A day in the life..
This topic has been on my mind for a while. Although it’s incredibly personal, how we live is something not many people know intimate details about. I thought I would open the door to some mysteries and misconceptions of being homeless. To begin, I will answer some questions posed to us: How do we eat/cook? How do we bathe? How do we go to the bathroom? Where do we sleep? How do the kids learn and play? Katherine and I generally wake up around 9 am. We begin our days with a few kisses to the kids and each other. We make breakfast, work online or over the phone and eventually eat lunch, go out for resources and then make supper. Now, these are normal occurrences for majority of families I would imagine. However, for our family, life isn’t as simple as opening the fridge to grab a hot pocket, pop it in the microwave and relax in front of the television. Heck, we haven’t even watched television in over three years. We don’t have to get frustrated with commercial breaks or get tired of the same shows on the programming. We use Pandora and YouTube to listen to music, we read the news from online media sources and stay up to date with worldly affairs through social media, Google, Wikipedia, and other popular sites. We each have a cheap smart phone, an extra one just in case and two laptops, one of which needs a new charger. That’s one thing we go through extremely rapidly is chargers, usually just phone chargers though. We have power converters to swap 12V to regular power outlets and USB port to charge our devices from the camper. The kiddos love to watch their educational shows on YouTube and night night stories too, we have to keep the electronics going! Not to mention for our outreach and work. There is a large bed, a converted bed area for the kids, storage under the bed, dry food box as a pantry, a 7 gallon water holding tank and a 2.5 gallon septic holding tank. This is a tiny version of a larger camper, however it doesn't have a shower but we have no issue bathing regularly there are many public places that have shower access. The kids enjoy going to the truck stops because they get to play in the water and the hot water never runs out, well unless the boiler breaks down. Which has only happened once, but luckily it was before we showered and not during! Remember when I said we have a 2.5 gallon septic holding tank? Yes, that’s rather small, but out in the west, most rest areas have free dump sites and truck stops have them usually as well. We definitely have to do much forethought when wanting to use the restroom, planning out how much room is left before needing to dump it again. It’s a bit different than always being privileged with running water and a toilet that flushes away into the septic dump already. I believe that answers all the questions. Now, lets go on to the myths and misconceptions. The first misconception I would like to touch on is that homeless people are filthy. For us, cleanliness is a constant. Since we are four people in a limited living space, we have many luggage bags full of clothes, shoes and toiletries, toys, educational materials, craft projects, a laundry area, boxes of books, as well as ourselves. Meaning, we have to keep things cleaned and organized on a daily basis. Waiting until the end of the week to take out the trash is not an option. That’s a daily chore or we are up to our ears in garbage! Since we have children, they are like children in any home, getting into everything! We spend a great deal of time redoing what our children undo, but that’s just kids. Second, some folks believe people without a permanent address are lazy. Katherine and I stay busy teaching our youngins, working on our home, preparing food, getting resources or doing our outreach and work from home. To me, that’s the opposite of lazy. Not to mention, our kitchen is stored under our bed and each time we need to cook, we must bring out our box of dishes and cookware, our camping grill, assemble it, set up our other box as a makeshift table, prepare food and cook. Want to save the dishes for tomorrow? We can’t do that, because we have to cook outside, which means all our dishes have to be clean before they return to the box, or they will get the inside of the box dirty as well and possibly mold. The box doubles as our washtub for the dishes and cookware. It’s a pretty good system we have going, but takes a good bit of work to accomplish. Total time is usually two hours to complete the cooking, eating and cleaning up process. Want to run to the store for snacks at 10:00pm? Definitely not an option unless we are already camping overnight at a truck stop or Walmart, otherwise, we would have to move all 21 luggage bags and remove all the curtains to leave and then redo it when we return to camp. We have to ensure all errands are made, all food is purchased for that night and the next day, our septic is empty, our trash is dumped, our water is full and our fuel tank isn’t on empty in order for us to run the camper and charge our devices and have lights. Do we sound lazy yet? I didn’t think so, I believe I stomped a hole in that myth. Third, is the assumption and accusation that most homeless are substance abusers. It’s no secret that used to be the case for us, but when we had a home. We were living a lie, trying to believe working for the dollar instead of working for humanity was the way to go. Trying to believe in someone we weren’t was torture. We aren’t wanting to work for the “American Dream”. We want our own dreams, not someone else’s idea of the right life for us or our kids. Of course we want a home again, we just haven’t found the neighborhood we fit into yet. We’ve tried, Austin, Columbus, Hattiesburg, Denver, Seattle, Portland and we are still searching for our home. I’m not sure we will find it since we both feel we aren’t from this world, just in it for a time. And with that time, we want to make a difference, be the difference. Even, if that means doing without luxuries, we have what we need, we are always provided for, even if we are extremely under privileged, we are still blessed. Fourth, and the last one I will mention is that under-housed folks are in their situation due to their own actions and being irresponsible. We are in this position because someone stole our money to pay our bills, from my wallet and we couldn’t find a homeless prevention organization, charity or church to help us meet our expenses that month and we lost everything except what would fit in our dodge neon and each other. Then, we made the decision to use it to change our entire lives and the direction we were headed. We packed our things, drove to Colorado and began working towards our goals: transition, sobriety, advocacy, volunteering, writing, activism and others we haven’t completed yet like returning to school, finding an inclusive, supportive community and establishing a home in it. Our dream for America and all of the world is for unity, understanding, love and diversity to flourish! We don’t want racism, division, hatred, judgement, fear and dominion. We want personal autonomy, but not at the expense of the civil liberties or safety of others. We want our children to grow up in a life full of living and preservation of life, not a life of destruction. We will continue on this path because our hearts tell us too, hopefully not being homeless, but being ourselves.
4 Comments
James Blake
2/9/2017 02:26:13 pm
Thank you very much for your kind and encouraging words. We definitely need more people working for good, especially if it's being an encouragement to others. We thank you for reading and taking the time to share your thoughts. It has meant a great deal to hear these words.
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Lauren T
2/6/2017 08:56:40 pm
Thank you so much for opening up and sharing this incredible part of your journey! It seems as though you and your family are truly blessed with the most important things in life! Thank you for clearing up some misconceptions and being so open. Much love and many more blessings for you and your family! <3
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James Blake
2/6/2017 09:02:07 pm
Thank you, we certainly are blessed! We feel fortunate to have each other and our platforms of outreach. Thanks for reading our little project!
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Authors:James and Katherine are a transgender couple raising two kids. They were southerners when coming to understand themselves as trans. Ultimately it lead to a nearly three year road trip to find home. Now they are re-housed and still focused on outreach in the transgender community! Archives
October 2020
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