Place 1
Woke up. The fluorescent lights are turned on at 5:50 a.m., and staff walk around yelling for everyone to get up at 6:00 a.m., every morning, every day of the year.
Place 2
To have lunch. The shelter closes at 8:30 a.m. every day, unless the weather is terrible or it is Sunday or a major holiday such at Christmas.
Place 3
To get the laundry that I left at my storage unit a few days ago.
Place 4
To wash and dry that laundry.
Place 3 again
To drop off some of the clean laundry at my storage unit, which also has my furniture and for which I pay $177/month. My high-school-sized locker at the shelter, for which there is a waiting list, isn't big enough to store more then a few days' worth of clothes at a time. It also has to store everything else that an adult needs: shoes, coat, umbrella, housing documents, medical documents.
Place 5
To shower, where I'll be illegally filmed and then victim-blamed for it by every exceedingly comfortable person and group that would never consent to living how they force me to live. I could shower at the shelter, where I would have to wait in line with all the other homeless people for 20 minutes or an hour and then have to finish my shower in 10 minutes while staff yells "10 minutes in the shower, ladies!" I'd be illegally filmed by the hidden cameras in that bathroom. Instead, I pay about $75/month for a gym membership, so that I can take a shower in a normal amount of time, even though I can't shower in a normal way because there are hidden and illegal cameras there, also.
Place 1
To try to sleep, in a bunk bed in a room that has more than 20 people in it. To sleep without being woken up every few hours is impossible unless you take sleeping medication. There is almost always someone who is snoring or coughing or talking to herself. It is also very unpleasant to be woken up because the person in the bunk bed below you is masturbating.
After having spoken to several other homeless women, we have all realized that medication that we have all taken for sleep at one time or another is probably the cause of our bladder problems, of feeling that we have to pee and can't. You're not told that when it's prescribed to you, particularly not by psychiatrists; they don't tell you about the side effect of urine retention.
The conglomerate has watched me having a bladder problem for 2 years and thinks it's HILARIOUS.
I might not even be able to finish my laundry today. I might have to drop off the laundry that I brought from the shelter at my storage unit and go back to the storage unit tomorrow to get all the laundry and take it to the laundromat, and then to go back to the storage unit and drop off a lot of it.
These places aren't even in the same cities: they are in 3 different cities. I will be traveling at least 30 miles today.
