When I was growing up, as far back as I knew it existed and then acutely after high school, I was afraid of being homeless.
"You look like a homeless person in those pants. Do you want to end up homeless?"
"Get a job. You're going to end up homeless."
It seemed inevitable. I wondered how I could live in the world, how people live in the world alone. It seemed as inevitable as me being unanchored and on my own. Both were my fate and my brother's fate. We who didn't really spend a lot of time with extended family. The lesson we were taught was that people are like stars in the sky, randomly scattered, brightly or dimly shining, individual and if you're lucky by chance or kindness or gifted with popularity, you might be part of a constellation.
Today I'm sad about this, listening to the This American Life story about urban myths.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/
There's a story about things that refugees here about the U.S. before they come and can't believe, things that seem so normal to us. One of the things is that people without homes sleep on the street. Because in many countries, it is unimaginable that a family would let a member live that way.
Who might I have been had I grown up knowing that this would never be an option for me? Who might I be now if I had known to plan to take care of my parents? Or if I had grown up with some obligation outside myself to marry, reproduce?
I don't want to be homeless. Sometimes I feel the sad history of our country to my bones and also looming over me, endless.
Now I live in small rooms for small periods of time with small belongings and bottles of oil, disposable books, notebooks, things I mostly won't miss if they get lost or if there's no room for them any more.
But I think living in a bigger room for a longer time would be even more homeless-like. Because what determines who we take care of? Shouldn't I know my grandparents? My aunts and uncles and cousins? Is taking care of the small tribe, the nuclear family just reinforcing this trope, mine is mine, yours is yours...?
