Homeless Sweet Home

My last published piece here was an article written in 2019 about my experience of being hidden homeless in Ireland during one of the country’s worst housing crises in decades. At that time, my husband and I had been without a home for eighteen months and we were only housed at the start of this month, a blessing that we fought persistently for and which came at a time when there was not a shred of hope. It is everything we could ever have hoped for and yet I just can’t feel settled, relax, or feel like it’s ours. Being homeless does something to your brain, three and a half years of having no stable accommodation, the non stop scramble of trying to find somewhere to stay, tears, synapses constantly firing with no reprieve, cortisol pumping through your body - these things don’t just leave your system when you jot your signature on the dotted line. We feel so unbelievably lucky and are truly grateful for what we have, and yet there is an overwhelming fear that the rug will be pulled from under our feet, a residual effect of being on unstable ground for so long. We got something that amidst an ongoing and worsening housing crisis is like gold dust, a key to our own door, a bedroom to sleep in instead of a couch, a space that we can make our own and decorate as we like, and yet it does not feel real because our brains have been hardwired to not having a place to call home. If you’ve never experienced homelessness, the non stop scramble or trying to find a place to stay or living out of a suitcase, it’s extremely difficult to explain. I fear when I say these things that people might think we don’t appreciate what we have when people are living in tents and sleeping in doorways which is absolutely not the case. I feel a deep sadness and strange guilt when I pass people sleeping on the street that we have somewhere and our battle is over. Friends and family lovingly tell us we deserve this and yet I can’t bring myself to start unpacking, living in a space cluttered with boxes, because I fear that if we start to settle in, I’ll get a call to say we’re out. We have not rested or felt comfortable in three years and as a result my brain is in a learned state of constant readiness to pack up and go because that was my daily existence for years.

In pre covid-19 days i was never in any one place for more than three days if even and that time was spent on the phone trying to find the next place to stay. It was so utterly exhausting, a blur of hopping on trains, dragging a suitcase when I just wanted to collapse, all of which was made worse by a lingering malaise, fibromyalgia, and crippling mental health issues. I had a hysterectomy in 2019 but did not have the option of staying for the full recovery time in one place, was separated from my husband who is my most vital support, and was trying to cope with our grim existence while grappling the newfound insanity of being plunged into menopause. I spent the time making calls and sending e-mails to housing agencies, councils, applying for places at a time when I desperately needed to rest and it took over a year to fully recover from the surgery. Covid made being homeless immensely worse. Within the first few weeks I had a scare and had to shamefully ask the person I was staying with if I could self isolate for the mandatory fourteen day period the day before we were due to move on. That was the beginning of a new way of being hidden homeless and an even more tenuous one at that. People who normally would have been happy to help were now reluctant, especially with us moving from different households coupled with us relying on public transport. In Ireland, restrictions would be generally announced on the evening news and come into effect from midnight or at least within twenty four hours so it became impossible to plan and it put the kind people who agreed to put us up in a precarious situation, fearing if they took us in that we may be stuck there for longer than agreed. My health was worsening and yet I was reluctant to travel long distance to see my doctor, having to justify why I needed to see her, and often went without medical attention at times when I really needed it because I Was fearful of putting people I stayed with at risk. While I always felt I was happy to play by the house rules wherever we stayed out of sheer gratitude , at times I felt a sadness and loss of autonomy if I wanted to go somewhere regardless of the urgency.

We stayed with a relative but it became much more long term than anticipated and we felt like such a burden and the atmosphere grew to be cripplingly tense. We found ourselves to be wholly stuck there with no way out and the person we were staying with felt an obligation knowing that if she kicked us out we would be on the streets but the longer it went on the more we were permanently bordering on that. Lockdown brought everyone some degree of mental health issues and the house was full of a simmering rage. We knew we were in the wrong by outstaying our welcome but had nowhere to go other than a cardboard box and felt A deep sense of shame, desperation and frustration. Construction was halted, leaving the councils short on supply and we were in the worst bind yet. I called the housing department weekly but the resounding answer was nothing was happening because of covid, and while I understood their limitations it felt somewhat of an insipid answer seeing as they did nothing to adequately house people on the lists year on year for a decade.

One day out of the blue after a yearlong constant submission of medical records and pleas I got a call to say that we had been nominated for housing through a homeless agency. It took about six weeks but here we are now in a bright airy apartment instead of the damp dark place we rented for years before becoming homeless , miserably watching it crumble. The agency see us as people not a number on a list, see our health issues and struggles as something to be empathetic towards, a stark contrast to landlords seeing it as a liability and favoring the ones with more money in their pockets. They are doing everything to reassure us we have security as they see our vulnerability and fears we might lose this place. There are theories that change when you’ve been in a dark place , even if it is beneficial, brings trepidation and fear before you can move forward to the light and better things. Something as I write this late at night makes me feel like tomorrow it’s time to start unpacking, finish the budget flat pack assembly furniture stacked in the corner , and maybe just maybe start making this a home.