I’ll never forget being in active addiction when student loans were my hustle and I had to fake going to class long enough to get my disbursement. One semester I hopped a light rail the first day and had to flee the train nazis that got on checking passes — but I left my student ID behind, so they pursued me to campus and the cops came and removed me from class.
They wrote me a citation and I slunk back in with everyone staring at me, which of course I failed to appear and/or pay whatever fine. After I eventually became homeless that ended up being one of my warrants that turned a camping violation into a trip to jail, which actually becomes a thing you’re grateful for food and shelter except for the whole throwing everything you own in the nearest dumpster thing.
When you pull my criminal record today these things add like 1/3 page to what is a very lengthy report that makes me look like a hardened criminal but which is actually the story of a unwell person, suffering deep trauma from a society that continuously tries to erase me, and trying to grab a tiny shred of joy from that through the only reliable means I knew at the time.
The purpose of the permanent record? To keep erasing me, years later, no matter how many doors I shut between then and now. It’s a *really* long list of survival efforts framed as crimes — the crime of trying to exist in a world which believes I shouldn’t.
