Homelessness Is a Social Prison

So, even more alone, we dwell wherever we can and seek out the company of those who will have us.

It’s impossible, if not just highly improbable. It’s shameful, if not just highly inappropriate. What is it? Homelessness.

It started for me when I was 15 years old. My abusive mother threw me out onto the streets, isolating me from any other family members. We as people are social creatures. Part of what makes us who we are is teamwork and family. When you have no family, you are left with no options.

Most of the homeless people I have met were disowned by their families well into their adult years. The rest are like me, including kids who are dropped off at homeless shelters on their 18th birthday by state child welfare agencies, washing their hands of them.

We are thrown into a world where we are always vulnerable and socially abhorrent.

Even trying to have an adult romantic relationship is an anathema. Most people don’t understand what it’s like not having family and shy away from us as we seem unusual in this aspect, even though we had no choice as children. So, even more alone, we dwell wherever we can and seek out the company of those who will have us.

For a majority of us, we fall subject to addictions and other negative behaviors. Coping with this situation is beyond even the most resilient of us, myself included. Alas, I never fell victim to my own desire to escape through substances and crime. Yet, as I sit here and write this, the realization of my despair overwhelms me.

Recently, within the past two years, I stopped living in my car. Now, after that two years of car dwelling, I cannot bring myself to even look at my car, much less drive it. I have been trying to sell it for months to stop feeling such stress. That was a very stressful existence, even more so than sleeping on the streets.

Why? The reasons are varied, but the stress of merely living in a place not meant for human habitation is quite traumatic, regardless of the endless YouTube videos about car/van life. These people never talk about the real reason why they chose to do so and, by the looks of it, have funding sources which I definitely don’t.

When I see these videos pop up in my YouTube feed, I delete them. I don’t want to watch someone glorify homelessness in an abject and unreasonable way. It’s disturbing. There’s no glory in being homeless. No liberty. No freedom.

To date, I’ve never seen a video or read a website that gives the homeless a true guide in which to navigate the sea of homelessness.

I close with:

“The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”

– Hubert Humphrey

“The greatness of a nation can be judged by how it treats its weakest member.”

– Gandhi

“The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”

– Fyodor Dostoevsky

“There's a dilemma over how to balance concrete economic interests with critical opinions on the state of human rights. It's the human rights that suffer, and that's a great price to pay.”

– Vaclav Havel

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Editor’s Note:

Inspired by his own words in this piece—that he’s never found trustworthy website or video series for navigating homelessness—Mark Gansert has since written a 4,000 word guidebook for those facing homelessness.

Stay tuned for the more about An Improbably Comprehensive Guide for the Mostly Harmless Homeless by Mark Gansert, to be published soon by Speak Up.

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