Save Ourselves

Have you ever been alone? Not waiting in the car while your mom is in the bank alone. I mean soul crushing alone. All influences in your life seem to be at odds with you and you seek to escape though the silence in solitude is defeating. 

Take a journey with me while we walk in the path of another. 

Who are you? 

Are you socially awkward due to inexperience and a poor perception of the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of others? Is your home broken? Are your parents divorced, or otherwise in conflict with each other and are therefore over or under compensating their behavior towards you out of their own insecurities or frustrations? Have your parents abandoned you through death, choice, or circumstance leaving you a product of the “system”? Are you the victim of mental, physical, and / or sexual abuse? Has your concept of acceptable, wholesome human interactions been destroyed? Do you experience same-gender attraction? Do you struggle with your own acceptance or the acceptance of others? Are you addicted to drugs, pornography, or other harmful stimuli? Are you depressed, insecure, or paranoid? Are you experiencing compulsive behavior or another mental disorder that you feel powerless to control? Are you “broken”?

These burdens follow you. Your behavior is modified by your perception of yourself and is reflected in your interactions with others. You find every excuse to leave your home. In the woods, at the park, at a friends house, on a bus, or on a train, you yearn to distract yourself. Mischievousness and folly naturally accompany your undisciplined exploration but only leads you into greater dangers. 

Social interactions are filled with confusion, absent of purpose, and consistently provide an awareness of your broken nature as you attempt to define normal. The innate insecurities of adolescence and self-discovery are magnified and compounded in you. Your peers perceive weakness and a lack of self-worth through your silence, poor hygiene, awkwardness, sadness, anger, or fear. In comparing themselves to you, they attempt to establish a quality or correctness to their life or situation. For some, widening this divide brings vain satisfaction as the attempt to suffocate their insecurities by feeding yours. They seek to crush you through ridicule, violence, social or emotional deprivation, or worse. You are abandoned.

Are you comfortable enough with yourself to withstand these assaults and attempt to find healthy relationships with those who are socially and emotionally mature enough to refrain from engaging in these activities? Do you know what a healthy relationship looks like? Feels like? Do you know how to reciprocate in such a relationship and be positive and contributing? 

No, you don’t. You put up walls of anger, humor, sarcasm, cynicism, or apathy in an attempt to mask your “broken parts”. You find other “broken” individuals who reject empathy primarily because they perceive it as a weakness in their emotional immaturity. They lack the experience to know how to respond to empathy in socially acceptable ways. You however reject empathy and joyful expectation because of the accompanying pain and disappointment of your personal narrative. You are withdrawn.

With healthy social and emotional growth abandoned, you seek to fill these basic human needs with corrosive counterfeits. Rebellion, with it’s deceptive sense of autonomy, leads you down forbidden paths of thrill seeking, drug and alcohol abuse, pornography, sexual promiscuity, and / or criminal activity. Substance abuse provides you excuse and masks your broken nature behind the guise of intoxication. You convince yourself that others believe that your faults are due to your substance abuse and is not rooted in your character. Self-gratification successfully masquerades as purpose, fulfillment, and happiness because you have either forgotten or never learned otherwise. You have lost respect for yourself and are therefore incapable of having true respect for others. You become a parasite, ever consuming, never satisfied. Engulfed in self loathing you contemplate suicide as your thoughts and memories mock your pain. You are alone, so very alone.

You become prey to other parasites who identify your weakness and know your capacity to defend is weak. Subconsciously acknowledging the baseness of your situation and with whom you associate, distrust is woven into your character. You can’t trust and therefore cannot be trusted. You are afraid.

