My Experience of Homelessness

By Kerrie Portman

*Content Warning: Suicidal Thoughts*

The clothes floated limp and pathetic in the bath, staining the water a sick, yellowing brown. Were they really that dirty? I’d not had access to a washing machine for over a month now. Perhaps the accumulated sweat of the summer months was escaping. For some reason, I preferred to think that it was the blood. It felt less gross, somehow.

It looked worse in the harsh light of the shelter. Everything did. My bones and muscles pressed more and more into my skin the longer that I couldn’t eat consistently, but their shadows looked worse in here. It made my skin look almost green. I couldn’t really remember dinner beyond being a concept. Vaguely, I knew that I’d eaten hot food in the past. I’d have porridge with chia seeds every morning, maybe toasting a sandwich for lunch, using the oven or microwave to heat dinner. Meats, eggs, potatoes. This was back when I not only had a home but a job too. 

The clothes billowed under the water. I squirted shower gel on them. The bottle farted. I rubbed the gel into the material, hoping to get the stink and dirt out.

They say the first rule of homelessness is doing everything that you can to pretend that you’re not homeless. I’d not had hot water for the first three or so weeks. I was lucky to have it now, even though it was just a shower and not a washing machine. I’d wash myself with baby wipes twice a day and try to cover the oily mess of hair with a ponytail and dry shampoo, but I knew as time went on that it wasn’t enough. I felt self-conscious every time I left the shelter, knowing that I smelt and knowing that it was becoming more and more obvious that I was homeless. 

This shelter wasn’t in my hometown. I’d been moved to a strange city far away; I didn’t know where I was. The overpowering grey building, scene of drugs and urine and soundscape of yelling was unfamiliar and frightening. I still didn’t feel safe walking from the shelter to the bus stop, where I’d use my disability bus pass to get back home every day. I felt safer back home but also numb. I had so much there, once. I’d lost so much there. 

As university had been moved entirely online, I’d gotten a job in the town centre. It was in the communications sector, selling phones to people, deemed key working as more than ever people were reliant on technology to keep in touch with others. Ironically, all my technology was lost, forcing me to drop out of school, without access to support, unable to apply for jobs and making applying for benefits a great deal harder. 

I’d had to spend my final paycheck, after being reduced to Statutory Sick Pay, on a second-hand smartphone just to contact the council to ask for help and to reduce the dangers of my disability. When I had a home and an oven, I’d need to set a timer on my phone just to remember I’d put food in. I’d started way too many kitchen fires after forgetting to set my alarm and been to A&E way too many times for burns and smoke inhalation. 

In the office, I’d worked twelve-hour shifts, running on snacks, caffeine, and ambition. I’d even researched the best time to drink coffee to avoid the post-eating nap urge. On Saturdays, I’d been attending Zoom cheerleading training and every morning I’d do my stretching routine and run through the routine at 6 am. As competition season approached, I’d do a little cardio every morning too and go for a walk at lunch, the latter helping me stay awake. 

It was just after I got a promotion that it happened. And then everything else happened.

During the period that I couldn’t shower, I stopped socialising but clung to the town. I may not have a home in the sense of walls, a bed and my cat, but I had a home in my town. They didn’t seem to mind too much when I lay down for naps in cafes or sat all day reading.

I developed ear infections in both ears from being so unclean, adding physical pain to my concerns. At one point, my feet started bleeding from walking too much and my socks fused to my feet with the blood until I couldn’t take them off. 

My depression got impossibly, unimaginably, extraordinarily worse after I was limited in my ability to go to the town centre. I had started to attempt suicide by this point. More so than what I had lost, my attempts were motivated by the fact that things kept getting worse. I didn’t know how to stop it or what to do. I didn’t know how I’d ended up here with so little. Or rather, how I’d ended back here.

I’d been in Care. I’d been homeless as a teenager. I’d been born into nothing and fought for everything I’d had. But the difference between when I felt suicidal and when I attempted suicide was that I could sometimes self-soothe by going into town, feeling safe there, seeing people, going to the gym for weight training and classes, seeing the ducks in the river running by the churchyard. Then I couldn’t. I couldn’t self-soothe. I couldn’t see the ducks. 

I couldn’t even access health care, even when I started feeling like I couldn’t move from heatstroke or fainting from hunger or when my infections didn’t heal. That’s when the fantasies of jumping off a bridge onto the train tracks started and stayed. The bridge itself is quiet, near the shelter. There’s a rough concrete wall separating the path from the fall. I’d need to put my hands on top, pull myself up, swing my legs over. 

I begged for help. I contacted everyone I could think of. Most people didn’t reply. The ones who did didn’t help. I remember a plethora of moments of staring at my phone, knowing that I desperately needed help but not knowing who to ask. I had no one. 

The depression only started to fade like a heavy mist clearing when I realised that I did have people. Maybe they couldn’t let me stay with them, use their shower, or offer me food. But they talked to me and listened to me until I started to feel better. 

It reminded me of last year when the autumn faded to winter and dense fog covered the town. It was the most fog I’d ever witnessed; I couldn’t see far in front of me. The world has disappeared, I’d tell people. But after a day or two, the fog would go, and the world would reappear. The adults who supported me were like the sun breaking through the fog until the world reappeared.