The journey to becoming homeless differs from person to person, just as their needs and circumstances differ. Living in a homeless shelter the last three months has resulted in a list of common traits to expect, namely the use of or reliance on substances (cigarettes, drugs and alcohol), mental illness and disability, and in a women’s shelter during COVID, mostly women older than fifty.
Outside, though, I am aware it is another story. One woman of the shelter near consistently reminds me that 150 to 200 women used to go through the shelter in one day. The chairs in the day room would be arranged in rows as in a theater in front of the TV and there would be a help desk standing in the back. Conflicts that manifested in shouting matches, even physical confrontations were common on a near hourly basis. One of the case managers has had her head banged against a wall and another was choked. There would be no use hunting down a thief and there would be trading of drugs and cigarettes in the bathroom or out on the smoking patio.
Though I was told of how things used to be, just a month ago, the streets of the retail district were filled with the homeless. They had their tents pitched all along the sidewalk. The sidewalks would be covered in the excrement of both humans and dogs, discarded wrappers, papers and food, and everything that could degrade over time would turn to mush from the rain, mixing with all the rest. The same woman that would tell me of how things used to be was surprised to hear how things were just outside. When I told her, while I was not one to swear, I could not describe it to her any way other than “If you look up, it’s nice, but look down and it’s just shit.” She laughed and I felt I had to convince her that I wasn’t even exaggerating, I was probably giving the city the benefit of the doubt.
So how did I get here? For me, homelessness started years before the day I became homeless. Until returning to the US at the beginning of 2020, I’d lived in China twice. The first time, I went to China for a management internship at a 3-star luxury hotel in a provincial city that seemed doomed to fail from the day it was opened. I was there for nearly six months, only half the term of my internship, before taking the first opportunity to jump ship. I was stranded in Hong Kong for a month before finding another internship as an English teacher, only to be evicted from my hotel by the representatives of the internship program who had no alternative set up, and so I walked around for three hours with my luggage, just looking for a hotel that would take me. Then once I met my employer, they did not want to pay upfront for living expenses and put me on probation, finding me an apartment in the ghetto. I don’t know how the ghettos are in the US but in China, even people with severe deformities, missing limbs and disabilities would rather live in a shopping cart on a bridge than live in the ghetto. I once asked my students if there were any charities or organizations for the homeless. One boy answered, “Whatever for? Those people have houses, it’s their choice they don’t want to live in it.”
Living in the ghetto, I had a small studio apartment with a sliding door that separated the living space from the kitchenette and bathroom. The bathroom consisted of a hole in the floor and standing space in front of the water heater. The windows of the apartment had no glass, only bars of metal. If I reached through the bars, I could touch the next building over with my fingertips and my window was opposite another window. The kitchenette was formed by three shelves and a tiny sink, just enough space for a portable single-burner stove. Inside, while spacious enough for a queen-sized bed, wardrobe, desk and small shoe rack, the door was covered in ripped plastic, the walls were unfinished with scratches and peeling paint. My roommates consisted of mosquitoes and cockroaches, and next door a whole family resided in a space just like mine.
Outside the building, there were bundles of wires passing between the buildings and strung across the narrow alleys of the back streets. As cars could not penetrate the interior, there were dump heaps and twice a week, a bent-backed man or woman would come by with a cart, load it with the trash and pull it away. There was only one main road that went from the top of the hill down to a manmade lake, branching off into the back streets. When it rained, the sewers would back up. The waters would be so acidic, it would ruin clothing and shoes. My leather boots were unwearable after one day of flooding and I learned to walk barefoot, wearing shorts and carrying my clothes in my bag. At the top of the hill, in the morning, buses would line up and fill the single unpaved street, taking in people and packing them like sardines. People sat on people and people pressed so close together, if someone had a small scar on their nape, at least five other people would see it right away.
About four months later, I moved into a room in a shared four-bedroom apartment near the city center. I had a window seat with a view of the East train station, which was part of a mall and had a large Japanese supermarket. I went from making nothing to within another month or so, making 32000 RMB a month. While that’s not much in the US, in China, it’s as good as making at least 12000 a month in the US. However, I worked every day, anywhere from four to fourteen hours a day, even more. On my worst day, I would be holding business conferences until two in the morning, then wake up at five to head to the outer districts to teach at a boarding school. Though my job title was English teacher, I was also a performance reviewer, trainer, and interviewer. I assigned children to their classes, trained and reviewed other teachers, and developed the curriculum for an after-school learning center, while taking on classes and camps at a moment’s notice. I worked at three after-school learning centers. At my worst, I was working for five, my students ranged in age from four to forty-five, and if this wasn’t enough, I would take on side jobs as a voice actor for one company, private tutoring, and web design for a startup.
