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21 Homeless People Confess The Hardest Things They Have To Go Through

13.

Was homeless for about a year and just couch surfed, stayed with random people or just slept in abandoned buildings or parks. Scariest part was knowing that once the sun started going down, I HAD to lay low and find a place to crash for the night. Walking the streets of Muskegon after dark is fucking awful. Especially when you’re young. People tried to rob me, take advantage of me, sell me drugs (which I took) then follow my whereabouts, chase me just for fun. It was awful. I wouldn’t even have anything on me except my clothes and someone would come up with a gun or knife and tell me to give them everything I had. One time when I couldn’t give a guy anything, he beat the shit out of me just for fun and cut my arm up bad.

14.

I was homeless from 16 to 18. It was a rough time in my life. I was fortunate to have a job with my school at the time and saved a bunch of money to move away from my shithole hometown and move to a bigger city for college. I contacted a random person on Craigslist looking for a roommate and was able to pull my shit together.

15.

All the people who assume you’ll have sex with them for money. I was a young man at the time and I would get propositioned daily, mostly by creepy ass old men. The scariest bit would probably have been knowing that someone could kill you and no one would really know/care.

16.

I had really bad PTSD after Vietnam, and I spent about 4 years basically homeless. When I was in the rough the thing that got to me the most was the total lack of any kind of privacy. I looked for places to hide, but I never felt really safe. The constant vulnerability just seemed to build and build it was really hard to maintain like any kind of normal human.

Written by Alex Cogen

Alex is a New Yorker currently living in Austin. She loves cats, grass, and latex but unfortunately is allergic to all 3. She makes mom and dad jokes more than she cares to admit (jk she'll admit it loud and proud). She isn't as funny as she thinks she is. She is the founder of thelazygurl.com.