Life.... The Residual Aftereffects

  The Residuals of Life on the streets...

Life is becoming more like a residual aftereffect the longer I am forced to merely exist along the seams of humanity.  Though, exist, is really more than I have been allowed. Being on the streets for so long is eclipsing my life before.  It has literally become my life, who I am now, the person I never wanted to become.  Shadows of what life had once been.... becoming darker in colors and texture, no longer feels a part of my life, but rather something that was experienced in dreams, the images blurring more around the edges, becoming softer and fading where the detection of what was there is no longer visible.  

Many events in life shape, challenge, and define the very essence of who we are. Sometimes the defining moments are not ones we recognize when they are happening or when we are in the center of them around us, but usually becomes apparent in the lull between each other and before the next one takes hold.  Those moments transcribe themselves back to us.  Everything becoming more deeply embedded and incorporated within the threads of memory and every fiber of our being that are pieces and fragments of who we become, though doesn't define who we are, just adds to the whole.

My life has been filled and over-flowing with defining moments.... but nothing more so than my life on the streets...

One of the most defining moments in my life has literally become my very existence.....

and that is being forced to live my life on the streets, facing every day and moment on the streets without a home, without a bed, without a kitchen to store, prepare and cook my own meals, without a private restroom to do my personal and private business....  every moment defining and becoming so deeply ingrained, it seeps from my pores.  I can no longer even imagine what a home feels like. What a real bed feels like, what it is like being able to use the restroom in private without a full-on audience to watch the events unfolding as I clean up on the screen in the publics' eye.  My dreams no longer include a home but more of what life is on the streets.  All my dreams revolve about living on the streets, and the doors being slammed in my face time and again from the places that are "supposed" to be there to help.  Yet, not once has the help and assistance they are there to provide ever once been provided.

My life has been stripped bare of substance, sustenance, meaning....  stripped of my basic rights of a human being, my civil liberties, being denied my right to vote, to serve on a jury (yet, continually receive jury notices to appear), because the government insists on requiring a physical residence, and claiming you are not a "resident" of the county, no matter where you reside, when you do not have those coveted walls circled around you that gives the required numbers and names of the place you live.  Every last ounce of even the tiniest shred of privacy, destroyed and removed entirely from my life. So, the defining "moments" have become every single moment I continue to draw breath.  

Life becomes habit forming, a habit that cannot be broken.  A habit that requires endless endurance, while at the same time is so completely draining on so many levels.  Life on the streets is its own reality, and when you get caught in that reality.... it is one that takes hold and refuses to let go.

For nearly 2 solid decades, that hold has tightened like a noose around my neck.  And everywhere I have gone for help, only tightens the noose with increasing efficiency.