For a year and five months, I was grossly overworked. Though I burned out after ten months, I kept going. If I wasn’t working, I was in a constant battle with myself. Health became a matter of control. Rather than acknowledge stress, which I have always thought to be an unnecessary physical state, I was dealing with nausea, chills and nightmares. I should clarify that nightmares for me are not horrifying dreams while sleeping. I would sleep for very long hours and sleep most of my time in my apartment, even in the shower. A nightmare was the hallucination of a gruesome being looming over me or following my steps when I would go to the bathroom. Some nights, I would sleep outside or go on a four-hour walk, walking twenty-six miles in the middle of the night. I stopped eating for days at a time until I went six-and-a-half days without eating or drinking anything other than water. When I almost fainted along the side of an overpass without any railing above a freeway, I used what strength I had left to walk to a familiar restaurant, an expensive one I was fond of, and since they knew me, they prepared one of my usual dishes as I chose another.
Looking back, I know what behaviors manifested from my stress. I would walk into an expensive store where a shirt would be 600RMB and a skirt nearly 1500RMB, buy a whole outfit and leave my last outfit with the cashier. I bought a 6200RMB laptop with a 1600RMB upgrade out of pocket, as well as 7000RMB cat. Her spading and vaccines were all out of pocket as well. I also bought her nearly 2000RMB in toys and a water fountain among other things. When I overstayed my visa by two months, I paid 10000RMB out of pocket and went to Hong Kong for two days.
Within a month of leaving, I gave up my room and one of my former flat mates housed me in her room. When I came back to the US and stayed with my mom, brother and his family in their house, I was hopeless, at least in the eyes of others. In my mind, I was wading through a minefield while disoriented by non-existent drugs. I hardly did anything other than sleep and I had to get used to being with my sister-in-law and the kids. My family asked me when I would get a job and what I would do. While I could not feel it then, I was essentially panicking inside and looked for any way out. A friend I had met five months ago asked me if I wanted to join them and study in Shanghai. When I looked it up, there was nothing of interest at their university, but the notion that a guaranteed full-ride scholarship had me desperately searching for an option I would like and I found one at another university. The application was due in five days. I hurried to collect references and reached out, cold message, to people from the program and university on LinkedIn. One of the program’s professors gave me a recommendation, despite not knowing me. Whether of his own motivation or not, it became obvious later why anyone would be so accommodating.
I managed to work for a few months at a hotel in the meantime, but the money was spent on food, which is the usual case for me as cooking causes me intense anxiety that no relaxation method or amount of being in the kitchen has managed to calm. A friend of mine gave me the money for the flight. This same friend helped me out when I eventually became homeless, giving me the money to stay in a hotel for four days. He got me through the panic attack I had that day and checked in with me every day following, despite preparing for his wedding, a baby and overseeing the renovations to his house.
For two-and-a-half years, I lived on government funds. It was the full-ride scholarship from the Chinese government. They paid all of my tuition and fees, as well as giving me a housing and monthly stipend. When I first arrived, I stayed in an international students’ dorm for the first semester. I do not know how to describe what was happening to me those first three months but I was a very messed up version of myself. I was incredibly social and friendly the first few weeks, only to pull back and withdraw into myself. Though sex had never been enjoyable or even consensual before, I got involved with a sleazy, two-faced molester. It was partly my fault as I was so desperate to have an escape, but then I freaked him out with my obsessive-compulsive ways that it chased him away. In retrospect, one might say he got what he deserved and I delivered it, or part of it. Unfortunately, I am not a full-time dispenser of poetic justice.
While in China, starting my second semester, I became a teacher assistant, repeating the pattern from my first time around. The two teachers I worked for were, as teachers, pretty much incompetent. I redid their curriculums, presentations, managed their classes, assignments and grading. I held tutoring sessions and students, some of which were from the same year as me, would come to me about the material, subject, and requirements. I was paid generously for a TA, but that was only 800 RMB. A friend of mine later lectured me about my health. I tried for several months and found that if I cooked in my room, rather than the kitchen, I was more likely to relax a bit, but I would be in business mode to get through it.
Then COVID happened. It did not matter much in terms of my schooling as I had just graduated when it broke out, but after all my years in China, I was spent. I was done with life. Life for me did not consist of family, friends and other things, it was work and education. I did not make any close or lasting friends until I was in China, save for the friend who gave me the airfare to China and helped me out when I became homeless. However, I did not understand him until after my time in China. Then I appreciated him as he so openly appreciated me, and I am deeply grateful that he is still my friend.
