Has anyone ever slept rough?

  • Thread starter Thread starter GV 002
  • Start date Start date
  • 🐕 I am attempting to get the site runnning as fast as possible. If you are experiencing slow page load times, please report it.
G

GV 002

Guest
kiwifarms.net
Taking the subject from Stump's thread about his personal experiences, I just wanted to put it out there for everyone else to share their experiences of ever having lost their home, having had to sleep rough for a while, or any kind of hairy predicament along those lines.

I've not really talked about it much before, but I was on the street for a while. I don't really mention it because it's a little too personal in places, but mostly because it was a miserable, frightening time that isn't much fun to talk about. I don't like drawing too much attention to myself, nor do I want to give the impression I'm looking for arsepats, but now that the subject has come up and seemingly accepted I'd like to briefly share my experience.

If anyone wants to merge this and Stump's thread, do so - I didn't want to take his thread away from him and make it about me or anyone else as I didn't see it as fair.

I was sixteen when it started and it continued sporadically until I was nineteen, resurfacing again on the rare occasion until I was twenty two. Being a young woman on the streets of England was a constant rolling wave of unforgiving or unrelenting depending on where you ended up. I don't want to touch too much upon how and why I ended up here, but let's just say that my father was a violent drunk with a few much darker issues in tow, who by this time had been arrested and imprisoned. The immediate damage he left on me and my family caused us to turn on each other, and so I ended up out on the streets.

It was cold, it was mostly damp and there was absolutely nothing remotely enjoyable or fun about it. Yeah I made the odd friend out there, my most reliable being the cheeky little switchy I kept in my boot and the screwdriver I kept in my belt. That screwdriver was the best defensive weapon I think I ever had, and I still keep one around the house for burglar scenarios - it was just big enough and sturdy enough to hit with, but pointy enough to give someone a jab if they got too close. I learned to defend myself with blunt force and ruthless suspicion that I unfortunately still carry with me to a degree.

Shit happened. I don't want to go into gory detail. I've done things I'm not proud of, and things that possibly made me who I am today or some sentimental bull like that. What really got me through was my art - I never stopped drawing, even if it was just a burnt twig on a newspaper, or a biro I'd nicked from the bank on some scrap of whatever I'd fished out of a bin, I'd draw anything on anything with anything. That's one of those rare things that circumstance, people or blunt objects really can't take away. I really consider myself lucky.

Very basically, that's some of my story. If anyone wants to share, go for it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: hm yeah and Mourning Dove
Closest I've come is living in an unheated, 50+ year-old, beat-up 18-foot trailer with boxes of my surviving personal effects, in my parents' backyard (their whole property is like a mini-prefire-14BC) after the roof collapsed on my first house and I was evicted shortly thereafter. Was terrible, but nowhere near as bad as the OP's
 
Just before I moved to Arkansas (its why I moved here) I was about to lose my job and my home. Housing market crash was a bitch. Now I live in a shack.
 
Um, the roughest I've slept is on the hotel room floor while sharing the same room with 7 other people for a weekend anime convention.

I feel very privileged now... :oops:
 
Uhh...I slept on the couch in my backyard once. I forget why.
 
That must've been rough Chanbob, I feel for you. When I was younger I used to just pack a bag and head off to another state. I'd get there and just sleep rough till I found a job [ I'd always go to big cities where there's plenty of work]. Luckily I'm in a warm climate; it must be murder sleeping rough in the UK, what with snow and everything. Particularly as a young woman, alone and vulnerable, that must've been scary. For me it felt liberating, sort of like being on an adventure. Young and stupid. I'm too comfortable to just run off like that now.
 
Probably the roughest I've ever slept was on the bathroom floor of a room at a Holiday Inn Express. We were at a jazz band competition, where I was the drummer, and we only had enough money for 3 people to a room despite there being no pull-out couch or anything. I was in a bed initially, but the guy in the other bed was snoring so loudly I couldn't sleep. Me and the guy who was trying to sleep on the floor swapped places but it didn't help. So I gave up and just went to the bathroom, shut the door, and slept on the bathroom floor. Surprisingly worked.

So yeah, in the grand scheme of things it's really not much. That must have been really tough for you, Chanbob...
 
Oh man, I have a story to tell.

Back in 2012 I had two sofas in my room, but got rid of them soon, as I then had no bed. Almost on cue, my doctor told me I needed to use a pulse monitor for about two or three days, and I did, but I had to sleep on the floor in my room. I developed a nice pile of blankets on the floor, and then slept there. At least 6 times a night for 3 nights I kept waking up to loud beeping. Turns out I was fine once I returned it. Eheheh.
 
Roughest I had was when I went camping about three or four years ago. First time, my blanket and pillow were some clothes and jackets since me and the people I camped with forgot to bring sleeping bags. Second trip from those years was slightly better but then again, I found it to be no better.
 
I know you and me don't have the best track record, Chanbob, but just know that talking about your experiences doesn't equate with fishing for sympathy. It's hard to tell people exactly how it feels to wake up, back stiff from a park bench or leaves in your hair, clothes wet from the morning dew. It's a unique experience all it's own; My travels as they were happened to be far more cheerful when I was out on my own. The 'rebuilding' process and kipping down for winter nearly killed me inside.

