I always find it interesting when people say that. When you pass a man in a suit in the street, mostly see an office worker. When you pass a kid in a baggy old hoody and a haze of weed smoke, you write them off as just another PHD student.
That sentence, that when you are homeless, people don't see you - what it make me think is more that these people refuse to see themselves as homeless bums. They are still who ever they were before they became homeless. They have parents, maybe children, maybe even a job that they still identify with.
There are people I work with who, honestly, I couldn't tell you whether they have children, or a single fact about them except that they can sign QA documents. I suspect they would say the same about me. We don't feel invisible because we are able to accept what the other person sees in us - being a generic office worker is an acceptable part of our identity.
Often, when someone says people don't really see them, it means that what people see in them is not something they want people to see. However much truth there is to it.
I always find it interesting when people say that. When you pass a man in a suit in the street, mostly see an office worker. When you pass a kid in a baggy old hoody and a haze of weed smoke, you write them off as just another PHD student.
That sentence, that when you are homeless, people don't see you - what it make me think is more that these people refuse to see themselves as homeless bums. They are still who ever they were before they became homeless. They have parents, maybe children, maybe even a job that they still identify with.
There are people I work with who, honestly, I couldn't tell you whether they have children, or a single fact about them except that they can sign QA documents. I suspect they would say the same about me. We don't feel invisible because we are able to accept what the other person sees in us - being a generic office worker is an acceptable part of our identity.
Often, when someone says people don't really see them, it means that what people see in them is not something they want people to see. However much truth there is to it.