Living Hand to, eventually, Mouth

Yeesh...reading this post and these comments has practically given me an anxiety attack. I didn't grow up desperately poor (we always had enough to eat) but I was always the kid with the unfashionable Wal-Mart clothes and no lunch money. We also fell in that space between desperately poor and too well to do for any sort of assistance.

However, nothing can prepare you for what happens when you're homeless, as I was for two brief stints in my late teens. It takes years to get out of that moment-to-moment mindset. When you eventually have to slow down and do things like save money or plan for the future it's weird, because you're so used to not having a future.

If you've never slept in a public bathroom in the dead of winter, or agreed to do some rich kid's term paper so he'd let you into the common room of his dorm to sleep, or flirted with the guy at the deli so he'd give you a sandwich, or had someone shout 'Get a job!' at you while you were on the way to work, or slept in the storeroom of the convenience store in which you work while your friend on the graveyard shift watched out for the manager, or carried all of your possessions in a backpack so huge you knock into people standing behind you without realizing it, or caught your reflection in a plate glass window and thought 'Gee, I'm a bum now I guess,' you really don't know what it's like to be homeless.

I think the moment I really hit rock bottom was at one point (before I landed the valuable Store 24 job) while sparing for change, (something you feel bad about at first but takes just a few days without eating to get over, trust me) I realized that people wouldn't give me money with a sign that said 'Hungry' but with a sign that said 'Need Booze,' people would laugh and with a hearty "Well, at least she's honest!" plunk down some cash.

Coming back from homelessness is nearly impossible, and when you do so you can't believe your luck. Awhile back I got asked for change from a young punky girl in a store doorway and was taken aback because I still thought of myself as the asker, not the askee.

I wonder what happened to the homeless population of New Orleans. Was there any sort of effort to evacuate them?

Found the link via Body and Soul.