It's a rare thing, for someone with housing and a job to speak a string of words like I hung out at my friend's camp. There is a gap in society between unhoused and "normal" that's so vast, but never spoken of.

I was unhoused for two years. Today is not only the day we enter a new era in the Chapo shitposter's cosmic Mayanesque calendar from Hell. It's also my 3rd street birthday (three years to the day since I left home and became a dirty kid). I've been housed for almost a year now, and I fucking hate it and might start living outside again soon.

When I was unhoused, I felt like even the people who were nice to me and gave me $20 bills and bought me Thai food either saw me as a sympathy case or like, I don't know how else to describe it. I was an Other in a way literally no other fucking person on the planet would be to these people.

But I made a couple "normal" friends, all of them in the leftist/queer/punk corner of the subcultural milieu, and it felt cool as fuck. One of them even asked me to borrow $20 once, and I sent them money I made spanging cute girls on Telegraph Avenue near UC Berkeley.

Last year I got a job working graveyard at a convenience store, and I became friends with some of the people who came in to take advantage of Oregon's 10¢ bottle deposit and return cans. I became friends with them, and I mean actual legit friends. I've hung out at their camps and shit. One of them in particular I consider my best friend, and the asshole older brother I never had. I slept at his camp a few days ago, and he made us dinner. He refuses to give me my steel toed Docs because they're too big and I always complain about them fucking up my feet.

He gives me chores when I hang out at his camp (and he says I can't look at my phone when I'm there lol), and this weekend he made me pull a bunch of fallen branches up from the hillside.

The picture shows maybe half or a little less than half of what I hauled up the hillside.

And I did all that almost without any help. This guy who camps down a ways helped me with the one on the upper right.

I'm still sore from doing that shit, and I'm proud of myself as fuck.

And a couple days later my boss got pissed as fuck at me because he found out I was giving my friend free coffee and soda. Glad he didn't see the even "worse" shit I do on camera lol, like when I let another unhoused friend walk out with $20 worth of groceries a couple days earlier.

I do a lot for my unhoused friends. If I stop doing drugs I can do a lot more for them. In fact, the only thing that makes me give a fuck about living past like 30 is the concept of becoming what we call a "street mom."

So yeah, I'm totally a blood-sucking drug fiend. :agony-consuming:

I also sent $40 to an old friend from when I was on the streets in Portland, who's been fucking traumatized by state terror during the protests here and doesn't talk to me for some reason.