The Unadulting Society

I live in a group home. I have lived here for three years. Before that, eight months unhoused. Before that, a series of failed attempts at independent living that ended in burnout, meltdown, and hospital stays. I have high support needs. I am autistic. I cannot live alone. Both things are true. The group home is not a home in the way you mean it. I don't choose what I eat. I don't choose when I shower. I don't choose who I share space with. Staff check on me at scheduled times. My door is not really my door. Someone is always listening. Staff sometimes talk to me like I'm seven years old. Or talk about me in front of me like I can't hear them. I am twenty-five years old and I have a sense of humor and opinions about music and a stack of library books next to my bed that nobody else has read. Both things are true. I also have a roof. Three meals a day. After being unhoused for eight months — sleeping in doorways, eating from trash cans, being invisible to everyone who walked past — the group home is safety. It's not dignity. Safety and dignity are different things and our culture confuses them constantly. Safety is a roof and food and a bed. Dignity is being seen as a full person while you have those things. I have safety. I fight for dignity every single day. Some staff are genuinely kind. One of them — her name is Patricia — brings me used books from library sales because she knows I read. She doesn't make a big deal about it. She just leaves them on my bedside table with a post-it that says "thought you might like this one." That post-it matters. That post-it is a small piece of dignity in a system designed to strip it away. There's a weird camaraderie with the other residents. We don't always like each other. Some of them are loud at night. Some of them have behaviors that overwhelm me. But we understand each other in ways nobody outside can. We know what it's like to have your day structured by someone else's schedule. We know what it's like to eat scrambled eggs every single morning because the menu never changes. We know what it's like to be grateful and furious at the same time. Both things are true. I need this support. I can't live independently. And I also hate it sometimes. I'm allowed to feel both. I'm tired of people who've never lived in care telling me how I should feel about living in care. The disability community talks a lot about independence. I understand why. But I want to talk about something else. I want to talk about interdependence. About the radical idea that needing help is not a moral failing. About the possibility that a group home could be a real home — with choices, with privacy, with dignity — if we designed them for the people who live in them instead of the people who run them. I don't know if I'll ever live independently. I don't know if I want to. What I want is to live somewhere that sees me as a full person, support needs and all. Somewhere I can close my door and know it won't be opened without a knock. Somewhere I can choose my meals and my schedule and who shares my space. Somewhere that treats dignity as a right, not a luxury. Both things are true. I am grateful. I am furious. I am a person.