How do you recognise homelessness as an Australian?

[flow_urgirl]

Do you call a homeless person who has lived in between refuges and couches or spare rooms of friends places or people they met in a pub, a "streets" type of homeless? Or do you call a person that when they have long shaggy hair thick with dreads and dust and lice, black barefeet, red cheeks turning purple, and wool clothes too warm for their body to handle in tropical heat like October Cairns on a warm day?

Do you define the person as deprived of richness because they have been system raped? Because they have been systematised. Because they have had no choice in a long term owned property as they cannot afford it once they have been placed on Centrelink benefits? Dependant income that holds no guarantee of a place for them unless they manage to save and then invest the December 2009 cash payout to those on Pensions and other people who fit in to the recipient base.

Unless the norm for refuge women to be under control systems of psychiatric medication can manage something miraculous such as a realisation for the true independence of a life lived without fear of becoming bloated, murderous at being kept against their wishes wills and rights, stoned on the medication too much a dosage to maintain congruity or even to get off the couch and stop watching tv all day or snoozing off in an increasing wallow.

Now why would you bother these homeless people any longer who have a clear definition from the person who tries to live inside a building that has basic home comforts to a street person who wanders about looking for rollie butts and through rubbish bins?!

I know it because I am that factor of the homeless tonight! This morning! Given the opportunity and I will buy a home or at least some land and put a caravan or even a bloody tent on it and live freely on my own land without someone else having the say as to where I go next to live!! I am trying to find a shared accomodation to begin my B.Design next year, am 31, have chronic fatigue, a repairing broken right arm that can't even lift my laptop! And many other personal issues! Yet I won't go to a refuge, as I did that already and dislike and utterly oppose their control measures and lack of genius and innovation in getting the people who are poor from a homeless state and temporary ccommodation to something promised, worked on and achieved!

It is so easy to accept the boringness of life as you waste money on things you thought you would try just because of the appearance of it or it is new. You try living a life that ruins you every step you take into the cage of confomity and with no true response from yourself as you calculate a reply like a shopkeeper with the same bunch of bananas being sold over and over again.

Homeless does not lead to prostitution, drug addiction or any other gutter label you have. I haven;t been that and i know it is more complex. I was living in these kind of places since I was 16! Without having AIDS miraculously because I accidentally sat on the toilet seat of a woman with AIDS in a city womens refuge. Mind you I had a $500 payment advance and spent half of it at least on Clinique 3 step cleansing products. So before you try to say that you are aware of the situation because you have researched it, try living it for a year yourself. See what it is like.

I bet you would not be of the same behaviour if you were to go to some of the places I have lived in. You have to modify your actions and ways to handle some of the women there and the men when they are mixed refuges, on drugs or off them, drunk or not, violent or scared shitless, raped or raping, verbal or not. All buildings, some with entry keycards, some with security buzzers, some with drugs being shot up right in front of you as you try to go to sleep in a shared room with a pillow over your head at 3am with lights on 24 hours. Some with children in the kitchen as you stare at white bread and think of how terrible the nutrition is and think of your life just the other week when you had your health foods in a cupboard without fear of them being stolen. think great there goes my detox on Chinese herbs and my energy shield as it was in a glass bottle, not allowed!

I know not to worry. I'll be guided there safely by God to the next house with real people. Where I can hopefully stay awhile longer than a month. Might even get on another lease. Have had those since I was 18. Night.