“Living in your car… it’s not a home.”
Story by Connor O’Hagin. Edited by Amanda Yonushatis.
Transcript for Every Day Is Questionable
I don’t’ know what exactly led up to it, but there was an eviction. I had to pack everything up, but there was still – I had an altar that was still not fully packed away. All my things, pictures and my Latin work, and everything that I’ve done, it’s in there. Then we’re gonna come back the next day and finish, but they didn’t allow us to come back. I had to go through the court, and we didn’t even get the chance to go in and actually, you know, go through the whole proceedings, anything like that. She was making these outlandish claims about the condition of the apartment, what have you. It’s like: how could there be possibly that much garbage unless you were taking my belongings and throwing them out as if they were trash?
It wasn’t a good situation. You know, we were staying in a hotel. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed. I couldn’t believe we’re in that situation. I mean, it isn’t logical to say there too much time, I mean because you don’t want to deplete all your resources staying in a hotel. And after that, we went and we’re staying in the car at the parking lot. If I have to go to the bathroom, and go to the gas station and use that. You know, living in your car, it’s quite, I mean, it’s spontaneous. It’s not a home. Every day is questionable. But we do the best we can.
Yeah, we’re staying in a new hotel right now. Well, it was a relief actually, because we knew that night we’d be safe, we’d be in a bed. You know, and for me, it was important because my friend had gotten frostbite from being in the car, and she needed to elevate her feet. Laying in bed like that was important.
Well, most people don’t realize exactly how much it costs to live – to be. But, when you’re homeless, you really have to pay for everything. I mean, food, gas, resources. Well, when you’re in a situation when you don’t have permanent housing, you’re moving around a lot. Things get misplaced, you lose items, you have to keep buying them over and over again. Gets to be pretty expensive because you have to buy food as well. I’ll tell you this, I’m sick of eating fast food. The hotel we stay at is $85 a night. I constantly find myself looking at the gas tank. Pretty dire need for that because we have to get around and not only that we have to have heat when we’re cold. And, especially in my situation, I have so many appointments I need to go to. And it isn’t optional. I have to go.
Everyone thinks that people are homeless because they’re misers or because they don’t want to work, they don’t want to be responsible in any sense. That’s not the case. You know, so many times people, they shun people that are without homes. But there’s much more to me than this situation. I’m very creative, I’m very funny. I’m very romantic. I’m a writer. I just don’t want to be looked at as in a negative light because of the current situation I find myself in.
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