Homeless But Happy (Part 3 of a Series)

November 22, 2018 · 0 Comments

Special to The Auroran

There is something to be said about freedom. Presently I have a lot.
To breathe clean air is a freedom, to vote for your principles and elect a party or person is a freedom, and importantly the freedom of speech, as long as it communicates a valued idea or thought without harm to anyone around you. Freedom to express, using the wonderments of words, and sentences to articulate and educate others this discovery into my world of a non-fiction lifestyle.
I share a piece of my heart, in trying to make sense of my homelessness.
I am a morning cup of coffee pouring into a mug half-filled with hope, or half-empty from abandonment yet full of taste in my desires to see this world of ours differently. I savor this knowledge from the new people I meet, and the moments around me as a confirmation that life will go on.
I will not be bitter – grounds left and cast away. In this cup of me, I can make my own schedule. I’m very disciplined to rise early and have a plan of action for the day. I try to be active taking pleasing walks on the trails and educate myself with something new.
Reading the daily news seems more depressing then my current fate.
A recent first snowfall touching the ground to blanket us in a white shroud terrified me to think, I could become a petrified frozen artifact. Frozen in time some of us are just that; a sad reminder of lost souls with no home.
We become lucky and grateful to find a temporary space to stay somewhere in from the cold. I double layer myself in clothes enough to look professional, but I know now what cold really feels like.
Cold sets into your bones and in some cases, it will chill your heart.
I won’t let that happen to me.
I won’t let my heart that is so filled with love and kindness become numb, distant and unfeeling to others.
The biting temperatures outside guide me to the library once again, my sanctuary. I sit staring at the computer screen in the library – the wonderfully warm library trying to resume the rewrite of my life into perfection, but I cannot find the words.
These words come easier here.
The resume, the accumulation of skills, my skill is surviving right now.
I’m frightened to admit being homeless. It is a statement you cannot place on a resume. I keep rewriting the resume reconstructing the theory of my relativity. It took Einstein a while and so it will take me. I stop staring at the screen for a moment and remind myself I’m an inch away from a shelter.
I imagine the poorhouse debtors’ prisons from Charles Dickens in squalid conditions and diseases waiting to consume what’s left of me. However, in today’s standards they are still for the poor, but are pleasant; designed to look less a contrast that Charles Dickens referred to, and more perhaps unobtrusive to society.
Isn’t that what most of the “haves” want, to not really look upon us, to step over us, forget us except those few kind-hearted people and our local church charities? God Bless them. Without this service they provide there would be less of us wanting to keep going on in life.
Last week I was blessed to receive a ticket to a wonderful evening gospel concert. The music filled the church with the songs of an angelic choir accompanying the husband and wife musicians from British Columbia.
Cultural gatherings are still the moments I most enjoy. I blend into this painting of unity. I attended for the first time the “community café” run by young adults with disabilities accompanied by their staff and volunteers.
I was privileged to share in conversations sitting with friends. I would observe the genuine hospitality of this room filled with happiness. I felt worthy. I have listened to many unusual stories that have come my way recently, and some are heart wrenching.
A complete stranger spoke about himself. Then offered to let me borrow his car if I needed too.
A very decent unselfish gesture from a man undergoing constant medical treatments.
Instead I offered to drive him where ever he needs to go.
This is why I still believe in humanity.
I’m homeless but happy on this journey. The reality is, I don’t think, that people in general really understand homelessness.