Life on the Streets... A New Way of Living
The way you live and how and in what capacity life is lived changes
completely when you are forced to live on the street. How you eat, bathe,
sleep... everything, is different. And you have to learn how to live without being
allowed to actually live. Your life no longer resembles life. You have to
re-learn how to live on every level. You have to learn a whole
new way of life and how to live. Everything about your life
changes and in all you do.
Sleep being continually disturbed by the super blinding white lights that
law enforcement shines and direct right in your face, directly in the eyes.
Being so cruelly and rudely awakened throughout the night for just
being present. It's hard enough getting any rest being on the
streets, and then disturbed further by the lights. Sleep deprivation
causes excessive health issues, and then having your vision damaged
from having your eyes blasted with super bright white glaring light
for decades has not only caused visual disturbances,
but has caused permanent damage to my vision.
Healing from anything takes much longer, when or if it happens
at all, because you have no place to just BE, where your body is
allowed the time and space to heal. Your body cannot and
does not receive the rest and nutrition it needs to be healthy.
You find yourself running on Fumes... that stretches into
DECADES. Eating is very sporadic, at best, non-existent,
at worst. Life on the streets is unsustainable to Health and
Wellbeing. And the fact that those of us forced to live on the
streets are exposed to absolutely Everything, our bodies need
the defenses up strong, but when your body is missing the key
ingredients it needs to Function properly and fight off
all the viruses and bad bacteria all around, it takes an
excessively hard toll on your entire being. Because
Survival is the gear your body lives in, every
moment of the day and all through the night.
Life on the streets is nothing at all compared to life as most people
experience it. There is nothing similar, nothing familiar, nothing comfortable.
It's like living and being on an Alien planet, everything is Foreign and
you have to learn how to live in a completely different capacity,
in a strange, inhospitable environment. Life on the streets
is an entirely new way of living, which isn't living
in any sense of the word, but rather barely existing
around the periphery of Life...
of Humanity.
There
is no direction or path to follow. The rules change continuously
without warning, and each day and night are at once the same and
completely different. Never knowing what to expect or what will happen.
We are the shadowy figures, that have turned into Living Statutes and Icons...
The protection of a Home is no longer part of life, your life, when you
live on the streets. Privacy is completely erased from your life in every regard.
Becoming the most watched Movie showing at the Public's Cinema,
where admission to the Public is always Free, at our expense. Your life is
stripped bare, leaving you fully exposed and in the open in ways you could
never imagine. Living completely Raw... And learning the Alien
language of living on the streets.
Living on the streets you find you are no longer considered a living,
feeling Human Being, but rather seen, and more often than not treated,
like trash, debris and sewage remnants... And Life no longer has the
feeling of Life. Life becomes MOOT, and every moment turns into Survival,
instead of Planning and Scheduling, you find yourself searching
for safety, searching for food, searching for help, searching
for protection and a safe place to just BE. A place to Rest, a
place to Heal, a place to be able to LIVE LIFE.
Days lose meaning, Life has no purpose, no direction, no Value...
Every day starts to feel just like the ones before it, and before that,
and before that. Life takes on an immediacy that it never had before.
Always present and always on guard, every moment of the day and
all through the night. You become witness to what no one should.
You see things, experience things that are not meant to be seen,
experienced and witnessed yet becomes common place.
Witnessing and experiencing “Life” on every level,
The cruel undersides of Humanity...
the Needs, the Desperation, the Anger, the Violence,
the Mentally Unbalanced and highly Unstable.
You learn to see without seeing... you learn to hear without hearing.
Because there is no one around to help. Protection is only
afforded to those who have the luxury of a Real home.
You learn to stop reaching out. You learn to stop caring.
