they'll let you because it's raining and windy outside and you know you'll soon be back out in it I have no doubt that if I had to do it for longer in either instance I probably wouldn't have survived it one way or the other so I can't answer the adapting to it part but thought I'd share what I do know anyway it sucked it was freezing I learned how to start a fire with very little supplies though tortilla chips Doritos are great fire starters once I acquired a tent it was much more tolerable I walked for as long as I could and passed out on a bench in front of a church so someone woke me up and asked if I was okay in the morning and I explained the situation and then they told me to leave since it was private property and there would be people there soon and they didn't want me making the place look bad as soon as the words left his mouth I realized that I was already viewed as less than human after one night I ended up going to work still as I never told them I was kicked out of my home and showering at the local community college since they never check to see if the people using the gym were students eventually I got back on my feet and even now that I'm not homeless I still feel that way inside often like I'm less than human the closest I got to being homeless was when I was 19 I was kicked out by my old landlord because he wanted to do renovations to be able to justify raising the rent ever more well-off tenants the first night I slept in my car after that a mate of mine let me crash at his place so I spent six months sleeping on my mates couch does that count it was surreal I was at one of my lower points freshly 21 and I met a bunch of people that traveled with renascence festivals so when my lease was up and I didn't find a new apartment I went to the campground where all these vagabonds were staying and ended up staying in a guy's dog house next at his tent that he had constructed out of tarps and scrap wood with his dogs over all the night was good for I still had my Adaro and money for liquor I ended up traveling with those people for a few years working rent fairs partying seeing that the different parts of the u.s. just being completely free when I was in grade 9 my mom had finally gotten out of an abusive relationship her friend from work let us stay at their house for about a month then we had to move into a battered women's shelter for about six months we had a big room with four beds in each room and a pin pad to get into the room being 14 years old I definitely knew what was going on and was pretty embarrassed by the itand didn't tell anyone what we were going through my mom sister and I were still all together though so it could have been a lot worse in the end we bought a house are all in good places now if anyone's interested I can go into more detail about stuff edit spelling mistake my experience may kind of buffer and it was actually recently I was homeless I was in a rough financial situation so I used the last bit of money on a tent a lock some food and a bunch of plastic bottles of vodka I worked a kitchen job with a woodsy area next to it and set up my tent out there I'd basically just hang around the woods f king off climbing trees trying to build various things until I had to work went to work came back to the tent put a lock on the zippers and drink myself to sleep watching YouTube I charge my phone at work I had a Planet Fitness membership since it was $15 a month go to the gym to shower and all that after a couple months I'd saved up enough for a place in a new state I grew up busking and begging because my druggie parents could remember to take care of me I knew most of the homeless in my area because of that so when I ran away I knew things like who to talk to and where to bunker down it was quiet compared to the constant outbursts of crazy and violence with my parents I felt safer because most of the more respected homeless people had known me close to a decade and made everyone leave me alone absolutely sucked and still does I slept in a shopping mall that happened to be open all night the next day I was able to get in supported housing that is shared with other people fortunately my phone is paid off and I have unlimited data so that gives me something to do as I was big into gaming before all the sh t happened I'm currently living on one bowl of oats a day until next week when hopefully I receive some government help I don't take drugs drink alcohol and I have no possessions to sell for food come with a thought of eating something such as pizza or a roast dinner sounds so amazing but it's so far away that I try not to think about it I spend my time watching streamers and browsing ridet you would no believe the amount of reposts when you spend so much time on hello my stepdad destroyed my stuff and his mom lied to the police and said I hit him my mom was locked up at the time due to protecting stepdad from drug charges this happened on my 19th birthday which is mid-january there was snow on the ground and I left with nothing but a trash bag of clothes I luckily had some friends that let me couch surfed till it was almost spring but I ended up under an overpass