MY LIFE AS A WASTREL, PART 2 - HOW I KEPT OFF THE STREETS

The thing about having no money is that it means different things to different people. I got to the point where my income from my job wasn't covering my rent; due to a fire at my place of employment there wasn't enough work to keep me paid in full, and when there finally was work my health had taken enough of a hit that I couldn't do my physically demanding job. I had a letter telling me I was expected to vacate the flat I was renting; I ignored it and decided the best course of action would simply be to stop opening my mail. So although I had no legal place to live I had a roof over my head and some income; all I had to do was live in constant fear of being turfed out on to the streets.

There was some outrage a couple of years ago when a clip from a 2003 documentary called Born Rich was shown on a couple of late night shows. In the clip Ivanka Trump recalls how her father pointed at a homeless guy outside of Trump Tower and told her that the homeless guy was eight billion dollars richer than he was after one of his many business disasters. People took umbrage at the tone deaf nature of the comment, but to me Donald's point is that he has the support network and assets in place that allow him to screw around as much as he wants without having to worry about missing a meal or sleeping outdoors. He was a conman that sold himself on being a great businessman despite having six different companies file Chapter 11 bankruptcy. He shouldn't be trusted to run a church tombola, let alone the world's largest economy. But he illustrates my point that having no money doesn't necessarily stop you living comfortably.

I got my notice to evict in February 2018, I took this as a signal to stop paying any rent. The few months before that were very tight financially. My laptop, a few years old, broke in November 2017 and I didn't have the money to replace it. I didn't have a TV so I would sit in my kitchen and read, if I could focus on a book without anxiety making my mind wander. I soon found this hard and took instead to downloading podcasts on to my mp3 player at work and listening to them in my flat whilst filling out a couple of nonogram magazines I had bought months earlier but never finished. Nonograms are a sort of logic puzzle, you shade in squares on a grid and a picture forms. I still do several a day using an app; by hand they take a lot of time and concentration. Here's a completed one that would have taken about three or four hours with the app; hand shading each relevant square would obviously take a lot longer:

Laugh it up, Chuckles!

MY LIFE AS A WASTREL, PART 1 - HOW I BECAME HOMELESS

The trope about being broke that you see most on film and television completely fails to understand the mindset of an actual poor person; it's a privileged person's idea of what it would be like to have no money. You've seen the scene; a man takes a woman on a date to a fancy restaurant but can't believe it when the bill comes, or a lady goes to pay for her groceries when, uh-oh, her card's been declined! How embarrassing! In reality you are acutely aware of exactly how much, or rather how little, money you have.

I used to be very poor, despite having a job and being on benefits. Part of it was misfortune that could of happened to anyone, but a large part of it was me being too scared, stupid and proud to ask for help until it was too late. I have pretty bad anxiety and depression, and when shit goes south I tend to slap on a brave face and pretend everything's fine. I recently read about a study that showed we see the future version of ourself as an entirely separate entity from our current self. That is absolutely my case; I'll maximise the pleasure I can eke out of each day and let future Tanks deal with the repercussions. Fuck that guy!

I've intended to write about how I got to be homeless ever since my first post, but I don't have a clear picture of how it happened in my head. I was in denial even as it was happening, and there's no clear narrative of what happened to me in my head. I don't know if I still owe money, or to whom. I don't know what happened to all my stuff. I know that I was rejected for benefits based on my health but was given £2600 retroactively, after I'd lost everything and was living in a hospital. I know one of my banks at the time tracked me down and sent me an £800 cheque over the past weekend, a refund on fees they just now decided I shouldn't have paid at the time. When cashing that cheque today I did think back to that time and wonder if I had all that cash then - roughly eight months rent - I wouldn't have lost my flat. It's easy to think that, but the truth is I was pretty miserable back then and I'm lucky to be alive now, the extra money would probably just have delayed the inevitable. My situation now is pretty bad, having no home and living bedridden in a pretty uncaring care home, but I'm genuinely happier day to day than I was when I was squatting in my flat. I tend not to think about that time in my life.