What's in the Attic? Part 1

On homelessness and it's effects on our psyche

Hi everyone! At long last, I’m finally ready to dig into the attic. This piece has gotten extremely wordy, but I don’t think there’s any way I could have touched on this topic succinctly, so I’m releasing it in parts. Part 2 will come tomorrow, which will include everyones submissions to the attic.

If you’re new here, it may be helpful to catch up on the dollhouse project here.

In April, I asked my Substack subscribers to imagine what objects they might find in the attic of a dollhouse. So far, we have discovered a spinning wheel, a quilt, a coin, a ghost, a conch shell, a clock, a rocking horse, old clothing, a box of memories, an acorn, and a sewing machine.

By conjuring the image of an attic, you might find yourself exploring the attic of your psyche, rummaging through its chests and trunks to uncover forgotten relics and memories. What needs dusting off, and what deserves our attention? What is worth keeping, discarding, or repurposing into something useful for our time? The attic symbolizes the past, inviting us to reflect on what has been forgotten or overlooked. It is a repository for fragments of ourselves that may not fit neatly into the present but still hold intrinsic value.

As I posed this question, I realized I was not yet prepared to examine the contents of my own attic. It's often easier to keep that attic tightly sealed, but avoidance does not work. The ghosts in the attic will haunt us if we do not confront and excise them. What started as a simple prompt for my newsletter has turned into an extended excavation of generational trauma and personal experiences of poverty, dispossession, and homelessness. By reducing these experiences to a miniature scale, perhaps I can see them more clearly. Maybe by distilling the universal human experience into the confines of this dollhouse, I will make sense of the larger universe.

Homelessness is so ubiquitous in our world today that it has become a banal fact of life. Many of my friends who offered me their couches were well aware of my predicament, but I’m not sure we ever called it that. I was just crashing for the night, waiting for an apartment application to go through, sometimes for months. I had a rotation of friends’ couches, Grindr dates, and keys to the shelter I worked at. I managed to sidestep the full experience of homelessness. I became adept at concealing it, keeping small bits of my belongings at my workplace, “forgotten” at friends’ homes, and the rest on my back, as a shell to a snail.

little me outside of my childhood home.

Looking back on this period, I am perplexed at how I maintained a fun-loving and at-ease disposition. This way of life became so mundane that I cultivated memories I now look back on fondly. I’m sure my vision is rose-colored. I find it difficult to frame these experiences in a way that acknowledges both the suffering and the chronic anxiety I experienced while maintaining a sense of dignity in the telling.

Having lived both with and without a home, I can vividly describe each reality. As I write to you now, I sit beneath a weighted blanket, my cat nestled beside me. The lights respond to my command, dimming or brightening at will. This space is saturated with my own chosen music, scents, and ambiance. The house is one’s own corner of the universe. Here, I control the rhythm and pace of my personal cosmos. Here, I am insulated from what is outside. I am free to cultivate my inner world, to be creative, and to envision a future self.

Without a home, external forces dictate one’s universe wholly. The unhoused person is not granted the same agency over their life experience. The rhythm and pacing of their lives are dictated by bus schedules, the hours kept by the public library, and the kindness of those who offer shelter from the cold. There is no time for intellect, only instinct. There is no time for planning, only desperate daily attempts at repose. Survival overshadows creativity, and dreams of a future self are often eclipsed by the pressing needs of the present.

I am tongue-tied in my attempts to describe the duality of my experiences. When I started working at an overnight emergency shelter for homeless youth in Chicago’s Boystown neighborhood, I was 25 years old—just six months older than the maximum age for participants in the program. While sleeping in the storage closet, I was responsible for processing new intakes, delegating nightly chores, and diffusing conflicts among up to 27 residents who all slept on mats on the floor of a single room.

I resented this job, and I was bad at it. I was the blind leading the blind, and I hated being in a position of authority. I despised making impossible judgment calls, such as deciding who would be barred from the space for the safety of the whole. I was living a nonprofit version of the Stanford prison experiment, arbitrarily assigned the role of a guard, holding the keys to a basement beneath a church. I was acutely aware that my proximity to wealthier social circles and my ability to navigate the job interview process were the only things preventing me from falling through to the bottom.

The house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.

-Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

I recently stumbled upon "The Poetics of Space" by Gaston Bachelard. The book describes the home beyond a physical structure, expanding it into a universal poetic image. The home is a cocoon that nurtures our inner worlds. It is a place for convalescence, reflection, and for gathering loved ones and developing intimate relationships. Throughout this book, Bachelard speaks to the importance of dreams and daydreams, and the home’s essential role in facilitating them.

I have been stably housed for several years now, but the effects of homelessness linger. To be denied a home means being denied a path to self-actualization. I moved into my current apartment when I was 28. This is where I grew up. This is where I learned to listen to my soul and speak in my own voice.

Without a home, I lived in a dissociative state. Enduring traumatic experiences often requires one to compartmentalize their daily struggles and keep them separate from the tasks necessary to stay afloat. This compartmentalization builds a labyrinth around the self. It was once necessary to file away these darker memories, to relegate them to the attic of my mind, but they are still there. They still lurk and haunt my present. I have to remind myself daily that I am safe, that I’ve acquired a home, and that I have everything I need. I'm lucky enough to share it with a partner, and we’re in this together.

I am often jolted by the contrast between my present self and the person my oldest friends knew. Last year, I saw my friend Cesar for the first time in five years. The last time we saw each other, I was saying goodbye at O’Hare airport before his flight when he moved to Prague. I was 23 then, avoiding all seriousness with cheap liquor.

Many years later, he seemed taken aback by my new disposition. “You’re so calm!” he kept repeating as we visited all the bars we used to frequent together. The version of myself he knew took nothing seriously. And how could I have? When you're constantly fighting to survive, the everyday concerns and formalities of those living comfortably seem absurd. When your existence is a daily struggle, the trivial worries and routines of others highlight a stark divide between genuine need and superficial importance.

We enjoyed eachothers company. I felt known on a deeper level. I no longer felt inclined to inebriate myself and leave my body. I am allowed these expieriences now because I have found a soft place to land. A place to put my things. A dining room table to gather loved ones around. I was able to find myself because I found a home.

Homelessness is a labyrinthine existence that many struggle to navigate. It can take years to find inner peace and a way out, to articulate and understand the experience. Such a journey fundamentally changes one's worldview and sense of being.

I have had trouble framing what the dollhouse project is because i’ve been avoidant of sharing these things. It’s a topic that felt too big to take on, but I feel compelled to. I want to make sense of this expierience and do it in public so that we can all make sense of it. Homelessness is to ever present in our lives to not look it in the eye. The dollhouse serves as a map of the soul, a representation of the human experience. One room at a time, we can map it out together.

Click here for part 2