coincidentally one right by my mom's prison I already had an abusing cough medicine but I stepped it up after that point and never really got my sh t together till about ten years later sorry for formatting mobile edit spelling on a word I wasn't homeless in the living on the streets kind of way but I did end up couchsurfing for a couple of months it's hard to describe the disconnect with wanting to go home only to realize you don't really have one the first night wasn't really a big event for me because I knew I'd be couchsurfing for a month or two it was really the little realizations that I had no home to go back to that all my stuff was locked up in a storage space and I only have what was in my backpack that got to me sometimes months of depression lead me to travel with no money I got to a really big city by train first month I stayed at a dude's house in which he wasn't living then I thought it was a little too much and decided to go to the streets where I already had made some friends who already were living in the streets the first night was weird at some point all this wandering Souls gathered besides a train station and everyone started sharing the food they've got during the day we ended cooking a fondue inside a big tomato can it was the first time I tried fondue then it was 2 months of a routine sleep there wake up with the Sun wash myself in the clothes in a river and go with a friend to do stunts in a stoplight the last night before deciding to go back to my hometown a group of neo-nazis attacked us now I have a one-inch scar in the left side of my skull I'm a right now father of two in love with my wife and with my own house in the woods for me it was note of a nun or a long time with couchsurfing and when I was younger living in tents I guess the closest answer I had it when my aunt took me in I had been staying with a friend after a long time trying to find safe placing to stay at night but this was the first time someone asked me to come stay with them it was weird it didn't feel real and I had to adjust to living with three much younger kids I felt like I was walking on eggshells and I had to get to know this family I barely knew I'm super grateful and adjusted pretty quickly I was able to finish high school and start at the local JC Wall with her I adore my aunt for giving me a solid chance I'm currently homeless have been for about four months the one emotion that stands out amongst the rest his anxiety constant chronic crippling anxiety I've worked full-time since before I lost my housing so I have minimum basics covered but I'm terrified I'll never get ahead enough to move back indoors it's constantly waiting for the next thing to go wrong break get stolen it's knowing it's healthier to buy supermarket food but can only afford dollar store canned goods and have nowhere to cook anyway it's being uncomfortable in a time your home its shame and self-hatred for letting it get this far it's isolation because you're too embarrassed to tell your well-off friends you've failed at one of the most basic human needs it's mind boggling how I have never had a drug or alcohol issue but I'm now living right alongside those who do all this because I couldn't work while I was in the hospital and how zero support system in my life to go to for help it's dehumanizing and I'm ashamed of myself to be honest I wasn't on the streets but my alcoholic mother kicked me out the second I turned 18 it was a desperate scramble each day trying to find somewhere to stay I felt like an inconvenience the panic if my phone was about to die and I hadn't arranged somewhere to stay for the night ugh luckily I was semi-intelligent work my ass off through college and enrolled into uni loads of debt but a room at least I was 15 northern England I was sitting in the train station waiting room not knowing where to go there was an attendant who locked me in there so that I'd be safe said he had a daughter my age there were padded benches and a toilet so it was invaluable as a home until I was able to find a job and room to rent as soon as I was 16 I won't have been able to keep going to school or get a job if I hadn't had somewhere to get kind of a good night's sleep and wash in the sink I lived in my friend's car for a while if that counts it pretty much felt like camping or sleeping one off after a tailgate party and honestly I was just stoked to not have to go home note I was 15 working at McDonald's and my stepmom made home life literally so unbearable I'd rather be homeless even after I got a place no one in my family knew where I was and my brother just so happened to drive by and recognize my car parked outside two years later I was 18 in a new city and had zero idea where to go I walked around all day trying to find a shelter and asking around but to no avail I passed a church and thought it was my best bet as I knew priests rarely turned people away I knocked on the door and nobody answered I wasn't surprised as it was getting late so I hope the fence into the back courtyard and fell asleep with my back against a wall it was about 40 degrees so it took me a while to fall asleep about an hour later I woke up to a