The Unadulting Society

I've been living in a 2012 Toyota Sienna for eight months. When I tell people this, they do one of two things. They either look at me with pity — the kind that says "I'm sorry life brought you here." Or they ask if I'm on some kind of adventure. As if homelessness were a road trip with better lighting. Neither is right. I chose the van. That's important to say. I chose it over an apartment I couldn't afford and a family home I couldn't survive. I chose it over sleeping on couches and pretending I was fine when I wasn't. I chose it over the version of my life where I kept shrinking myself to fit spaces that were never built for me. That doesn't make it easy. The first night, I parked in a Walmart lot and lay awake listening to every sound. Cart returns. Car doors. The distant thrum of the highway. I didn't sleep. I thought about everything I'd left behind and everything I didn't have yet. I thought about the cold. I thought about the knock. The knock. That's what we call it in the car-living community — when a police officer taps on your window at 2am and asks you to move along. It hasn't happened to me yet. I've gotten good at finding the right spots. 24-hour gym parking lots. Rest stops with overnight allowances. Industrial parks where nobody checks after 6pm. There's a whole geography of invisible parking that you learn when you have to. The loneliness is the part nobody talks about. You can go days without anyone making eye contact with you. I didn't realize how much I relied on casual human recognition until it disappeared. The barista who remembers your order. The neighbor who nods. The security guard who waves. When you live in a vehicle, you become transparent in a way that's hard to describe. You're surrounded by people but completely disconnected from them. I cope with rituals. Coffee on the camp stove every morning — the hiss of the propane, the smell of cheap grounds, the warmth of the mug in my hands. It's the same coffee I drank in my apartment, but here it means something different. Here it means I'm still a person with routines and preferences and a life that matters, even if nobody else can see it. The van has taught me more about myself than any apartment ever did. I know exactly how much stuff I need (less than I thought). I know which parking lots feel safe and which ones don't. I know that a gym membership is worth more than renters insurance. I know that freedom and loneliness live in the same metal box and sometimes you can't tell them apart. I'm not writing this for sympathy. I'm writing it because car living is real and millions of people do it and most of them never talk about it because the shame is too heavy. I'm writing it because some 19-year-old is considering this option right now and needs to know it's possible. I'm writing it because this is my home. It has four wheels and a cracked windshield and a dent in the back bumper from when I backed into a pole at a gas station in Arizona. But it's mine. The car is not a metaphor. It's a minivan with a sleeping platform and window covers and a camp stove and two cats who have adjusted to this life faster than I have. It's where I park. It's where I sleep. It's where I'm learning to be okay.