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I hate homelessness. I was homeless a few times in the past. The first two times weren't that bad(or maybe I was humbled too much to think they weren't "that bad"?), because they occured in the summertime and I had a car. With a car, I was able to drive up to friends' places to stay or at last resort, could sleep in my car. My friends were nicer to me then and let me stay with them, so it wasn't that bad. But the worst time occured this time 2yrs ago, when I had no car and was kicked out by my parents in the middle of an unusually cold winter.

The things that I hated the most about homelessness were: 1) the physical discomfort of being constantly cold and having nowhere to sleep; 2) the discrimination. People constantly falsely accused me of shit when they found out that I was a "homeless person." They made me feel as if I'd been homeless for years, due to things within my control such as drug addiction, mental illness, murder charges, etc...when in reality, I had good grades in college, had worked menial jobs since 8th grade, and simply couldn't find a decent job after college so my parents misunderstood this and kicked me out(my parents later profusely apologized and confessed that they were unaware of my bad situation). I got accused of being a thief, an attempted swindler, and a coke addict...all untrue. I lost a lot of friends because of homelessness. Some "friends" would falsely accuse me of things or blame everything on me. Some "friends" sympathized with me on the hard luck I was having, yet wouldn't respond when I asked if I could stay with them for a single day. Or when I finally contacted a few of these fake "friends" and confronted them about their superficiality, they got unreasonably angry at me. One "friend" was helpful at first and let me stay with him, but soon after ditched me because it "really got to him" that all of his acquaintences were taunting him for hanging out with "that homeless girl." There was more than one bar that kicked me out simply because they heard through the grapevine that I was homeless...and this is considering that I had enough money to buy a drink or appetizer! Overall, people gave me attitude and discredited the fact that I was a good person put in a bad situation.

It got to the point that I started pretending to NOT be homeless, except when propositioning friends and/or boys if I would be able to stay with them for just a day. I risked getting arrested in MANY occasions, when I would sneak into my former college's lounge to sleep, or walk into their gym facilities as naturally as if I were a student, to use their lockerroom showers. I would try so hard to look "normal," but people usually could tell or if they couldn't tell, they still treated me like crap because they could at least tell that I didn't make much money.

Of course I wasn't going to tell prospective employers that I was homeless. But this came back to haunt me when I worked at Applebees, and despite my best efforts to hold down this job(there were many obstacles, such as it being in the boonies beyond mass transit extents on some days, and a few other difficulties relating to my lack of car or home), my problems caught up to me and I got in trouble at work. At that point, I felt obliged to confess to the manager about my homeless situation, because it was the only explanation that made sense by that point. Well the manager USED THIS INFO AGAINST ME, treating me like crap for the rest of the night and blaming me for stuff that either I didn't do, or stuff that the entire host staff was responsible for(but they didn't get blamed, only me). It was humiliating and degrading.

I have never been treated like more of an outcast/pariah than when I was homeless. :( Even when I was outcasted as a "nerd" in middle school, and that's really saying something if you know anything about "middle school clique politics" and the effect on a child's self-esteem. Jan 9 9:00 PM MST