hand on my shoulder it was another homeless man and I guess I was sleeping in his and his girlfriend's spot I explained my situation he gave me a blanket and a granola bar I thanked him over and over and the next day he walked me to the other side of town and showed me where the soup kitchen was his name was Tom he was a good guy well when my dad first threw me out I was 17 the first couple weeks were okay because I couch surfed but being that I had no money and was unwilling to have SX for a place to stay I soon found myself without a couch the first night alone on the street was rough I was a seventeen year old girl it was November on the East Coast I remember more than anything not being able to get warm took a while to figure that one out I spent two years living on the streets and the only thing that kept me from jumping into traffic was drugs being homeless and sober is next to impossible the hunger the depression the fear it all gets swallowed up by the booze the dope whatever you can get your hands on this was more than a decade ago I'm sober now other than cannabis in a legal state I've been living indoors for ten years but sometimes I'll wake up in my bed and panic that I'm still on the street a lot of people do not lose their homes abruptly they just sort of fade into the homeless realm by surly disassociating from their public lives and losing control of their ability desire to pay for homes I slept in my car how many cars do you see with people just saw sleeping in them and you barely give them a second thought put the shoe on the other foot and you think the whole world is staring at you I left an alcohol treatment center over three years ago started traveling the country first night I slept in my car and felt like a loser had one of the best wake up's ever and decided to see where this new life will take me now after hitting all lower 48 and driving 250 K+ miles it was the best thing I ever did I can upload a pic of my wakeup spot that first day later if anyone is interested edit my first wake-up spot HTTP em ger con gallery PhD CST X I was 13 when my family was homeless we had just finished the school year when our landlord showed up and told us we had 5 days to move out and we had nowhere to go my parents didn't tell me what was going on but I could figure it out my parents told us we were going camping and that we had to move everything into a storage unit so once we sloppily packed up and moved all of our positions into a storage unit we went to the campgrounds that we had been to a few times before and set up camp the first night was a bit rough but just from the aspect of sleeping on the ground in my head I knew what was going on and just kind of acknowledged it as I have no control over the situation let's see where this goes thankfully had a truck to sleep in I had slept in it a lot before so that didn't bug me but after day 3 I went to drive home after work and realized home was an empty lot behind a warehouse that hurt not me but my math teacher in high school had lost an arm while woodworking he lived for one year on the streets after losing his job and becoming depressed one guy he called him an angel adopted him and took care of him until he could get back on his feet which he did and became a math teacher capital D the first time I was homeless I was six I just thought it was a cool sleepover and it would be fun it slowly stopped being fun especially when my parents were just upset all the time no matter what the second time I was probably eight or nine and it was the same thing again we stayed at churches through this really good program the most recent time I was 15 instead of trying to get a job so we could afford rent my mom thought it would be a great idea to live in tents on a campground in the middle of nowhere it was so terrible that I can't even enjoy weather or the outdoors without it all coming back and just feeling the dread of it happening again now I live with my dad and things are much much better I'm currently homeless I just did a year of AmeriCorps and ran into financial issues unrelated to the program mostly in return - no place to stay and no money I initially thought if I drove back to a small town I had lived and coached and that I'd be able to stay with some people I used to work with upon figuring out that their significant others all didn't want to have me on their couch I just found a parking spot in the woods to sleep in my car slept great due to exhaustion and it's been two months of calling that spot home I shower at the high school I coach shirt and work a couple of shitty jobs that aren't consistent mostly just by $0.59 cams and junk tallit I would say the worst feeling that keeps on hitting me is how lonely it can feel being surrounded by people that I've invested myself into in the past definitely feeling better than day one for sure was in Paris managed to never sleep outside cause I had great friends went to one's place during a month or two then to somebody else's some time when I felt that I was taking too much place I'd go out and hooked up with girls one night at a time when I first had a place I could call home after two years of