Cutting Ties to Bad Relationships

Being homeless presents a fairly unique opportunity to potentially cut ties -- or at least reduce the connection -- to people you really do not want in your life.

Yes, I know: No two situations are exactly alike and there can be complicating factors, such as shared child custody, that can make it difficult or (temporarily) impossible to achieve. But if you are homeless and you do have ugly personal entanglements, this may be your best chance ever to sever those ties.

The good news: If you do manage to move these people mostly or entirely out of your life, it is another piece of the puzzle for building a better future for yourself.

If you find yourself temporarily without a mailing address or phone number, this can be a good time to just start falling off the radar of people you really don't want so much contact with anyway. It is also a good time to think carefully about whom you wish to give such information to when you again have a mailing address and/or phone number.

You may find that you are unusually free to relocate. With no housing, you don't need to give notice to leave. You may be able to just leave. If so, you can simply start walking in the direction you desire to go and figure it out as you go.

I moved a lot as a military wife. Just up and leaving with a backpack is vastly less hassle than trying to move house.

As a military wife, I never had to deal with trying to arrange employment elsewhere in order to move there. My husband's job was the reason we were being sent, with relatively little input as to where we wished to go.

But, from what I gather (from reading internet discussions), trying to arrange a job elsewhere in order to move is a significant obstacle for many people. It can actually prevent them from going to the place they would like to go.

These problems can be largely irrelevant when you are homeless. You will be starting over from scratch anyway. You can start over in a city of your choosing, if that is what you wish to do.

This can also be a good time to disconnect from problematic online situations.

The internet can be a real sanity saver while homeless and can facilitate a great many things while homeless that would have been nigh impossible previously. But it can also be its own source of bad social connections or bad experiences.

Being homeless is a serious enough crisis that it makes for the perfect excuse to kill off a website that is almost all downside, no upside or drop out of sight from some forum or other. It may be possible to come back later and reconnect when you are more together, thus making the same forum into a more positive experience for you. Or you may be happy to do a straight up reboot of your entire online life.

Exactly what makes sense for you depends on a great many factors. These are good things to contemplate while homeless.

You may find that you often have little or nothing to occupy yourself in terms of entertainment in the evening while waiting to fall asleep or walking somewhere. Time spent contemplating whatever thorny issues hound you, whether social in nature or not, and trying to sort out how to address them is generally going to be time very well spent.