You ask the question “Who is this person, living
rough? Who do you think you are, pleading for our sympathy and dollars?” (We at the Night Shelter are asking the people of Dunedin for money to purchase our buildings.)
Well who am I? Sometimes I’m not sure who I am. To
survive my story has changed over the years. Even when and where I was born
gets a bit hazy with the meds my body has been hit with. Childhood! Well some
of that I would rather forget. Not that it was entirely their fault. I guess I
was a bit of a bastard. I thought I was just like everyone else but from the
jeers, teasing and beating maybe I wasn’t. It was my fault I guess. The
teachers tried, but I could not keep up.
It was a fast downhill trip, gathering speed and bumps. I suppose I
wasn’t the only one who breathed a sigh of relief when the classroom door closed behind me for the last time.
A job?- Yes I had a job, but not much of one though.
I didn’t have to read so I could get by until - “ Sorry we don’t need you now. The job has changed.” and the door closed behind me again. I couldn’t find another, What the hell
can I do anyway? The booze made me
feel better. I guess I looked like
a ‘sitting duck’ to the drug dealer but it was something to numb the pain.
My life was mindless drifting ,‘til, great - an open
door! There were others like me to
share my story with, things to do, a meal, some hope. I had found a daytime drop-in centre. I felt better, more
normal, ‘til “Sorry, there’s no more funding.” and the door closed behind me once more.
Shit happens in heaps I reckon. Not long after that,
Mum died. Life hadn’t been much for her either. She’d loved me somehow; she was
my ‘life line’ and at least I had a home to go back to. Eventually they came
and said “Sorry the house is on the market and the door closed behind me again.
Wandering the streets and a mate said “There’s room
on my couch” - well thanks. Here was a roof over my head, and more, drugs and
‘all sorts’ coming and going. “Where’s
the money you owe?” this guy said one day. He had caught up on me. That led to a trip to E.D. At 4 a.m. they kicked me out and I went ‘home’ to be told “You’re
not welcome here.” You
guessed it the door slammed shut and
out into the wet cold streets I went.
Sheltering in a doorway, maybe it was the cold, or
the hunger or tiredness, but it seemed there was a line of people, looking like
a jury, ready to judge me and my future. One looked set to beat me up again.
Was he the guy from standard one? The ‘suit’ said, “Well drugs! What do you
expect!” Was that the dealer or
the lawyer? Another, I couldn’t see her face. Guess she didn’t want to see me
now. Some pretend me and my sort don’t exist. Another muttered, “What’s the
government doing about it anyway? What are social agencies for? Why haven’t
they done something? Get them off the streets.” Life for me is a black hole. What’s the use? Life is crap. There
is no future for the likes of me.
I know I am shit, but nobody really knows how I feel. I have learned to
hide it, or block it out by acting tough.
As the faces faded with daylight I thought, “if only
I could get warm? Breakfast would be nice, somewhere safe, someone to guide me
out of this mess.”
I know I’m not the only one. The others I used to
talk to, they struggle too. Mental
illness, anxiety, depression, addictions, things that others just don’t understand
and can’t cope with. We’ve all had family and friends who have now gone or
given up.
The benefit! Well I’ve always struggled to make it
last till the next one. Every week I say to myself “This week I’ll do better”
and then I stuff it up again.
“Hey, you don’t have to spend the night there.” this
stranger says. He takes a scrap of paper from his pocket and writes the address.
“Be there at 7pm.” The Night
Shelter! The light above the door looked hopeful. The door opens to “Hi mate, come in”. Warmth, the smell of food and a friendly face, was it too
good to be true? Would I be judged good enough, is it safe, would the money run
out here and the door shut again?
------------------------------------
Notes and
reflections on the story…
This is not the story of any particular person, it is
“made up”. But sadly it is a true story.
The story originally was written by my wife Jean when we were mulling
over people’s reactions to those who need the night shelter. I have edited it a little. Jean has
written it out of her experiences of running a Friday Night Drop-in centre at
our last Church for eighteen years.