this [ __ ] it felt like a true relief all of these stories highlight an endemic problem in the u.s. today it would be wonderful if all your stories could be shared with a wider audience so more can understand the hardships of being homeless as well as the different types of homelessness Karplus jobs versus on the streets my heart breaks for everyone and I wish there was something I could do to help got out of service in 2012 when I left the hospital by 2013 things were going ok but the pain meds the VA had given me morphine morphine all don't remember the name now was starting to cause me problems so after another spinal surgery I asked to be taken off of them that was the beginning of a nightmare that lasted for three years as the withdrawal or following my request they terminated my prescription but didn't warn me about the side-effects of withdrawal crack the shaky foundation my post service life was founded on things started to go bad and x200 be I ended up homeless faster than I knew what was happening being The [ __ ] that I am I figured that was fine as long as I was able to keep myself clean attend my f king classes and graduate from college I had spent the better part of my adult life up until that point and various shitty deserts and shitty jungles living in shitty conditions so what did being homeless in this land of plenty really mattered to me for a while I lived on the banks of a river with another homeless veteran or at a truck stop nearby where we slept in my car I told myself that as long as I was able to get myself showered into class on time and get my homework done I used the truckstops internet which they were kind enough to not be TCH about I was gold then the nightmares really started taking over the other vet that was crushing with me will call him Sam used to wake me up by reaching over the back of the seat I slept in the front he slept in the back huge classic car got eight four hundred bucks in gas a month and shaking my left foot said I'd start shouting orders or screaming in my sleep enough that the place was probably going to call security on us I didn't understand what was happening and despite all the fake information the service forceful during briefs that you sleep through I really didn't know our f king thing about PTSD or understand what happening in my brain and x200 be I failed my finals and that cost me what I had left and x200 be by this point I was having enough trouble sleeping that I just tried not to anymore Sam had started smoking sh t I don't want to describe so I left him on that River I went north and then in a huge circle I knew enough about how to survive that I wasn't ever really in danger of starvation unless I was ironically near a city I had taken my footlocker with me in my trunk and it was stuffed with leftover sh t from active duty that tied me over a good number of months a lot of it I pawned for fuel I considered selling my car a few times but was determined not to it kind of became a symbol to me as long as I could sleep in it I always had relative safety from the elements which were lethal as often as not I would drift from city to city try to find some kind of job I could hold down in my degenerating mental condition and when I inevitably snapped I moved on to the next and x200 be during this time my emotional state became completely erratic and extreme I remember once I was talking to a gas station attendant in Flagstaff and just kind of grayed out when I came to he was standing above me looking down at me with his sad sad expression evidently I had started having a seizure and backed myself into a corner where I'd hunched down and tried to hide crying my head off the entire time reacting to things that had happened almost a decade ago that was the first seizure that I remember I've learned since that I was probably having what a cool transient ischemic attacks on and off fears and never knew it from there it got worse way worse I learned a lot of things about myself then that I didn't want to learn I learned that I would steal I learned that I would hurt the people I had sworn to protect if I thought it would get me enough food to survive I learned I would hurt other homeless folks if I thought they were a threat to me all were to post to my crash when I was trying to sleep I remember that sh t on and off now and it makes me so goddamn - shamed of myself I don't really have words for it and x200 B I ended up in San Antonio for a while close to Fort Sam there's an overpass there where a group of about 20-30 other homeless vets were crashing at the time you could feel the despair in every word that wasn't said and hear the screams at night it was like a nightmare the whole tribe of guys down there were all on metal drunks or both the general attitude was if the myth doesn't kill ya the PTSD is going to anyway the Outreach promised by all these after service organizations had turned out to be completely fraudulent as the whole country has since learned and the VA smishing was literally to kill us so there was no place to go and x200 be there are huge numbers of guys like me that had no families and no close kin so there was no one to turn to