Eventually you age out. At the age of 18 you find yourself standing face to face with a society and expectation that is foreign to you. Your rebellion, in conjunction with your broken home and other mental or emotional baggage, leaves you ill-equip to navigate the responsibilities of life. You have not been taught proper hygiene, commitment, responsibility, or acceptable inter-personal communication skills let alone how to find and keep a job. Not having an education, you clean up after people who do. After a few vain attempts at full-time employment, you find yourself without a job and evicted from your apartment. In a matter of minutes, you sum up your life’s accomplishment by identifying the indispensable items that will fit into your backpack. All other worldly possessions abandoned, you face the harsh reality of your situation. For a time, friends and relatives suffer your presence. They let you sleep on their couch, in their spare room, or in their car. Rarely staying more than a couple nights you try to move around and mask your shame. The day comes when you find yourself pretending to pass out on someones couch because you have no where else to go just to hear them talking about how they can get rid of you. You are unwanted.

Always on the move, sleep is elusive, and peace is a dream unattainable in your vigilance. You rest in the woods, propped up against a tree in the rain, eyes swollen begging the sun to rise. You spend a night in jail, comforted by a roof, a bed, and three warm meals which are affectionately referred to as “3 hots and a cot”. You hitchhike from town to town not knowing what to do with yourself and never staying long enough to be an identifiable burden. You rest under a bridge in the snow, or on the side of a hill. You lock yourself in a public bathroom cringing every time someone bangs on the door, occasionally daring to use the hand warmers when the cold becomes unbearable. You endure the pain of impacted wisdom teeth, a cracked molar, and massive cavities. You stay awake overnight petrified because you are stuck at a truck stop in the inner city and can’t find a ride. You rest under a bush only to be ejected by the sprinklers in the early morning hours. You stand in line to receive food you didn’t earn. Some people show you kindness, others do not. Through it all, you are alone.

What do you do? Without a residence, proper hygiene, transportation, references, an education, a clear criminal history, hope, or self-respect you convince yourself it is impossible to find gainful employment. Do you succumb to lawlessness to feed yourself knowing that the result will always end in you being fed, either by your thievery or by the prison system? Do you traffic drugs, or allow yourself to be trafficked for an inflated sense of security, to feel needed, wanted? Do you bare the shame and ridicule of panhandling or bread lines? Do you risk a shelter knowing that many people find it a source to prey? Do you accept your situation and join with those who share your fate or do you avoid those communities out of fear? You are defeated. You are invisible. You are homeless.

Who are you? Are you a product of your environment, of your choices? At what point did your situation become your fault? At what point could you justly declare, “I have brought this upon myself”? At what point does this distinction matter? At what point could you have been helped, preventing this horrific outcome? At what point are you beyond help, incapable of recovery and becoming a contributing member of society? 

What are you? Are you broken beyond repair? Are you humble? Are you teachable? Are you willing to change, pleading for it? Do you know how? 

Homelessness in and of itself is devastating. Limited access to health care in conjunction with a lack of adequate nutrition, sanitation, and hygiene compound the physical strains. Worse yet are the effects on mental health. Homelessness and its associated stigma of depravity erodes hope and self-respect. 

Many live in profound fear. Fear for the future, fear of violence, or fear of finally succumbing to the despair that incessantly plagues them. Living in these conditions is the antithesis of healthy social maturity and may significantly reduces their chance of recovery. 

When a dog is successfully rescued from a life on the streets, it is cared for and prepared in very specific ways. The animal is cleaned, fed, and given a safe, controlled environment. Medical ailments are identified and treated. Physically, they are made whole (as far as possible). This helps them to feel wanted and appreciated. Additionally, it removes any distraction from their physical needs. Social and emotional needs are addressed as the animal may display aggressive, distrusting, or withdrawn behavior. The animal is provided with opportunities to experience wholesome interaction and evaluated for proper rehabilitation and placement. It is taught (or retaught) typical expectations and allowed to experience the satisfaction of compliance and reward. Members of the community then petition the to adopt the animal. The rescue agency evaluates the applications then conducts interviews and home inspections. A family is selected which is then required to formally sign a contract committing to certain standards of care for the animal. After all requirements are met, they are then placed in the loving home. 

Are we no better than dogs? Can we not provide similar care and attention to raise a fellow human being out of the despair and destitution associated with homelessness and extreme poverty? Youth experiencing homelessness are in desperate need to know compassion, self-worth, and a true sense of community. Rescue those willing and able of rescue and in the process rescue ourselves.