Sometimes I get people asking me if it was hard struggling with homelessness for so many years through my adolescence, and all I can tell them is it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I don't think I have the audacity to say I was stricken with a sense of helplessness to the extent that many others are left to feel.
I didn't have a home, yes. I didn't have a bed, I didn't always have someplace to lay my head.
But I had hope. I had my health, I had my dignity, and I had friends. I wasn't raped on the streets like many others, I wasn't sick and disabled, I wasn't mugged, I wasn't stripped of my sense of self worth, I was lucky.
I was followed, and I went hungry, I had my personals with me, and I was able to get out of sticky situations. I felt my dignity slip away a bit, I do have to admit that I was willing to do anything for something to eat. Even dirt looked nice. I felt real hunger and I would have probably slept with strangers if it meant I had someplace to sleep. I always say the only thing separating the "sleazy" hookers on University, and I, are the opportunities were ran into or lack there of, and the fact that I was not in the wrong place at the wrong time being given what I thought was the right choices.
I'm happy I made it somewhat out without doing any real damage, other than committing to a relationship I didn't want because he fed and sheltered me. I wasn't arrested for stealing, I wasn't hooked on drugs while looking for a coping mechanism, and I had friends and some family who didn't mind letting me set my head down at their house for a while. I wasn't a statistic, I wasn't a number, I was doing alright and I tasted my first ounce of real life, a bitter and lonely one.
I try not to let what has happened to me over the years turn me into someone who is prude, spiteful, vindictive, manipulative and bitter. I say spiteful and vindictive to hurt the ones who said they'd always be there, but weren't; and bitter to those who try and speak to me not but I can't stomach up enough of a voice to yell, or bare to look them in the eye without feeling the hurt creep within me and out my pores. I can be better than this, I can be better than a spiteful prude. I want to be exactly how I deserve to be, happy.
