Close Enough to Feel, Far Enough to Forget

We pass by. We hesitate. We look down, look past, look away.

This episode is about the taboo we have built around homelessness—how we have learned, collectively, to make people disappear from view, out of discomfort more than indifference. It is about those fleeting encounters on the street that we try to erase as quickly as they happen.

Beneath that avoidance lies something more fragile: anger, not only at what we see, but at ourselves—at our helplessness, our discomfort, our quiet cowardice in the face of suffering that is too close to ignore.

This episode is about that tension: between visibility and erasure, between encounter and avoidance, between what is there—and what we try not to see.

---

Statistics mentioned: 

- About one-third of homeless people report having been assaulted (INSEE)

- About 40% of homeless people are women (French Senate Report 2024)

- "After spending 1 year on the streets, 100% of the women declare having been raped" (declaration to Senate of Aurélie Tinland, psychiatrist at Public Assistance Hospital in Marseille) & French Senate Report mentioning that all NGO working with homeless women report that all of them have been victims of rape & sexual violence https://www.senat.fr/rap/r24-015-1/r24-015-1_mono.html#toc94

- Life expectancy: ~45–50 years (consistent estimation from public health authorities and NGOs)

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

They're eating spotning line. Hi everyone. I'm feeling a little introverted today. Um, which I don't know as a woman could always be something to do with hormones, but it could also just be the mood of the day. And I was thinking about that because today I had yet another VG casting, which is in German like flat sharing casting, where you like you apply for a flat and then they decide if they want you in or not. And yeah, it just made me realize how vulnerable it was to apply for something, and because I'm in that phase of my life where I have to apply for jobs, I have to apply for apartments, and yeah, it's kind of it's a very humbling experience. I mean, it's not new for me, I've been doing it for a while, but every time I'm reminded how helpless I am, I don't know which posture to adopt. I'm thinking about the fact that I'm supposed to be myself, and then I'm not myself because I'm thinking about it. Um, so I get in my head, and sometimes I really just have fun meeting new people. Sometimes I'm like, oh no, this again, and anyway, my point with that is for some reason it made me think about something that touches me a lot since I've I've moved back in Berlin, which is um being confronted to a lot more homeless people that I I have been used to in that. And as random as it sounds, my reason for linking those two experiences is trying to please everyone and always being waiting for other people's approval to be able to advance in life is a very small and probably not comparable but somewhat small, small, small, small scale experience of what people who are homeless in the street must live through every day. To constantly asking people for things they don't want to give, to ask for forgiveness for taking up space and for existing basically. Um they know that 99% of people will reject them and then maybe someone will relentlessly give them something that will get them through the day. I forgot how violent it is to be confronted to people in such situations of misery. I don't know why we don't talk about this. We we really don't, never in the public debate. We talk maybe about how poor a country is. Maybe we talk about the disturbance of homeless people, but we never talk about the interactions that we have with them. And so, yeah, today feeling vulnerable, not knowing how to present myself, I thought about how difficult it must be for a homeless person to be in that position 10 times more every second of every day and have 90% of their interactions be like that. And yeah, maybe this is a very um uneasy comparison, and if so, I I really apologize. Um, not trying to disrespect. On the contrary, I'm trying to find how to relate to such a situation that is very, very extreme, and uh that I think nobody who has the comfort of having a home can really grasp. I think it's one of those things you don't understand the violence of until you're in the situation. Um, but yeah. These people, they obviously survive in conditions that are more than challenging, and that's eating the life away. So I'm not sure about the data. I've seen that in France life expectancy of homeless people is around 47 years. Um, not meaning they live 47 years in the streets, but they die at the age of 47 on average, of course, which is about 30 years before um people who have a home. Um which is crazy if you think about it, because they probably didn't become homeless at 18, so their life expectancy in the streets is probably around 15 years. I don't know. Um, I I have no idea, honestly, but this shows just how extreme the conditions are. I think they say like one-third of them also are victims of violence. And when I saw that, I was a little bit stunned because I remembered an interview of a woman saying that she almost was raped every night in the street. And so uh knowing that 30% of um homeless people are women, um one-third of all homeless people having been victims of violence seemed uh kind of blurry. And then I looked it up, and apparently in 2024, um French Senate did a study on this um sexual violence is on homeless women, and it appeared that all of them had experienced a rape or more. Um so I guess violence in in the sense that is considered um violent, rapes are not included for some reason. Yeah, I don't know. It's it's difficult to compare figures if you don't know who measured exactly what, um, in which way. I mean, statistics, right? But still, um, all women in the street are suffering from extreme, like the worst kind of violence you can experience in a lifetime. Because what do they have to defend them themselves? They have no place of security to escape. I mean, it's constant danger, right? So yeah, that's just the physical conditions they live in. Of course, you could you could take into account that they might be for some dependencies to substances. In Berlin it's very obvious that I mean some people running around in metro stations um that have inquiry and thoughts and everything are on drugs, obviously. Which um, by the way, you don't really know if they got on drugs because they were homeless or they became homeless because they were dependent on the drugs, um, would be difficult to say. But in the end, the part of being on drugs or not doesn't change anything in the distress they are in. It's just changes something on the shame we put on homeless people for being in that situation. It changes something about the way we look at them, but still distress and drugs make it worse. So yeah, not a relevant factor for me. And now just imagine being in that state of survival, of constant danger, add to it the lack of perspectives, the constant stigma, knowing that they are nuisance to people, knowing that people are irritated once they see them and triple times more irritated when they're asking for money. