Cardboard Dreams...

 

 

~ Under Construction~

The Building of Cardboard Homes

Cardboard Dreams...

Cardboard Lives: Constructing Indomitable Spirits

Ever wonder how it comes about the abundant homes that are made 

out of cardboard....

The Building of Cardboard Homes (Our Lives)-- makeshift lives, 

living on the streets. Days flow into weeks, which turn into months and 

transform into years.... time no longer holds any meaning when you are 

on the streets. Days blend and blur, becoming one long day.

 

Have you ever wondered where and how people began living in 

Cardboard homes?? Or did you just make a snap judgment about it, claiming 

they are 'junkies, alcoholics, low-life's...Just lazy and so forth? Most people, 

contrary to popular belief, did not choose to be homeless and most are not out 

here due to chemical dependency, otherwise the streets would be overflowing 
with Doctors prescribing their own addictions. Homeless living is 

highly stressful, soul-grinding existence... lazy need not apply!! 

As this is not for the weak or feint of heart.

You ever wonder about the lives inside-- beyond the cardboard?? 

Do you ever see the person before you, or do you automatically 

discard us as mere trash along the way? Perhaps pass 
judgment for something you know nothing about, assuming you know 

exactly "why” we are out here.--Living takes on a whole other meaning 

when you are looking up to the heavens when you awaken... peering through 

the holes, the spaces from where the cardboard that you have placed 

around you shifts with your every move. The soft folds of night that 

held everything in shadow as it slips and fades from the first shafts of 

morning light begins to take over. Peeling and picking the residue and 

layers of Mother nature off that has settled through the night, 
the sediments from the night that leave and has left their marks... 

insects, rocks, grassy bits, twigs and leaves, among the masses..... 

before moving into your day. All these things in various stages of 

embedment through your body, and found in the oddest of places.

You learn the true meaning of isolation and being non-existent when you are 

forced to live your life on the streets, even when surrounded by people, 

you find you’re not welcome and made to feel like you have never mattered… 

People pretending to be your friend, then turn their backs on you, making it 

crystal clear your presence isn’t there… you simply cease to exist, in their eyes-- 

in their consciousness. Without ever telling you what happened. Butchering 

your heart in the process because you cared, loved and trusted them with your 

heart and felt it in your entire being. People forget you are a real person--- 

a living, breathing, feeling being just like them. But they do not 
treat you as a person, rather something to be discarded and avoided like a 

toxic substance they “need” to steer clear of. It doesn't diminish the pain and deep 

sadness left in its wake, that permeates your heart and touches the core of your being.

And when you are on the streets, people insist you have so many places to go, so 

much shelter and so many places to get out of the rain and so forth, and they 

refuse to believe otherwise. When you are on foot, have little or no access to bus service, 

which is all but non-existent on the weekends-- you’re left out in the cold in the truest sense. 

Your choices are extremely limited. If the library is open, you can go in there for a 

brief time, then when they close, you’re left out again, and trying to find 
another place out of the brutal weather becomes more challenging. Finding some 

place where no purchases are required in order to sit in there for any length of time, 

such as Kinko’s or Safeway-- and they are not always an option, not when 

you are no where near them. But people insist, “oh, Renee, you have to 

have some place you go-- I know you are not 
outside 24/7-- OK, come out with me then.

Falling through the cracks…

Slipped trough and fallen through and into all the crevices and cracks of 

this screwed up “system”, the chasms deepening and widening with each endless 

attempt trying to receive what I am fully  entitled to, yet refused and denied 

with increasing cruelty and the nightmarish hell the system drags you through… 

when you are physically challenged, female and homeless… literally forced 
to live on the brutal streets, no income-- you are slammed head first repeatedly into 

the walls, then dragged over hot coals. Your health, your very life compromised, 

discarded, dismissed as the hours roll into days, flowing into weeks, changing 

into months, turning into years, morphing together where time has become 

suspended, no longer holding or holds any meaning. 

 
Your life… a void in the chasm.

When you are not chemically dependent, don’t have a habit to ‘support’, 

a convict or a felon, or an illegal immigrant, you are denied your very existence. 

The very ‘rights’ we’re supposed to be guaranteed, food, clothing, shelter… 

readily dismissed. And the battle begins. Refused housing because there is no income, 

denied sustenance because you don’t have a “physical” residence. The catch-22 that 

loops continuously, the cycle that has no end. When you are a single individual, female, 

and clean-- there is no category for you--- ‘well, you don’t drink, you don’t smoke, 
you don’t do drugs… you look too clean, so you cannot possibly need assistance. 

You don’t “look the part, or smell the part… don’t look like you are homeless, so 

obviously you don’t need help. We only help people who ‘do’. Even the so-called ‘programs’ 

are only designed for chemical dependents, families with dependent children and seniors. 

Fallen through the crack, time and again.

Renee Bowen

Homeless since Sept. 1, 2000

© 2011