I came to the Netherlands after my mum died suddenly. I was only 18 years old, grieving and trying to find stability in a new country. Instead, I was trafficked, and not long after that, I became homeless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Everything in my life changed very quickly. I had no home, no support system, and nowhere to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For four months, I lived on the streets. I slept in parks and playgrounds. Because it was summer, it was manageable. I was able to find food most days. There were places where I could eat, and sometimes I even received warm meals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In some ways, the physical part of surviving on the streets was not the hardest thing. I wasn\u2019t afraid. I knew the Netherlands was a safe country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What affected me the most was the feeling of being invisible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was invisible.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n People passed by me every day, but it felt as if they didn\u2019t see me at all. Sometimes even making eye contact felt impossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI used to wish someone would look at me so I could tell myself I wasn\u2019t going crazy.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n When no one acknowledged me, the silence became overwhelming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI started talking to myself just to make sure I was still alive.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Being homeless was not only about sleeping outside. It was about feeling unseen in a world full of people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That experience changed the way I see the world. Sometimes the hardest part of homelessness is not the cold or the hunger, it is the feeling of not existing in the eyes of others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Everyone deserves to be seen. Sometimes a simple look, a moment of acknowledgment, can remind someone that they are still human.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I came to the Netherlands after my mum died suddenly. I was only 18 years old, grieving and trying to find stability in a new…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":216,"template":"","story_category":[],"story_tag":[],"class_list":["post-215","story","type-story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/here2gether.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/here2gether.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/here2gether.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/story"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/here2gether.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story\/215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":217,"href":"https:\/\/here2gether.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story\/215\/revisions\/217"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/here2gether.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/here2gether.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"story_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/here2gether.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story_category?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/here2gether.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story_tag?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}