Homeless
“You think you know me.”
A note of anguish in his voice made me turn back.
I searched his faded, wrinkled face for signs of someone I might have known. His coat, though dirty and torn, had been expensive once.
Bitter eyes followed my gaze. “You don’t know me. But this is where you think I’ll tell you my hard luck story, make you feel all charitable.”
He painfully raised his frail bones, spat at my feet and showed me his back. “You can kiss my ass.”
The hitch in his voice broke me. “Maybe I could buy you lunch?”
Image by Leroy Skalstad from Pixabay
I’ve always been bothered by the way we, as a society, dehumanize the homeless. Every person out there is a human being with a story, a history. They don’t owe us those stories; they don’t owe us their pain.
As a former therapist I cared for many broken people. They had safety nets. The homeless are often broken people who haven’t been so lucky. Sometimes they have mental illness and have fallen through the cracks.
Whatever their stories, whatever has brought them to the street, let’s not forget they are someone’s child, someone’s sister or brother. They are people. Had our lives been different, they could have been us.
I've portrayed so many homeless/houseless people, it's a topic very close to me. A brief conversation with anyone on the fringe can truly make a huge difference. If people pictured them sitting in a third grade classroom with the same hopes and dreams as other kids, they'd treat them differently.
A wonderful reminder that we are all people, some have fallen into dire situations. I have spoken to many homeless folks. I believe in acknowledging people we come in close contact eg standing by the door of a store I’m entering. My most long term acquaintance was with a fellow who was laid off from Tim Horton’s. He didn’t live at the homeless camp, he lived in the woods. A baker laid off when Tim’s centralized their bakery and delivered frozen goods to the coffee shops. I would see him at the park, and at the Whatcom Rd,strip mall. We always stopped to chat,he never asked for anything. My husband would give a little of money to help pay for food for his cat. His cat was always on his bicycle in a little box. I have never been homeless ,but I have been poor in my childhood, and in my early adulthood.