Homeless

Homeless

One cannot blame God or Satan or the economy or a recession or high unemployment. When you lose it all and become homeless, you should only blame yourself. 
   
But you can also blame all of the above, including yourself. You feel better.

The descent to homelessness is long and unfair, sad and cruel. It starts when you lose your job. You never panic in the beginning because you never consider all your options will disappear. At the same time, you can't imagine yourself on the other side.

I remember years ago when we bought our first house, the former owners (two brothers in their fifties) used to walk by every day in front of the house with their sad faces. The house had been repossessed recently by their bank. My heart broke every time I saw them admiring all the repairs and improvements we did to the house day after day. I felt bad for them, but I felt good for us.

I also remember that back in those days, I used to love two songs that brought tears to my eyes, Fast Car by Tracy Chapman and Another Day in Paradise by Phil Collins. Sad songs about losing hope, devastation, desperation, and poverty. Years later, I became an expert on the subject.

Then the economy went bad, and after months of unemployment we depleted our savings. Depression began to take hold of my mind, and my attitude changed. I began to argue with my wife about insignificant little things. I no longer treated my children the same way as when things were plentiful. I felt they no longer admired me anymore. Then, I sold one of the cars. Garage sales became regular and a good source for fast cash. Suddenly the garage looked bigger, and the house too.

The pile of bills grew relentlessly. Pink notices started to arrive. Not even bankruptcy could save us. The time to panic also arrived. 

Just before we lost the house, I sold the other car. I was convinced that I had the Midas touch in reverse. We had one last garage sale before we moved to an apartment.

Things aggravated in a hurry; there were no signs of relief anywhere. I knew I had lost the rat race. The rats won.

My wife abandoned the ship just before we sank. She took the children with her to live with her mother. I was glad she lived in another state. 

I was too ashamed to face my friends, and I became a recluse. 

I had to accept that the middle class was now too far from our reach, maybe impossible to recapture. I no longer cared. I spent the last few months in the apartment rent-free ignoring 15-day notices every fifteen days. When I finally left, I felt free.

I ran out of options, and with no place to stay, I hit the streets. I never imagined how easy it was to become friends with homeless people. Within a week, my dirty clothes and dirty appearance would expose the cruel reality. I had become one of them. For the first time in a long while, my problems disappeared. I had no more bills to worry about. The social group I once belonged to would have to ignore me now.

Once your pride and dignity are gone, begging is not that hard or shameful.

When I was in a better position, my unselfish generosity gave me humility. I was never indifferent to people down on their luck. That made me feel proud.

I began to drink to drown my sorrow, and instead, I sank deeper. I adapted rather easily to my new life in the streets. Inebriated every day, I stopped looking for work. I lost all hope, and I became another casualty of society. Without a source of income, whenever you break a twenty dollar-bill, your heart breaks too.

Most homeless people form groups to protect themselves; most of them are compassionate to each other. I became friends with a few of them. We shared our pain and everything else. I found better friends in the street than I used to have in my time of success. Many of them were war veterans. One of them was Bill, a former real estate agent. He said he knew his situation was temporary. That was a popular phrase in our circles.

Some nights, after I found a place to sleep, I would pull the pictures of my kids and my wife from my wallet and started to cry. Only alcohol could kill that kind of pain. I was an old, weak drunk. Nostalgia, loneliness, and defeat soon would turn into resignation and acceptance.  

People always suspected that the money collected begging would be used to buy drugs or alcohol. That was the reason they would give us food or milk instead. One time, someone even gave me a lottery ticket. I laughed at him and blessed him sarcastically. I remember it well because it was my wife’s birthday. I felt depressed all day, and for a change, I got drunk again. Soon after that, I forgot about all birthdays and holidays.

Another strange thing about being poor was that regular people make you feel abnormal. With their attitude, they would push you into corners. You feel hunted down, observed, surveyed, and trapped. Poverty becomes inescapable.

People feel uncomfortable. They think this is our choice. They avoid eye contact. They feel guilty for refusing to help us. The way they treat us makes us feel like lepers.

One of my new friends, who came from Haiti, made a funny comment. He said that poor people in America were not that poor because they were never hungry. What a consolation. 