I hope you never have to take the 'long walk' again. It's no way for someone to live and changes you. It makes you harder inside, and it makes everyone else look like...well...shit.

Tl;dr it fucking sucks, it's terribly lonely, but I'm glad you're alright. I hope you're not too attached to what may have happened on the dirty streets. It's hard to forget some things.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Strewth
I've slept on numerous strange things during my military days. This includes:

1.) Mossy ground
2.) Pile of sticks
3.) Abandoned housing project in Al Kut
4.) On top of a generator
5.) On an office desk
6.) On a C-130
7.) In a Stryker
8.) In a mock farm house in a MOUT site while playing OPFOR
9.) In the back seat of my car
10.) Plus many more

The number of things I've slept on reads like a bad Dr. Seuss book. I can sleep here or there. I can sleep most anywhere.

Come to think of it, maybe that's why my back is all screwed up.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Zim
There's another time I had trouble "sleeping." It was a 12 hour long international flight from Beijing to San Francisco. I was trying to sleep in my economy seat, and not even melatonin helped. Sitting for a long time in an uncomfortable seat, the dry cabin air, the person in front of me reclining into me, the constant hum in the air cabin, and the little kid behind me constantly kicking into my seat didn't help. Out the window I could never tell what time it was since we were flying over different time zones. The monotony, lack of sense of time, and my sleep deprivation made me delirious.
 
The hardest I've ever had was during Hurricane Sandy when we lost heat upstairs. We decided to sleep in the living room, with my parents taking the couches and my brother and I being forced to lie on the floor. I couldn't stop tossing, so I finally just said "fuck it", took my blanket, and went upstairs to my room. Fell asleep much easier.
 
R.A.E.L. said:
The hardest I've ever had was during Hurricane Sandy when we lost heat upstairs. We decided to sleep in the living room, with my parents taking the couches and my brother and I being forced to lie on the floor. I couldn't stop tossing, so I finally just said "fuck it", took my blanket, and went upstairs to my room. Fell asleep much easier.
Click to expand...

Oh, hurricane blackouts. I feel you. I was stationed at Fort Polk, LA back when Katrina and Rita went through. Katrina missed us but then Rita came in and hammered us a couple of weeks later. The power was out for three and half days where I was living. Having to sleep in a dark apartment with no air conditioning during the late Louisiana summer was miserable.
 
So one summer night when I was in high school my friends and I were outside just bullshitting and enjoying the nice night. I laid down on the blacktop to look at the stars and found it surprisingly comfortable....I even took a little nap.
 
There was a huge blizzard that occurred a couple years ago that gave our area over 3 feet of snow and left almost everyone in our area without heat or power for a week. Pretty much huddle around the fireplace to keep warm. Yes, it was pretty cold.
 
I once fell asleep on one of those big metal storage shelves in the back room of the fast-food joint I worked at in college.
 
The roughest I ever slept was wedged between a wall and a dining room table on a hardwood floor at a friends house during an overnight birthday party (there were A LOT of people there and the couches were first come first served).
 
My stories won't compare to being homeless or anything like that, but I have definitely slept rough by my own standards.

One summer when I lived in Texas, the teen camp I was in spent a weekend camping out at a site out in the wilderness, really roughin' it for us. What made it really rough though was that I had to share a tent with two other people, one of which probably weighed as much as the two of us put together and so took up a lot of space in that tent. That tent also held a lot of humidity, something very abundant in eastern Texas where we were. The condensation on my side of the nylon tent stuck to my skin, my tentmates were sweaty and sticky and didn't shower that day, and the big one snored and rolled around a lot, nearly crushed the two of us a couple times. All while on rocky ground. I ended up just getting out of the tent and kinda of sitting near it the rest of that night and letting the breeze cool me off. I did watch a bunch of bats fly around me the dawn after, which I thought was awesome. I guess I didn't really sleep...

I've fallen asleep on a couch while sitting on my knees and my head resting on my knees on more than one occasion.

Mourning Dove said:
There's another time I had trouble "sleeping." It was a 12 hour long international flight from Beijing to San Francisco. I was trying to sleep in my economy seat, and not even melatonin helped. Sitting for a long time in an uncomfortable seat, the dry cabin air, the person in front of me reclining into me, the constant hum in the air cabin, and the little kid behind me constantly kicking into my seat didn't help. Out the window I could never tell what time it was since we were flying over different time zones. The monotony, lack of sense of time, and my sleep deprivation made me delirious.
Click to expand...

This describes my experience every single time I enter a plane for any length of time. Except I would add "and some old guy a few rows up is coughing up a phlegmy lung and isn't covering his mouth."
 
I've had a hard time sleeping on busses, planes, cars, pretty much any moving vehicle one can name where I'm sitting in a seat where I'm not lying flat. There is no position that really feels right while sitting and it's annoying. It isn't until all the fussing that I'll finally be able so somehow position that pillow against the wall and/or window in some way that is decent enough for me to fall asleep if I'm really, really tired, otherwise, it doesn't work or if I don't have a windo seat, well, I'm screwed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back