I spent part of my day today reading the following three stories:
I am posting the above articles because I was struck by the fact that many of the tactics that work if you are trying to hide your identity also work if you are homeless and maybe don't have an address or an ID card. Things like cash, gift cards and pre-paid phones are your friend.
If you are having personal drama, being homeless is perhaps one of the best ways to fall off the radar and sort of disappear without actually going into hiding. As a homeless person, there are serious barriers to making friends and socializing in the usual way.
I do most of my socializing online. Even there, I see other people make real friendships that elude me. Even though there is no real reason they couldn't share some of the same things with me that they share with other internet friends, they simply don't. With each other, they become twitter pals or they share with their friends other spaces they hang out or they swap phone numbers and sometimes even meet in person. I am consistently left out.
It isn't like I haven't tried to make real friends online, but it never really clicks. They can't really get past the fact that I am homeless in order to connect to me like a real person. The one man who did seem like a real friend for a time turned out to have an agenda to get me to move in with him and no doubt help raise his kid as he was a single father.
When push came to shove, he wasn't really any different from the guys who have offered me a place to stay based solely on my looks and my obvious poverty. It is a perhaps polite form of intended human trafficking, an attempt to take advantage of my incredibly vulnerable position. Color me unimpressed with the polite fiction that makes them comfortable with such a goal.
If you really want to drop off the radar legally and quietly start your life over legitimately and you happen to be homeless, this is probably your best shot at doing that. A lot of your so called friends will want nothing more to do with you. You can up and leave and go elsewhere with just a backpack far easier than if you needed to pack up and move a household. If you have any sense, you eventually learn to keep your mouth shut and quietly avoid subjects that you just don't want to call attention to, like the fact that you are homeless.
Sure, lots of people can infer that I am homeless. But I rarely tell anyone in meat space. I am open about it online. But, these days, I am not so open about it in person.
I very much enjoyed reading the above stories. It made me feel kind of like I pulled off a successful disappearance in plain sight, under my actual legal name.
I encourage you to read them. Maybe you will enjoy them, be able to identify with them and also take some inspiration from them on how to re-establish a legal identity, mailing address and so on. Perhaps it will make you feel more like your life on the street is a great adventure or you can imagine yourself as being like an intriguing character in a wild story. Or if your story really is that filled with drama, you can preen and feel good about disappearing legally, in plain sight, under your own name.
- Eddie Maher: How I took my family on the run for 19 years
- Gone Forever: What does it take to really disappear?
- Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here's What Happened
I am posting the above articles because I was struck by the fact that many of the tactics that work if you are trying to hide your identity also work if you are homeless and maybe don't have an address or an ID card. Things like cash, gift cards and pre-paid phones are your friend.
If you are having personal drama, being homeless is perhaps one of the best ways to fall off the radar and sort of disappear without actually going into hiding. As a homeless person, there are serious barriers to making friends and socializing in the usual way.
I do most of my socializing online. Even there, I see other people make real friendships that elude me. Even though there is no real reason they couldn't share some of the same things with me that they share with other internet friends, they simply don't. With each other, they become twitter pals or they share with their friends other spaces they hang out or they swap phone numbers and sometimes even meet in person. I am consistently left out.
It isn't like I haven't tried to make real friends online, but it never really clicks. They can't really get past the fact that I am homeless in order to connect to me like a real person. The one man who did seem like a real friend for a time turned out to have an agenda to get me to move in with him and no doubt help raise his kid as he was a single father.
When push came to shove, he wasn't really any different from the guys who have offered me a place to stay based solely on my looks and my obvious poverty. It is a perhaps polite form of intended human trafficking, an attempt to take advantage of my incredibly vulnerable position. Color me unimpressed with the polite fiction that makes them comfortable with such a goal.
If you really want to drop off the radar legally and quietly start your life over legitimately and you happen to be homeless, this is probably your best shot at doing that. A lot of your so called friends will want nothing more to do with you. You can up and leave and go elsewhere with just a backpack far easier than if you needed to pack up and move a household. If you have any sense, you eventually learn to keep your mouth shut and quietly avoid subjects that you just don't want to call attention to, like the fact that you are homeless.
Sure, lots of people can infer that I am homeless. But I rarely tell anyone in meat space. I am open about it online. But, these days, I am not so open about it in person.
I very much enjoyed reading the above stories. It made me feel kind of like I pulled off a successful disappearance in plain sight, under my actual legal name.
I encourage you to read them. Maybe you will enjoy them, be able to identify with them and also take some inspiration from them on how to re-establish a legal identity, mailing address and so on. Perhaps it will make you feel more like your life on the street is a great adventure or you can imagine yourself as being like an intriguing character in a wild story. Or if your story really is that filled with drama, you can preen and feel good about disappearing legally, in plain sight, under your own name.