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.

Living in Limbo....

Living in Limbo….

Life was not meant to be lived on the streets, on the sidelines as a bystander…. It was not meant to be drudgery, something to avoid and be disheartened with. But hope no longer resides on my heart, faith nonexistent….Love, have no idea what that even is. Maybe it's the disgust that comes across people’s faces when my circumstances or my very presence, really, become known, or perhaps it’s on the rude remarks and cruel comments directed at me every moment of the day, wherever people are present, or in the mockery of my movements, proceeded and then followed by laughter as people find the way I move hilarious as hell. Laughing out loud, or pretending to cough while trying not to choke from laughing while making fun of me…. Is that what love is??? I’ve come to truly dread being anywhere where people are anymore. I was born with a life sentence, given before I was even present in life, present before birth, and a lifetime physical sentence through the actions of others resulting in the way I move, or how I breathe. But the hardest to deal with are the rude ignorant remarks and cruel actions and behaviours of others at my expense. Being on the receiving end of the worst of humanity, makes me truly dread and come to hate having to go or be where anyone is. I no longer try reaching out to connect with others, what is the point?? When you are not seen for who you are, but rather how you look, the way you move (or don't, as the case may be), or judged by your circumstance.... but not the person you are. Not in how your heart may beat, what brings excitement to your eyes.... to your life. Not in your beliefs, not in your friendship, not in causes that mean something to you, not your skills, your humanity....nothing of substance. The only thing people choose to see is how you move and what your circumstance is, nothing more. You are not viewed or treated as a living, feeling being, but well below that of a human being.

I used to really love giving to others. Because I wanted to and it made me feel good, that is until my gifts were rejected, refused, and fully discarded because of my circumstance. And the ones I have given gifts to that they refused demanded to know "Where did you get this?", "How did you come by this?", "I can't take anything from you?". "You're nothing but a passenger, and I don't associate with passengers." Nothing I have given has been accepted, no matter what I have given.... not even my friendship has been welcome or accepted....just thrown in the trash. So I no longer try connecting with others.

Keeping to myself, more and more often. And then become immersed in Nature and her Beautiful gifts all around. Her beautiful feathered, furry, and winged creatures are my confidants, in the truest sense. They keep me going when life is too raw and ugly to endure, which is more often than not the case. Dragonflies and hummingbirds bring magic to my days.... alighting on me, time and again. Hummingbirds always draw my attention, and when they are really wanting to connect, they come over and hover just above my head when I am either meditating, reading and or writing, they wait for me to acknowledge the motor sound of their wings, and then when I look up to see them, they lower to face me directly, eye to eye. Once they have my attention, that is the time they take to rest on my knee, or the back of a hand..... or the closest branch near me, and begin their songs. It lifts my heart like nothing else. And when Dragonflies want my attention, they fly around my head, zipping past my vision, until I follow them with my eyes.... then alighting on my knee or forearm.  Butterflies landing on the tip of my nose, or sitting lightly on my finger-- The magic never fades, no matter how many times it occurs. But it is breathtaking every time and lets me know my presence matters, at least to a select few, if not actual people. Though, their friendship is what pulls me through, and means the world to me.

Animals and nature have always accepted me, welcomed me into their space..... always. Rarely, if ever, has that happened with people. What does this say about me?? But man's best friend has never been man..... but animal, and more precisely, dogs. Because animals see and feel the real person, they don't care what you do, where you live, how you move..... they accept you as you are. There is no pretense, there are no masks that have to be worn..... just being you. Perhaps that is why the majority of people who criticize my very presence, and insist on their being "so much help" available to people on the streets (which is an erroneous assumption that is not the least bit true or accurate when you don't fit the "part") that I must be out here by choice, would never be able to last a single night on the streets, much less the nearly 2 solid decades I have been forced to. Animals scatter in their presence, wanting nothing to do with them. I have survived out here for so long because of the connections I have with animals, something I have never had with people. People don't accept you for who you are, and they never will. With people, you always have to wear facades and masks that are not real in order to be "accepted", but that is not acceptance. And when you don't move in a predictable and acceptable manner, their cruelty knows no end. People can learn so much from animals in how to treat each other, but their greatest teachers are ignored or hunted for sport. That is why animals, for the most part, do not generally hang around people. They know when people mean harm and when they do not.

I didn't choose this life that I was sentenced to, nor the harsh treatment from humanity.... just for being who I am and moving in a way they don't like, and forced into a circumstance not of my choosing, while getting endless doors slammed in my face from places that are supposed to offer help and assistance. So why do people choose to make my life a nightmare that I cannot wake from??? Does tearing someone else to shreds make them feel better about who they are???? When all they are really doing is putting themselves in a much lower light that is not at all flattering. Whatever happened to the Golden Rule....Do Unto Others As You Would Have Others Do Unto You.