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about how unable we are to know how to act in those situations. It's really interesting to me when you see parents with a child and a homeless person, which is always interesting to look at children's reactions because they're like beings who have not been socialized, so they have quite natural, spontaneous reactions. That probably is what we want to do in our um inside of us. The child will be very likely to want to initiate contact with that person that they see is struggling, and the parents will have the typical reflex of no, no, no, keep walking, uh, just ignore him, which is what everybody does, right? We we keep walking, we try to avoid to give any hope to the person that we are going to initiate any kind of interaction. And I'm not saying that in a way that I'm blaming um people to do so, and myself, because I mean that's what I do most of the time. But I mean, it doesn't take much wisdom to know that for them to be confronted to that amount of rejection every day, and the amount of people who never acknowledge them is something out of this world, really. But I think most of us the reason we're not making contact with homeless people is if I was cynical, I would say that it's just because it's not in our interest, but I don't think that's the case. I don't think that's the main reason. There might some people who are fully like, oh, you put this on yourself and you're responsible for your success and blah blah blah, which is such bullshit. But I think most of us we have really not any good alternative that we feel comfortable with. To me, there's like three options when you see a homeless person, and and one of those three we never do. Um the first one is to ignore them, which is incredibly violent for them. Because somebody who's not homeless who talks to you, you're gonna respond to you're not gonna completely ignore them. So that's the first option, right? Second option is you give them money, and then so you give them something, they say thank you, and then the interaction is over. But like we said, most people will not be willing to give money every time. And then the third option that you would have is uh to actually respond, to talk to them, to engage in an interaction. And I've really tried to put myself in a situation where I would do that, but I was really never able to pull it through. And I think the reason for it is I'm scared of being trapped. I I feel like I don't have a guarantee that I can control how that interaction goes, meaning that once I've entered in contact with that person and we engage and we we talk about our situation, then first I don't know how to end that conversation, and I'm afraid that I won't have a way out of it. And second, I know that the guilt that arises from being fully aware of what they are going through will pursue me forever. I mean, forever is maybe a dramatic word, but I will always remember it. And so let's say I'm on my way back from work in the train, and I for some reason, maybe I don't have, maybe I do have, but I've given before. Maybe I just don't feel like giving money to that person. I could just tell them, hi, nice to meet you. What's your name? Um, how was your day today? And by the way, in Germany, homeless people are usually so polite when you interact with them. I don't know how they find the strength in them to be like that. Like they're always um saying hello, I hope you had a very nice day. I'm very sorry for disturbing your uh your peace, but I wanted to let you know that I'm in a tough situation. If you'd be able to help, even with 10 cents, that would be a huge help. I wish you all the happiness, good health, and have a nice trip. And I'm always like, how I mean, I know that part of it is strategic because it's a better way to make people want to give something to you if you're not uh making them feel despicable about themselves. But as at the same time, I'm like, who is going to apologize to you? You're apologizing for taking up people's time who are in okay living conditions, but society is failing you in every way possible. And who is going to apologize to you? So, yes, and I've been confronted to very direct situations where I had to make the choice, right? Um, two times a woman came to me. I I to this day I'm not sure if it was the same woman or two different ones, and told me that her man had beaten her down, that she escaped and she was in the street for the night, and that she was looking for a place to stay, that she had no money, if she could just sleep at my place for the night, and then she would leave me, get to an association, but um, that the association was closed for now. And obviously, I mean in my head I was like, I don't know if that person is telling the truth. Also, I'm not allowed to take somebody home because at that time I was living in the home of other people. Um, but if I'm being honest, even if today I had a huge apartment with three free bedrooms and somebody asked me that in the street on the night, and I had a guarantee that she was not lying, I don't know if I would have it in me to do it. Because once you let somebody that is in such difficult situation enter your life, then you you can never escape that again, that reality. I think for most of us, we're not able to grasp the violence that those people are under. The absolute rejection they experience every day from everyone. You can see they talk to themselves because nobody's going to talk to them. And it's not in a weird way and protest way that