No one sees you on the first day. You’re just another person on the bus, or walking by on the street. However, homelessness is in the eyes, written all over the face, but few of us are trained to see it. I’ve seen it before, reflected in the lenses I used to hide. Time slows down as the temperature drops, and this was one of the slowest nights on record.
In the coldness of night, movement is your only friend. Everything else freezes, along with regret. It’s just as well, because you can’t use it anyway. What remained of my fear hadn’t fully healed by then and what had didn’t matter. I was trained for that, to stay alive, no matter the circumstance or the enemy, even me. It was never intended for that, but it had to do.
It’s surprisingly easy to get lost in a familiar place. When you’re used to being invisible, you don’t always see what you should. There’s a voice in the wind that I never before heard. It doesn’t speak in tones that are easily recognizable. It replaces the thoughts in head once your eyes begin to burn and your lips start to tingle. If you do listen closely enough it will change your mind about all you believed to be true.
The first best thing I can do is learn to forgive. It would be especially true, if I could do it for the unforgivable. There’s no such thing on the street late at night. Everyone and thing is in some way redeemable to someone. The problem however, is that we’ve all be made to believe that we deserved to be asked for things we should rightfully give away.
The night began with fast food. It was the longest it had ever taken me to eat a burger and fries. I did it quietly in the corner away from everyone. I sat alone attempting to prepare myself for the battle ahead. That time was not well spent. Survival is a response mechanism. The idea that you can plan to survive is absurd. It isn’t until you leave the warmth of the building and enter the fourth mile or second hour that it hits you. You discover that you are either succeeding or not. It’s the moment when you can actual feel that the difference between tonight and tomorrow is your next step. You can’t close your eyes at night. When near or below zero sleeping is death.
There is a point when the skin is too cold to touch anything, including God. At that moment you don’t pray because you’re sure no one is listening and you don’t cry either because your own tears get cold enough to hurt.
Shelter is such a basic thing. So, basic that it is very easily taken for granted. There were brief moments of rest to be found in portable toilets. They are places far enough out of the way to serve their purpose. They do nothing about the cold or even the wind but what they do is hide you from the occasional eyes in the night. Eyes that aren’t concerned about the place you used to call home, but your intentions towards them. They are the ones who are able to see victims in the mirror.
There were drug stores, diners, department stores, hospitals and even bars that lit the way, but they weren’t places of refuge as much as they were reminders of what I had become. The last thing I could tolerate was hearing, “can I help you?”, and the second to last, my own voice saying, “no”. At four in the morning, no one wants to help you and no is a lie. They are telling you that you no longer belong. More important than any of that was the need not to be labeled or marked in some way that closed you off to places of last resort, at least not on the first day.
The sun rose eventually and I could no longer hide. Blending in with the commuters isn’t so easy for the tired with nowhere to go. When the buses started running, there would be a place to warm and sleep. Day one ended as it began, looking into a window at a man I no longer recognized.
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