Overpass Living

Overpass Lives...

Life on the Streets

Mud Embankments, weather in all extreme, gorging 
insects, hunger...These are just a few of things that life turns 
into when you are forced to live, or rather merely exist, on the 
outer outskirts of life itself. Living in a Subculture of 
existence. Into a Dimension all its own.

Survival mode becomes the ever-present setting of all you 
do. It becomes the Default setting. A setting that you 
cannot turn off. Life has never come easily to me. 
 I have never mastered the cadence or nuances, aside from 
that of Nature. Life remains elusive and out of reach. 
A life of Influence, of Impact, of Meaning, of Purpose... 
a Life that Matters, in the truest sense, happen 
only in Dreams, if even then.

Labels and erroneous assumptions mark your passing

just for being in a circumstance not of your choosing.

Judged immediately for just being present. Being assigned

a classification solely based on your circumstance,

put into a specific character form in a role that has been...

and continues to be, grossly ill-fitted and ill-fitting.

Cast into a role that was never meant to be.

But one that I have been forced into.

Forced and boxed into a Stereotype of

Characterization. And into a Journey through

the bowels of hell....A Journey I never wanted to take.

That is what life on the streets is like.

And living on the streets, people believe that you

are now the repository for all their castoffs and

discards they are looking to relieve themselves of,

that have long since lost there usefulness. We are not

the drop off stations for their unwanted junk. But

People come to the conclusion that once we are living

without a home, that gives them instant permission for us

to immediately become there dumping ground repository 
station for all their unwelcome, unwanted

junk, trash and debris. They think and believe that

just because our circumstances have changed,

that we are there just for them to unload

everything on us, Burdening us with their trash.

The Stereotypical version of the Homeless is rarely the

ACTUAL version of what being Homeless truly is.

Over-passed, Overlooked....but the depiction of what a

Homeless person is supposed to be like is all wrong, and

mis-counted when they do their “Census” surveys,

because we do not look the part, so we are egregiously

under-counted, again and again. But the Services in

place are not for the people living on the streets, it is to

cover the overhead, the payroll, and reams of paper for

the forms for all these agencies purported to be there to

help us, when those of us outside are not the ones who

benefit from the funding these places receive. It is the

PROGRAMS who benefit at our expense.

So nature continues to embrace me when Life has all but

forgotten all about me. Animals, my trusted friends

and deepest confidants, share my days and nights.

Embracing me in a way people, and LIFE, never has.

Listening to Nature and her Orchestra nourishes

my heart, while filling an emptiness I didn't

realize was even there.

Ever forget where you left something; keys, phone, coffee...

or forgot what something feels like; the texture of grass,

fresh fruit, a shower or a bed? I can no longer recall or remember

what a hot shower feels like, or what any shower feels like,

or what it feels like to clean up in anything but icy

cold water, regardless of the temperature, or

what it feels like to sleep in bed, undisturbed.

Likely lose the sense of what it is like to be a living,

breathing human being, as the longer I am forced to the

edges of the merest existence, the sentience part of my being is

loosening its grip, lessening more and more, minute by minute,

draining the very life out of me, going from a living, feeling,

breathing being to a dry, desert lanscape of existence.