if things go to [ __ ] I crashed with a buddy I was on active duty with for a month or two trying to get my sh t together but the VA didn't move fast enough and he tossed me out on my ass law couldn't blame him really I was a wreck and a complete head case I left SAR with just enough gas to get my ass north figured I'd go someplace where it was warm enough that when I ran out of gas the weather itself wouldn't be enough to kill me that entire journey which took about a month all told my car died and was resurrected in Arizona by a really cool dude that fixed the engine for me and by then I had sunk low enough and was frantic and terrified often enough that the motivation to keep going finally just started leaving me the whole trip there I could feel the need for it to just be f king over one way or another a decade and a half in uniform and once I got hurt bad enough and couldn't do it anymore I just started to rot to death in a matter of months and x200 be time my car finally croaked and that was okay I hadn't gotten any real protein in my body for around four days and I was sick enough with the flashbacks that I didn't know I was having and the shaking and the crying that I really did just want it to be over like a light from God while I was taking everything I thought I could carry out of my footlocker I found what was left of a bottle of my pain meds from a few years ago that I didn't even remember putting in there and x200 B I took them all and x200 B I didn't know that there was a dude watching me and as he'd called the cops when he saw me just sit down hard next to my car and stop seizing I had thought overdosing on O Pierce would be like falling asleep it really really f king wasn't I woke up in a VA hospital I was luckier than I had any right to be that particular VA had a particular doctor that volunteered with them for exactly this kind of scenario and ran the only organization in the country that specialized in dealing with guys like me that wasn't an awful cynical scam with his help I have since learned about the physical changes that happened in my brain and why I started having and continue to have seizures and blackouts there is actually a new old therapy technique the VA has finally okayed that might actually be a real-life cure and I'm going to try to be on the list for it my deck having people fck around with your amygdala sounds scary as [ __ ] but when your is exhausted and tired of it as I am you're willing to do whatever you have to law and x200 be things are better now than I could have ever imagined in those days better than I deserve I own my own home I'm married and much of my life is centered around helping out the organization that recovered me as there are still just in this city around 5,000 dudes in exactly the same position I was in and no one no one gives a ref ck about them at all but I'm here and if this new therapy works I'll be in a better position than I ever was to hell so I'm going through a divorce he was verbally and physically abusive I also have dogs and I will not leave them because of this so I'm living in a pop-up camper in my mom's yard she's allergic to the dogs and I don't have any other options right now I won't lie it's hard winter is coming but I'm with my best friends and we will get through it the first night I cried tears of joy no matter how hard this is I'm no longer being abused it's cold it's damp but I have peace and that there is worth any hardship kicked out of the house because of a physically abusive stepfather thankfully always had a friend who would let me couch surf for a bit had no car so the one night where I really had nowhere to go I was just sobbing at the bus stop for hours thankfully at like 1:00 in the morning my girlfriend convinced one of her friends to pick me up and let me sleep on her boyfriend's couch wound up staying at a Roach and other creature infested halfway house for about two weeks realized them that I had no home not sure how I made it through that and I'm hazy on exactly how that resolved it was a pretty dark time if you're homeless aren't on drugs and have an able body and live in the u.s. try heading to a pnw fishing town it's possible to get a job on a big crab boat some cat will let you sleep and live on the boat throughout the season also those boats are always looking for guys because of burnout rate is so high crabbing is super hard and being on the ocean away from friends and family is even harder if you have nothing to lose this might be a good place to start [Music]

Channel: Reddit Jar

Views: 58,516

Rating: 4.8109245 out of 5

Keywords: reddit, r/AskReddit, ask reddit, askreddit, updoot, toadfilms, sir reddit, reddit jar, askreddit funny, askreddit dumb, reddit ama, reddit ask me anything, r/askreddit, reddit stories, reddit story, askreddit scary, askreddit stupid, scary stories, askreddit new, top posts, reddit top posts, reddit cringe, askreddit top posts, subreddit, funny reddit, best reddit posts, askreddit stories, best of reddit, reddit best, funny askreddit, storytime with reddit, r/

Id: oPEwZAo7W6o

Length: 46min 25sec (2785 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 01 2020