I used to be homeless and addicted; in fact I was homeless because of addiction. I'm not anymore, to both the former and the latter.
I used to be apart of a Facebook group about homeless in the community; I'm not anymore. Or to put it accurately, I don't have a choice; I've been banned. I guess it had something to do with the fact that my narrative is different than the administrator's, in the sense that I prefer to expose others to the truth. Which is that 97% of street people (if not more) are there because of choices they chose to make. A cliche, but they tend to be that way for a reason. 🥴
Let's look at the juxtaposition between admin's addiction experience, and mine.
I quit smoking hard drugs cold turkey; I found something worth living for and never looked back. I took accountability and responsibility for my situation, reached out to loved ones, and have been clean for nearly 3 years.
He is a relapsing addict that has been using since early adulthood. He relies on the encouragement of strangers and relapses on their criticisms. He believes in enablement and blaming others (government, landlord, mental illness, etc.). He is always anonymous, but I know that he is, at the least, 40s or 50s.
Obviously the lies were the biggest things I had issue with. Take into account how gullible and stupid the average person is, the ones who will unquestionably eat up everything that they're told. The ones with no "experience," the ones who aren't aware that you can easily spend up to $200 a night, every night on drugs. That's over $5,000 a month! But we wanna talk about tHe GovERnmEnT, as opposed to priorities, or common sense, or self-control?
The average person doesn't seem to realize that a city-dwelling homeless person relies entirely on manipulation of his fellow man. Manipulating him out of his time, money, sympathy, and resources. The last time I tried compensating a homeless guy $20 in exchange for a 10-minute interview, he turned it into, "Yeah so just a couple of things... Get like, 20 pizzas for the encampment (that's already $300), some cases of water (another $100), and I want you to take me on some urban explores." A 10-minute interview. What more can I get outta this person?
(Image created using an AI art generator on Night Cafe)
And why do they choose to manipulate as opposed to building relationships with members of their community? More specifically, why does this man choose to lie?
Because he has no self-worth and no sense of purpose. Because he still has yet to amount to anything in his life -- not anything he can feel proud about anyway. He has no healthy support system and thus relies on the words of strangers. He deals with guilt and shame and self-hatred, and because he cannot cope with it, he makes it everyone else's problem, by creating the illusion that compassion and enablement can solve all.
I couldn't give a damn anymore. I was the poster child of homelessness -- I had never known a home! 😂 I grew up in divorced households, each one subject to its own form of instability. I had two emotionally unavailable parents. My grandfather sexually abused me my entire childhood. My stepfather abused my mother their entire marriage. I've been in relationships with an alcoholic, and a drug addict (so one can imagine the trauma and gaslighting that resulted from both of those relationships). I have Borderline Personality Disorder. I was living in my car for over 3 months and spending $150 a night on crack.
And another thing!
There's an Ignore notification? What are we, 5? Cry harder
We have an ignore notification on here? Or on Fakebook lol
On here! 😂 Some dummy either upvoted by mistake, or didn't read the post until later, didn't like what they read, and downvoted, then also went out of their way to Ignore.
This post, my experience in general, just attracts non-stop idiots; forget what community we're in? 🥴
Fuck it that’s why it’s the rant community, anything flies in this bitch! Lol if someone down votes something I’ll try to counteract it as best I can but the ignore thing is new for me lol
Reading part of the post and I knew this quote I got the other day is apt! Let’s finish reading.
Ok finished the rest! I definitely think the quote is apt. People identify with the situation SO much that they can’t fathom doing something else and it becomes their whole world. I’ve seen it myself with family members. They’ve had issues, molested and whatever which are definitely challenges but they choose to drown their entire existence and define themselves by it completely without realizing it’s part of them but not ALL of them and we have to move on and improve ourselves and situations.
I am no saint myself but thankfully have never been homeless or in some crazy scenario like that but I feel for the people that do however I have a hard time doing something besides helping someone with advice or some food or something. I don’t think there’s enough desire and self control for people not to take the money and so drugs with it which is sad. We live in a challenging world that’s for sure!
It's a difficult thing for a lot of people. Choosing to separate yourself from your trauma means that A) you can no longer play victim and blame things on it, and B) you have to actively work on yourself to improve the damage from trauma. And a lot of people don't want to do that -- "But it's hard! 😭"
Why wouldn't you want to come out stronger? Why would anyone choose to remain "weak"? Just boggles my mind. Society isn't able to make an individual a better person. At some point there needs to be accountability...