like generally sometimes having conversations with themselves because nobody is going to have that with them. So yeah, I I've been thinking about these three choices, and I really don't know, really don't know how to act. And I've heard like lots of associations say that you can always have a conversation with someone, it's going to help them more than you think, and it costs nothing. The yeah, it costs the fact that maybe you're never going to be able to physically or mentally escape that exchange. You're always going to feel responsible and guilty about it. Which doesn't mean it's a good enough reason not to do it, by the way. And it's this contradiction of how can you be angry at people who disturb your peace because they are in such a tough situation that you will never experience because you're born privileged. But at the same time, I feel like we have to talk about what it does to us to be confronted with that violence every day. Like it hits in the psyche every time. Since I moved back to Berlin, um, a lot of the homeless people are asking for money within oops, sorry, within public transportation. Uh, because it's a good way to uh see lots of people who are confined within a place and have to see you for the three minutes until the next station and then moving on if nobody said yes. Um, so it's quite smart. And depending on where you are, of course, there's more or less people. But if you travel on evening in public transportation, usually you get asked per evening three to four times if you have money. Which I mean, to have a really, really tough day and having someone ask you all the time for money, getting angry when you don't, making you feel like shit for not giving. This is also very important to mention. It's maybe the word is difficult because it's not the same person doing it all the time, and also it's not out of bad intentions, but it's a form of harassment for money all the time. Which when I think about it, they're not the only ones doing. Uh, it's also what marketing does, it's also what advertising does to us. Just aggressive publicity when you surf on the internet and when you download apps, when you wait at the bus stop, everything asking for money all the fucking time. No wonder it's irritating when someone asks for more. Um, and I've also been in situations where like people are like, Come on, we go to a bank so you can give me some cash, I'm going with you. And you get angry because you're not able to escape that situation, and that you're like, I'm a student, you're asking me for money when people have 60 houses in 60 different countries and don't pay taxes, like this is so unfair. But at the same time, life is so much more unfair to them that you're really not in a position to say that. Um, to explain that I remember a philosophy class. Um, I had when I was like again in school in in France, you have uh some philosophy class before you uh graduate, which is really good. And uh we had that class uh about nonviolence, um, so like Gandhi and the whole nonviolence movement in India, and why is it that it was so efficient? And I mean vulgarizing it a lot, the principle is that you confront the person who is being violent to what he's doing to you. You're mirroring his violence by not doing anything. Because if somebody hits me and I hit him back, he's like, Oh, it's equal. It's one hit a hit, where we're both violent, we both hurt each other. But now, if he hits me and I do nothing, the only thing that he can take away from this interaction is I've hit her. Maybe she said some things to me, but I'm the only one who has been physically violent. And that's one side of the story. But then there was another side of the story we talked about, which was the problem with non-violence is that sometimes the person who is being the instigator of violence is becoming even more violent when he's confronted with an absence of reaction. And the reason for that is that the lack of reaction on the other person's end and and the mirroring of his own violence is incredibly difficult to accept. He doesn't want to be confronted with his own unacceptable behavior and cowardice. And I think that's the reason some people get angry at people in the street and they're like, oh, those people always, instead of using the money for good stuff, they're buying alcohol, whatever. It's they are angry at those people because in fact they're angry at themselves for doing nothing in a situation where a child or our inner child, our inner human, in fact, wants to help. And I think if we could help a homeless person really, if we gave them two euros and we would know their situations after would be better, we would maybe do it a lot more. But because we know that it's such a predicament that they're trapped in, that society has put them in this situation and that it's always almost impossible to get out of it, and we feel bad about it because we are not in that situation, it's a protection mechanism to just ignore it. And the resentment we feel about that injustice, we we push it upon them because they triggered it. But the problem was not them, the problem is how our economical system is failing them and other people, by the way. So, yes, that's my thought of the day. Maybe next time when you're stuck in a train with terrible smell because somebody who was Wasn't able to take a shower in in a week, slept in in the train because it's the only way he could get some heat. It's an incredibly uncomfortable situation to be in because you can literally not breathe and you want to puke and there is no way out of it. Okay, now you've set maybe 10 minutes in discomfort of that smell. Then you go out and you keep on with your life, and then you're home and you're in safety, whereas the people in the street, a third of them are going to be beaten down by someone else, and women are likely to get raped every night, sometimes several times. Maybe remember how much we are collectively failing those people, and that the discomfort you feel for five minutes, they're feeling it 24-7 until they die because they were not able to get out of the situation and nobody was willing to help. But also give yourself grace that it's I think near to impossible to have the right reaction and we just we need to talk more about the violence that it is and how to live through it. Yeah. Anyway, have a nice evening and enjoy the sun coming.