I lost my apartment about a month ago. I don’t have anywhere to go, so I spend my time on the streets of Dublin.
I walk around for hours just watching other people live their lives. Sometimes I’ll sit on a corner with an old cup in my cold hands hoping I’ll get some change. I don’t like doing it, it’s embarrassing, but any money I get can help me.
It’s hard to just sit around begging, especially when the days start to get colder. While begging most people won’t even look at you, they’re too busy thinking about themselves and their own lives to care about what’s going on at their feet.
During the day, instead of thinking about the situation I’m in, I like to let my mind wander. I like to imagine that I still have a good job, my apartment and my friends. But I don’t have any of it any more, because a few months ago when I lost my good job, I lost everything else with it.
If you asked me to describe being homeless in one word I would say humiliating. It’s humiliating to have to sit on the side of the path hoping that someone you don’t know will feel bad and give you a few cents. It’s different for other homeless people I’ve met, some of them don’t care and will just sit around and do whatever they want all day.
Trying to get a job while homeless is just as hard as you think it is, when I go in to try to get some sort of job, I tell them I’m homeless and straight away they treat me differently, it’s like some sort of switch is turned on inside their head and they will straight away make rude assumptions about me, and then they’ll tell me that they already have someone chosen for the job.
I wish I had the courage to stand up for myself, and tell them that it’s not my fault I’m homeless, that the only reason I’m homeless is because I lost the job I had been working at for most of my life. I’ve always worked. I’ve never just sat around doing nothing, even while I’m homeless I’m still trying to get a job so I don’t have to humiliate myself any more than I already have.
Being homeless feels like a never-ending cycle that will never change, and no matter how hard I try to get out of this cycle, it will never stop. The time I’ve spent being homeless will never leave me, I’ll never be able to forget it.
Maybe I’ll always be homeless in Dublin.
