Circling: living in the legacy
hazy, mundaneness
MINOR, SECONDARY, DYSFUNCTION

“At various points during the study—especially at the beginning—we noticed many participants either had a hard time articulating their goals or described their future using words like “dark”, “fog”, “hazy”, “fuzzy”, “circle-y”, and “murky”—like they were trying to look through a foggy window. Many expressed a sense of purposelessness and mundaneness to their existence and a feeling that the future was either too overwhelming to consider or simply out of their control. The majority of participants grew up in homes with varying degrees of family dysfunction and financial stress, and many described traumatizing primary and secondary school experiences such as bullying and negative messages about their cognitive ability. Most continued to live in the legacy of these childhood experiences—thrust into adult roles as teenagers (some even earlier), consumed with making ends meet rather than planning for the future:
I think maybe when you’re in a position where you have to take care of yourself, and that causes you to be paycheck to paycheck, and you’re struggling even though you don’t have other responsibilities, you just kind of feel like you’re not going to have a chance to actually pursue what you actually may want, or actually want in life, because you have to worry about these little things, these minor things. Already, it’s like you don’t have the fair chance to actually look towards an actual bright future for yourself. (Monique, 6-month interview)At the time of this interview, Monique had consistent full-time (minimum wage) employment and was housed; on the outside, she had “successfully” exited homelessness. Despite these achievements, she demonstrated an acute awareness of forced self-reliance and inequitable life chances. The experience of navigating a post-homelessness existence was also confounded by structures that seemed almost intentionally cruel and challenging to maneuver:
I went into this circle of being told to obtain stable housing to be able to get the children back to my care, but [social welfare program] is not giving me enough to do that, so I went in this circle of not being able to get housing, and then [child protective services] won’t return the children until I can get housing, so it was a constant circle I was going through. […] So now [that she is receiving rent subsidies through the study] I can show them that I am doing consistent groceries and that I have a bus pass to be able to get to my appointments. I’m kinda like showing stability and the fact that I am able to do what I need to do. Then when they have my visit showing the adequacy, it shows that I have prepared for the children for when they come. (Alice, baseline interview)Notable from this excerpt is that, despite living in poverty and navigating life on her own, Alice was expected to present the illusion of stability and demonstrate “adequacy” to those who have the power to take away her children for good. Almost 2.5 years later, Alice was still living in a two-bedroom apartment (required by child protective services to prove she had room for the children) trying to get her children back and demonstrate adequacy:
How am I supposed to pay rent for a two-bedroom place on a single person income? My single person income is $1,100 and my rent is $960 and change. […] I’m constantly stuck in the catch-22. (Alice, 30-month interview)