Why Mother did what she did will probably never be known, nor will the extent of the damage ever be fully comprehensible. Many people are quick to point out that I was never truly homeless, that technically I could go live with my parents, but then again technically you could drink saltwater in small amounts and still survive. I still don't know if there is anyone at fault. My various oddities have always just been out of Mother's ability to understand. Try as she might, one fact was becoming urgently clear. Nine times out of ten her actions were the catalyst of a suicidal dive.In a choice between life and shelter, I opted for the street.I lived like that for a month, from September to October of 2003. I don't think I ever really slept on the street, I just always managed to talk Beanie into letting me crash on her couch every night. It was around this time that I finally managed to get a job working in a tiny camera store doing restorations, but it didn't pay a sustaining wage. I knew I was horribly underpaid for what I was doing, but my boss couldn't afford to pay more. Towards the end of October I went on a pilgrimage to Point Pleasant to collect my mind. It wasn't the true Holylands of Wildwood, that would have taken far too much time and money, but it would do in a fix. It was warm that day. Summer was giving its last gasp before succumbing to Winter. I remember that long walk on the beach so well... I was lost, so very, very lost.On the way home the bus stopped a town before mine and declared it to be the end of the line. Apparently I hadn't checked the schedule closely enough. I remember wondering how I was going to get home when I realized I had nothing to return to. The bus driver left me stranded on a corner alone.Eventually I got home via another bus, but the damage had been done. Any lingering illusions about my situation being temporary were gone. I truly was homeless.Beanie decided to let me live with her about a month after she discovered I would rather sleep in my car than go home at night. I lived on her couch, any clothes I could carry out of the house now resided in a Tupperwear container behind it, and most of my most immediately needed possessions were packed into my car. The landlord of her building looked the other way to my squatting because I had tended the apartment's gardens during my summer of unemployment, another one of my Missions from better days. When he passed on, miraculously I was allowed to continue my stay. As Fall turned into Winter, it was like the Eternal Grey all over again. I hadn't given up just yet. In fact, I came up with a new hare-brained scheme to get a job just about every week. In January I saved up $1200 to put myself back into the design scene by taking continuing education classes at the School of Visual Arts. I worked 9 to 5 six days a week, then took the bus to NYC four of those nights to attend school. It was the only thing keeping me going.The inadvertent side-effect of going to SVA was being thrown into the glorious burst of confusion that was commuting to New York City at night. Every night I would slip into the current and let it carry me. It was bitterly cold and the Winter filled whatever nooks and crannies it could find, but the city fought back with a continual stream of activity and movement. It was an ideal hiding place for a nomad like me. No one notices that you don't belong. No one notices, but no one cares either. This was a city of humans with lives and jobs. Those of them that could not fit the mold fell by the wayside, the detritus of society, forever lost.What if I couldn't find a way to fit? There were hundreds, thousands of normal, professional people competing for each job out on the market. They had corporate habits and manners, normal clothes, professional portfolios and resumes. I saw them everywhere, going to bars, going on dates, drinking at Starbucks with clients. It was a world so far apart from me, one I, for the life of me, will never be able to understand. I had talent and skills, but I didn't have It, that essence of the everyday man. All my life I was in school, a place where you didn't necessarily fit in, but you couldn't be easily thrown out. In the real world it was done all the time. There were more than enough round pegs for those coveted round holes. At best I was a novelty item in mainstream America.There was no need for me.I still had my job at Photo Cullen, though. I had just begun wondering if I supplemented my meager pay with a second job as a janitor if I could afford a place to live when an agency returned my call. Even after all this time I was still putting in resumes for jobs, albeit in a mindless routine sort of way. I met with them in early April where they told me they had a job opening for a designer at a firm in Soho. I was rushed across town to meet with their creative director, who said they would hire me on a temp to perm basis if I could start the day after.I said yes.The next day I told my boss at Photo Cullen that I had to leave on very short notice. I hated to do it, especially after all he did for me, but I was desperate. He understood, and oddly enough, someone came into the store looking for a job later that day, She was hired. I went to my new job for two days, then was told that my supervisor would be away shooting a commercial for the next week. I was to get a call when my new boss came back, telling me when I could come in to continue my temp period.I never heard from him again.After 2 weeks of desperate calling I found out that they had hired someone else and hadn't bothered to call. The agency who placed me apologized profusely and promised me another job, a position as a designer for Marlboro cigarettes. I may have had lost everything, but I still had morals.I quit the working world.