one thing that no one ever talks about homelessness is how it changes your relationship with permanence and “stuff and things” as i like to call it. having been functionally homeless for most of my adult life (my housing was based mostly on interdependence or good will, meaning my housing was always in someone else’s hands, functionally.) my relationship with “stuff” is so materially different from other people that i can clock people who have been chronically homeless pretty easily with one simple trick.
the chronically homeless will never buy anything they wouldn’t be comfortable throwing away tomorrow. for years as i navigated life on the edge of society and on the verge of homelessness, my tolerance for “stuff” grew much smaller. i started to resent when people would give me things, especially when they were thoughtful. anything i owned was just another thing i could lose and at the time i was suffering strongly from an animal hoarding habit that had started as a response to the instability in my life (bandaid babies, per se) so i had too much stuff that couldn’t be discarded already. anything else was just an insult to my circumstances.
even now it’s been six years since i moved into this apartment. i’ve been here six years without a single decoration beyond a few trinkets that i had had since i first moved out. slowly, i’ve experimented with buying some small decorations. a small figurine here, a desk lamp there. but it really took a turn when i allowed myself to buy a nendoroid. luxuries like figures were something i hadn’t had before and wasn’t ready to necessarily go all in on. but i thought about it and i realised that i’ve been denying myself the ability to grow a sense of stability by buying things that would require me to continue to be housed to own them. buying a collection of magic cards a few years ago was a big step and i’ve almost lost that several times. so, i never felt secure enough to collect things and put them around or decorate my space in anyway.