Written in October 2026, looking back on my first night in a rented room on September 1.

On September 1, I moved into a room in a house here in Chico.

One uninterrupted night

And that first night, something happened that I hadn’t experienced in years.

I slept all the way through the night.

I didn’t wake up once … not once … until morning.

It had been so many years since I could say that.

Even when I was sleeping on the floor in the warehouse, I always had one eye open. I was never completely off duty. There was always some part of me that stayed alert, even when I was trying to rest.

And at Torres, with so many people sleeping in the same space, all the noise and interruptions and rules, a full night’s sleep wasn’t something I could count on.

But that first night in my room was different.

I went to sleep … and the next thing I knew, it was morning.

It’s such a simple thing. Most people probably wouldn’t even think to mention it. But for me, after all those years of never quite being able to let my guard down, it was remarkable.

A room doesn’t magically fix everything. I still had rent to pay, work to figure out, and plenty of uncertainty about what came next.

But for the first time in a very long time, I had a private place to sleep … and I could finally rest.

What a room can mean

That’s one of the things I want people to understand about housing. It’s not just a roof or a bed or somewhere to put your belongings.

It’s the chance to feel safe enough to stop watching everything around you for a little while.

It’s the chance to wake up in the morning because you’ve had enough sleep … not because something or someone woke you up.

I spent so much time thinking about how to get out of homelessness. That morning reminded me what getting out could actually feel like.

Sometimes the biggest change isn’t something you can photograph.

Sometimes it’s simply sleeping until morning. 😁

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Related: My homelessness is ending and The Little Things That Make a Home.

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My homelessness journey … chapter 14 of 17

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