I Was Homeless, and She Gaslighted Me

For a while during my 20s, I was homeless.

It was not a fun time for yours truly. I went through two horrible divorces and five years’ worth of abuse at the hands of the second wife. I was working — barely — and in perhaps the worst mental state I’d endured since my mid-teenaged years. I really could not tell if I was coming or going, constantly under the fear my second wife would track me down and fulfil her promise of breaking my back if I ever left her.

I counted myself lucky I could scrounge up enough income to eat most of the time, but that was about it. I had no home to rest my head, no prospects of finding better for myself, and barely anything I considered precious and collected over the years. When I left her, I abandoned nearly everything except what I managed to squirrel away into my van in the days leading up to my freedom.

That turned out to be little more than a few sets of clothes, a couple of my Star Trek collectibles, and baskets full of PTSD and fear.

Not much to go on.

I’m grateful it was summer.

It was only fortune or fate that allowed me to experience being homeless during the summertime. I lived in Indiana where the winters are harsh and impossible to survive without some kind of shelter, while summer is at least somewhat mild compared to areas in the south. I worried I was not going to find a way to get myself on my feet before the cold came, but I couldn’t get together enough cash to wend my way to better climates if that time passed.

Even though I had a “shelter” of sorts in the form of my van, it was still an extremely tough time to endure. There was nowhere I could turn to get help. What little family I had remaining broke ties with me because they thought she did no wrong and refused to believe I went through abuse with her. The friends I had before getting married to her were long before gone. She made sure of that during the course of our “relationship.”

A chance meeting of an old high school buddy led to me finally getting into a home — shared with her — and I could start putting my life back together.

Of course, the breakup with her was just as spectacular, despite that, she at least helped me get a better handle on things in my life. When we did split, I was able to move on from it without losing a home.

She berated me and would not let it go.

When I told this story to someone, they became extremely upset. Not with the situation I endured, though.

She was upset with, and berated, me for fifteen minutes about the fact I dared to call myself homeless.

“You weren’t homeless. You were houseless. There’s a difference.”

When she finally decided she’d spent enough energy on me, she moved on, but the “conversation” left me with a bad taste in my mouth and my unholy goat Bob chomping at his bit.

I understand there are folks who choose to live an RV lifestyle, or use vans as mobile homes. I am sure they enjoy their time doing it, roaming the wilds of the countryside as they boondock from one place to the next.

I’ve even been mildly interested in that kind of thing, myself, as I’ve grown older.

However, the situation I was in was not of choice. I had no resources, no recourse of “getting out of it” no matter how hard I tried. I had nothing. Many days I went without eating, showering, or having contact with a single human being other than to try my damnedest to find some place to live.

No matter how one might attempt to cut it, my van was not my home. It was my prison cell, mobile though it might have been.

I relived every shame I felt while I was homeless.

To have someone belittle my experience because of semantics made me relive that whole set of events as if I was a victim of it all over again. It was horrific, and angered me to the point I had to cut ties with the person from that point forward.

I see people doing similar to others on the net. Someone will mention their homeless experiences and have to justify themselves to others because their situations weren’t “homeless enough” or similar bullshit excuses.

And that’s the thing. The “houseless / homeless” debate is nothing more than an excuse to keep victimizing those who go through it, because no one wants to deal with the problem.

It’s easier, by far, to roll the eyes and blame the person for not doing enough to help themselves out of whatever predicament they’ve gotten themselves into.

How about we stop trying to debate if someone is deserving enough to be called homeless and acknowledge the real problem is within the system itself?

How about really, actually, helping people for once?

[This story originally appeared on Medium]