Tag: Homelessness

Imagine you have a blanket or a sleeping bag, a tent, a shopping cart full of stuff you’ve collected, and cardboard to sleep on.

What this means is, you don’t have a refrigerator, a cell phone, a TV, a bed, a car, a bicycle, a computer, a desk and chair, a bedroom, a comfy couch, a microwave, a bathroom, fans or air conditioning when it gets too hot, food or cooking utensils.

Instead, you are dirty, sweaty, exhausted, afraid, hungry, constantly uncomfortable, not sure where you’ll sleep, no decent place to use the restroom, are shunned and rejected by people, you sit for long hours every day, maybe you watch traffic, and wonder how you will keep living this way. Maybe you panhandle, use drugs, drink alcohol.

You have no friends and you trust no one because you’ve been robbed so many times, your life is tough. You want your privacy and space and to feel normal again.

Your life is small. Very, very, small. You barely move sometimes because you have nowhere to go anyway. Your mind has shrunk, literally, and you have thoughts of killing yourself, you’re in so much misery and pain all the time. What do you do, where do you go? Cars drive by, people walk by and no one notices the pain you’re in. But you can’t think your way out of a box.

Your mind isn’t functioning, you blankly stare out into the street, you have nothing to live for.

It’s a small, small, and very lifeless world. You are on your way to death.