When I came back, I felt trapped. For many years, I have compared myself to a cat. When I read that cats will avoid a spot where they encountered a stressful situation or reaction from their human, I identified even more strongly with these small furry companions. In my mind, the whole US became a stressful spot because it was “home.” In my brother’s house, I was completely useless. Though I cleaned, everyone kept asking me when I would get a job and what I would do. My only relief was playing with my nephews but then I hurt my nephew once, a behavioral therapist doing an intake reported it, and I had to leave my brother’s house. That was the day I became homeless.
I could not go back to my childhood house with my other two moms. When my mom and I had stayed with them for two months, while my brother’s new house was being built, I had nightmares and flashbacks from day one. I lived in a perpetual state of duality, where the present scene would be overlapped by memories and moments of the past. Someone might not be yelling at me but I would have difficulty listening or even looking at them properly. People who had used my body in the past kept appearing around me and I would slash them, mutilate them to make them go away. It was an old mental trick that wasn’t working. Eventually, I became so stressed that I stopped eating entirely. The only time I would eat is if my mom was sitting right next to me. At one point, I wouldn’t sleep any longer than an hour at a time. The nightmares, which usually appeared one a time, surrounded me with four or five. They lied beside me in the bed, loomed over me, stood in the closet and followed me into the bathroom, took off their head and placed it behind my water bottle or in the toilet, and would creep along the edges of the bed during the night. When I told my mom, I showed her sketches. They were not that scary and she continued reading.
The day I became homeless, I was two weeks into an intensive outpatient program. It was six hours a day over zoom for five days a week. It did not help. What helped was the medications. I was so grateful that the nightmares disappeared and I could sleep for eight hours, but the day I became homeless, I had numerous passive suicidal thoughts in the first few hours of being in my hotel room. I thought of cutting myself with a razor, overdosing on my medications, drowning myself, choking myself and starving to death. I got through the night and one of the therapists offered to have me hospitalized. A couple hours later, my sister-in-law reassured me how much she and everyone else loved me, and I cried for an hour. Though I suppose it’s true, I do not believe in words. They are only believed so long as they apply.
From the hotel, I went to a hostel. Another friend of mine gave me money for a week’s stay. This friend helped me during the outbreak and quarantine, bringing me masks on my birthday and making sure I was eating. Yet another friend insisted on giving me money as well, giving me his birthday money. After the hostel, I went to an aunt’s house for a month. Though she assured me in the beginning, I knew not to believe her, but due to my condition, she had my mom tell me that I needed to move out in two weeks. It was not a wise choice. That night, for the first time, I finally told someone the full extent of what was wrong with me, or what I was dealing with. It was an email I sent to my mom and then I forwarded it to the friend who helped me during the outbreak and quarantine, so only these two have a broad but comprehensive sense of my condition, not that I went into any specifics. However, even before I wrote this email, I went back to the list of homeless shelters and programs for homeless women that I had amassed back when I was staying in the hotel. I looked for more options and the next day, I called them all. The first shelter that answered me was the shelter that took me in. They told me to get a COVID test and once I had the results, bring my stuff and go to them. I had only been looking to leave the following week. Instead, I left the following day, got the test, had the results the next day and by the end of the week, I was staying in the homeless shelter.
Since arriving at the homeless shelter, people have been asking me what I was doing here or why was someone like me in this place. According to the criteria I listed above, I didn’t seem like the kind of person one would find among the homeless, neither as staff nor as client. Though I have a mental illness, a rather debilitating case of C-PTSD, it does not appear so to other people because as they have told me, I seem friendly, intelligent and highly capable. What I pointed out to them, after over two months of therapy, is that I’m only friendly to avoid conflicts. I endear myself to others, so that seeing me as helpful or necessary, they are much less likely to turn on me (for the moment). I stay away from groups entirely and conversations are held as much to a minimum as I can manage, but it’s hard to stop a friendly conversation, even if I become tired after the first hour.
I cannot explain how I became homeless, though this article is one of a number of attempts to explain it to others. When I think about it, it must be obvious, but I’m not certain of that. Part of me, an instinctive part of me who is prone to looking for the third option, the unanticipated escape route or loophole, is looking at all this and wondering if there had been a point where the rest could have been avoided. What did I need to save myself from this gradual decline?
The frightening question in my mind is, Could I have even saved myself? There is a part of me who is uttering a soft, No.
