New Year's 2025

New Year’s 2025

A New Hope…

A new year unfolding right in front of me. A new year

filled with hope. Something I haven’t experienced

for so long I know not where to begin to place it.

Being forced to live on the streets for nearly a

Quarter of a Century has left an Indelible mark on

every facet of my life and all through my body.

Finding myself living in Gratitude for seeing

colors and beauty all around. For having a solid,

safe roof over my head at the start of a New Year,

instead of being outside. It is a very new, very

different, very beautiful way to live.

Grateful to have a bathroom to use, and a bed

to lay on. Birds right outside my window, their

songs, a continual melody to my heart.

I was on the streets for so long, there was no

differentiating me from the streets, where I

began and where the streets ended, where the

streets started and I ended… it was so intricately

woven into the fabric of my very essence. I

could not tell one from another.

Even months after finally getting off the streets,

I cannot let go of the streets. It remains in all I do,

in how I respond, and in the essence of me. I am still

caring for the elderly gentleman whose son gave me

the step up and the hand up, not a handout, to get

off the streets that I have needed for this entire

century, though, certainly not in the way I

hoped for, but a step-up, nonetheless,

that lifted me from the streets.

But it was a path off the streets, at least for the

time being. I cannot say how long I will be here.

Paul’s dad has had to keep returning to the hospital,

then to their rehab. He will be 89 years of age this

year…. He has long since outlived his body in every

way. With him constantly falling and unwilling

or unable to use his weight to stand, he goes back

to rehab, hoping to gain the needed strength to

be at this house and at least be able to get up

and use the bathroom on his own, which is

something he is having more and

more difficulty with.

As he returns back to the house, Paul will give

his dad a few days, and if his dad can manage getting

up and using the bathroom on his own, he will be able

to stay. But if he cannot use it on his own, Paul will

be placing him in a nursing home. I do not know

where that leaves me, but for now, Paul is

keeping me on to take care of Abby, his

mixed breed dog, and to keep his home kept.

It puts my residency in a Limbo I am not at all

comfortable with. It literally hangs in the balance

of Paul’s decision, which affects more than just

his dad. I absolutely dread having to go back to

the streets, but with the limited income I receive,

that leaves little option for much else, but

doesn’t make it any easier having

to face the streets once again.

I am trying to stay positive, hope for the best.

A different start to this New Year,

to be sure. And perhaps I can finally put the

Streets behind me, though the streets remain so

deeply infused into every pore of my essence…

it will never fully and entirely be behind me.

A New Year filled with the promise of a New Start.