Some homeless people suffer mental deficiencies or are drug addicts. Most of them are alcoholics, but I believe that the common denominator in all of us is that we gave up on our responsibilities. We got tired of struggling for so long and gave up. I have no doubt some of these poor people are lazy. I wonder what category I belong to. 

 

I no longer had a permanent address, a phone, or a  bank account. I no longer had to pay taxes. I no longer existed for the government. I had a driver's license but no car. I had a social security card, but it was useless.

Sometimes I thought I didn’t fight hard enough to avoid my ruin. I thought I gave in too soon.  

In my prayers, I often asked God to take me. I couldn't sustain my family. I was a failure. I couldn't keep them together. I was a sad failure. God ignored me, like the rest of the world.

Winters were tough. Half of us disappeared. Some were taken back temporarily by their families; others went to hospitals and some others to cemeteries. Bill and I kept fighting. We knew it was only temporary.   

 

It was tough. At times, I wished I could be arrested so, I spend a few days in the comforts of a secure cell, with free food and shelter.  

 

After a year, I felt well adapted. I knew every single trick. I never felt hungry. Churches from all denominations took good care of us. They gave us food and clothing, sometimes shelter too. All we collected in the corners was for booze. 

Once in a while, I felt nostalgic and lonely and wondered if my family still missed me. They had no way to communicate with me, and I hardly got in touch with them. They might think that the separation was my decision and that I abandoned them. No matter what they thought, I wished they still love me.

Then, on my birthday, something amazing happened.

I was saving a fifty-dollar bill in my wallet for an emergency. Well, my birthday sounded like an emergency to me. And what do alcoholics do to celebrate? Right, they get drunk. That morning, Bill and I headed for the liquor store. When I pulled my fifty-dollar bill, I dropped something hidden there for six months, a lottery ticket. 

The little machine they had to check the numbers said that I was a winner. Really? When I took it to the clerk, he said that I hit the jackpot. Twelve million dollars. Really? I sat down on the floor with my back against the display. In case I fainted, I wanted to be close to the ground. Then I heard the clerk say . . .  “Hey, you better hurry up because today is the last day you have to claim your millions.”

As I filled the back of the ticket with my name, Bill said Frank had a car and that he could take us to Sacramento to claim the prize. 

Of course, we still got our booze.

Rumors spread fast among the derelicts and the beggars. Bill made a collection from them for gas and expenses, without failing to make a list of our benefactors. Then we headed for Sacramento to claim my prize.

For a moment,  I thought all that was happening could be just another stupid dream. I would have killed myself.

 

We were two hours away from Sacramento. We had enough time and booze to make it there. We kept making plans for our bright futures. And of course, I never forgot about all the friends I made during the last year on the street. I pictured all my friends living in an apartment building rent-free until they could find a job and make it on their own. Then, rotate them and give a chance to another group.

Our time was cut short severely after a cop pulled us over and arrested Frank for driving under the influence of alcohol. They confiscated the car because Bill and I were also drunk and couldn’t drive. The tow truck driver gave us a ride to a gas station, where we called for a taxicab.

I was desperate and nervous; it was 4:00 already. We only had an hour left; I told the driver that we had a good tip for him if he drove faster. He said he wouldn’t break the law for a million dollars; he said he needed his driving license to survive.

 

Oh my God, a responsible taxi driver. My future depended on him, but I didn’t say a word the rest of the way.

When we arrived at the front of the lottery office, a man was locking the doors. I pulled the door handle, and he wagged his index finger, and then with the same finger, he tapped his wristwatch and walked away. I couldn’t believe a man was deciding my future, not God, but a simple man.

I had tears in my eyes. I wanted to break the door glass with my head. We missed it for a second. Then, on one last desperate attempt, I knocked on the door before the guard disappeared. When he turned our way, I showed him my wrinkled lottery ticket, and he came back to open the door.

God exists!

After I deposited my winnings, we went to get Frank out of jail. 

Next, I went to claim my family back. 

Edmundo Barraza

Visalia, CA. 10-29-2012

http://edbar1952-accomplishedignorant.blogspot.com/