We have also had forty years of encountering “street people” and
reaching out to them in various ways. Jean did the bulk of the food preparation
for our drop-in centre and was like a surrogate mother for the people who
came. She would take around plates
of food at different times during the night and engage most in some sort of
conversation. So the story is typical of the things that have happened to people
often referred to as “street people”. As I read it to edit it, various people
came to mind that I knew had experienced these realities. I knew the people that Jean had in mind
and the story is not over dramatic or false. It is a very abbreviated and simplistic
story. Most stories of decline happen because of a complex web of interactions,
failings and rejections. The theme is that experiences of “closing doors”, real
and metaphorical, finally leads to people being imprisoned by their own sense
of inadequacy and a real loss of hope.
Disjointed
… The story is a bit disjointed and had my grammar checker
screaming on my computer. I edited out a bit of its disjointedness but then it
lost some of its authenticity. When you converse with many of these people their
conversation is disjointed. They
speak often in blurted out short sentences or phrases and you have to make the
connections. Often too their voice dies away, it is like they are scared of the
sound of their own voice.
Sometimes I am sure they are uncertain of my reaction so they just “dip
their toes” in to see if I am accepting or interested in their story. I wonder how many negative reactions
have caused them to lose confidence?
Loss of
confidence and hope … I hear people saying that these
people do not help themselves, and I often agree. But as I have mixed with them over the years, in spite of
bravado, aggression and “know-all” behaviour, I have come to see that it is a
real loss of confidence and a deep sense of hopelessness that keeps them down
at the bottom of the heap. I recall taking one with me to Habitat for Humanity.
I would coax him into doing stuff, simple stuff like drilling a hole. After all sorts of bravado and excuses
to avoid doing it, he would say, “I can’t do that. I’m crap.” I discovered again and again, he was
simply scared to try. He did have
the skills, but any self-esteem had long been knocked out of him. That is a consistent theme among these
people, hidden often by a tough demeanor.
The aggression we sometimes experienced in our drop-in centre was often
like that of a wounded, cornered animal struggling to cope, fluffing up their
fur to scare others off. And they
often have no hope. When I lay in bed at night I often think of something good,
something positive I can look back on or look forward to. Something I can
complete. Maybe a run or walk I want to do. Maybe a task I am looking forward
to, or one I have done well. But in the darkness these people have nothing positive to reflect on nor to
look forward to. When you have nothing to do and little confidence to do
anything, life is a struggle just to get through each day. There do not seem to be any positives
to hold in mind. It is then that smoking, drinking, marijuana or legal highs
look attractive. What else is there?
Those that
change… I have seen some change. Change, when it happens, happens in small steps.
Friendship…
I once sat on a fence outside the Church beside a glue
sniffer. As I sat with him the people going past would stare at us. They did
not have to say anything, just their looks said, “You are scum!” These people live with that every day.
We had one very intelligent drop-in centre guest who had mental health and
socialization problems. He came into the drop-in once and declared, “There are
two “normals” looking for you down stairs.” (Indeed two of my friends had come looking for me.) That is what these folk live with. They
feel abnormal. To change or even just to cope, they need to be loved and
accepted by “normals”. Just in small every day conversation it can make a
difference. Even if they cannot change, you are doing a great service if you
treat them as normal. It helps
them feel better about themselves. I had one man out of the blue in the street say
to me, “Thank you. I just want to tell you - thank you.” “Why?” I asked, “You always talk to me
in the street. You say my name. There’s people in my Church who won’t do that,
they look away, they pretend I am not here.”
Introduce small steps… There was a
young man who stopped and talked when we slept rough in the centre of town. He
talked of running the three peaks race, a very high achievement indeed. He has
represented NZ in the “Homeless Football World cup.” When he first came to our drop-in centre he was a heavy
drinker, argumentative and in a mess. Two years after my first introduction to
him he rang me up and confessed over the phone that a year or so before he had
stolen the Church vacuum cleaner. Now he is a changed man. It has taken many
people who have been his friend, and many small steps but he is on a positive
journey. I played table tennis with him. I suggested the football and joined
him in that. I talked about my running and said that maybe he could do it. But
others have been there in his life introducing small steps. He has had the
friendship and then courage to take those small steps and he is a very
different man. The friendship
tells him he is worth something. The small steps give him something he can look
forward to.
The Night
Shelter? What part does the Night Shelter play in this? It is
a small way of saying, “You matter!”
These folk often live on the edge and can easily run out of options and
end up homeless. They have this
feeling that society spits them out the back end and they do not matter. In
some way the night shelter says, “There are some who care.” I think that can
make a big difference, even for those who never need it. They know that there
are people who care enough to have it available. It is a worthwhile venture.
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