January 2nd
On falling out of the economy
The message arrives without warning.
No hello.
No easing in.
Just the body speaking.
I became homeless December 31st after falling behind in rent payments for the last two months of the year. I wasn’t going to wait around to be evicted.
It’s grimmer and more grueling than I had envisaged. Feels like the socio-economic version of the death penalty.
Easy to take a bed, toilet/shower, and electrical outlets for making toast and coffee for granted until you’re bereft of them.
Difficult to get enough sleep when you’re narrowly wedged in-between boxes and other miscellaneous shit and books in a compact car. I think a coffin provides more legroom, not to mention significantly less brightness than the car headlights constantly setting ablaze the interior of my car at night.
Don’t get me started on the page I had to take from the contortionist’s handbook in terms of awkwardly maneuvering my lower torso such that I can perilously piss into an empty gallon water jug at night.
Speaking of which, in my fifties, it sucks to be at the total mercy of that most ruthless of drill sergeants… my bladder.
I read it once.
Then again.
The words don’t rush.
They don’t ask.
They state a fact the way you state a diagnosis.
I met Matt in 2006.
A tech startup.
That particular kind of hope that smells like whiteboards and bad coffee.
We were building a brain fitness system for seniors… trying to slow dementia, hold off Alzheimer’s, buy people more time with their own memories.
Future-facing work.
Deferred reward.
Matt was careful.
Always had been.
Frugal. Precise. The guy who knew where every dollar went.
The guy you assume will be fine.
Then 2020 happened.
His job disappeared.
Not dramatically.
Just… gone.
COVID cutbacks.
Matt didn’t panic.
He didn’t implode.
He did what we’re told responsible adults do.
He lived off his savings.
Month after month.
Year after year.
Six years.
Six years of discipline.
Six years of math.
Six years of believing the runway would hold.
Until one day it didn’t.
That’s how it happens.
Not with a crash.
With a narrowing.
Rent doesn’t care how responsible you’ve been.
Inflation doesn’t remember your discipline.
Time doesn’t negotiate.
And then there’s a moment…
Not dramatic.
Almost quiet.
Where you decide not to wait for someone else to remove you.
You leave.
What does it feel like to fall out of the economy?
It feels like the world sharpens.
Sleep becomes shallow.
Light becomes aggressive.
Your body becomes a problem to solve.
You learn how to wake instantly.
How to pee carefully.
How to stay invisible and alert at the same time.
You learn that a car is not a home…
it’s a holding cell.
You learn how much of dignity is architectural.
A door.
A lock.
A place to lie down flat.
You learn that once those are gone, the day becomes a series of negotiations with your own organs.
And still…
You write clearly.
You joke.
You observe.
Because something in you refuses to disappear.
I paid one of his credit card bills.
It happened to be MLK Day.
A day off.
A holiday about justice.
Not a rescue.
Not a solution.
Just a bill that didn’t need to keep growing interest while he slept in a car.
I’ve helped him with his resume.
We trimmed.
Clarified.
Removed dates the way people now do… carefully, strategically…
like age is something you apologize for without naming.
Matt is a proofreader by trade.
Or was.
Words are his home.
He’s been applying for basic jobs.
Not ambitious ones.
Basic.
And still… nothing.
Because something happens in your fifties.
You don’t disappear loudly.
You just stop being called back.
Experience turns into liability.
Care becomes “overqualified.”
Precision becomes “not a culture fit.”
It’s a quiet erasure.
The kind that leaves no marks.
Matt got help.
Friends showed up.
His brother did what brothers do.
But help has a half-life.
Eventually even generosity runs into arithmetic.
Not because people don’t care.
Because the system is built on the assumption that no one will ever fall for long.
That savings are infinite.
That resilience doesn’t age.
That responsibility guarantees safety.
It doesn’t.
I asked myself if I should ask Matt to proofread this.
Not as charity.
Not as therapy.
As work.
As collaboration.
As dignity.
And also…
so I could put some money in his hand for food.
Not for the post.
Not for the audience.
For the day.
For the small human math of getting through an afternoon.
If he says yes, I imagine what it will look like.
A comma moved.
A line tightened.
And one note in the margin.
“This part is accurate.”
No embellishment.
No correction.
Just accuracy.
And even before it happens, I already know something:
Even here…
wedged between boxes, headlights flaring, bladder on patrol…
He is still doing his work.
Still tending language.
Still telling the truth cleanly.
Still inside the sentence.
If you are reading this from a bed,
with a door that closes,
with a body that can rest…
Hold that gently.
Not as pride.
As proximity.
Because what happened to Matt did not begin with failure.
It began with time.
And a world that believes people expire economically
before they do biologically.
Presence is not something you lose when the numbers run out.
And neither is worth.
Matt and me, September 2025.
Damn Airrion, you’ve done it again - named the truth in a way that leaves us forever changed.