Hard-Won Wisdom from 12 Years on the Streets
Life is a journey of becoming
As a successful business owner in 1980’s New York, Lee Stringer asked himself: “Is this it?”
That’s when his descent into homelessness began. He ended up living on the streets for 12 years.
Before he lost everything, Stringer had all the trappings of success. He’d achieved the title of Marketing Manager. He had his own office. He wore expensive suits.
Inside, he felt empty.
He Lived a Life of Quiet Desperation
“I could see this was supposed to be the arrive-all and end-all of existence,” Stringer reflects on his life before homelessness. He confesses: “I was living a life of quiet desperation.”
Amidst this quiet desperation, tragedy struck. A heart attack took the life of Stringer’s business partner. Then his father passed away. Shortly afterward, his brother died too.
“I was in depression,” Stringer says. He numbed his feelings. His life became work hard — play hard with plenty of late nights at the cocktail bar. When alcohol stopped masking the pain, he turned to cocaine. It was a revelation:
“With a line of cocaine, suddenly the whole of the 80’s made sense to me. I was down for the whole mad, surface, acquisitive party of it all, running around, splashing money, hungering after things.”
Crack Cocaine Plunged Him Deep Into Addiction
Stringer describes the euphoria he felt the first time he tried crack cocaine as “like love, orgasm, winning the lottery, omnipotence, and Christmas morning all wrapped into one.” He immediately wanted more.
He burned through everything he owned to feed his addiction. This ended in an 8-month crack binge. He stopped showing up at work and ceased paying rent on his apartment.
He knew what was coming, and it terrified him.
He Lost Everything
“When I passed homeless people at that time, my biggest fear was that happening to me,” Stringer says.
This lurking terror of homelessness failed to scare him away from substance misuse. He lost his job. He got evicted from his apartment. His greatest fear came to pass.
Stringer was homeless.
That’s When He Stopped Pretending
He’d expected to feel sheer panic. That’s not what happened. Stringer felt relieved. He no longer had to pretend. He no longer had to try and fit in. He could just be himself.
Stringer realized: “I’m going to have to discover some other way to live, some other relationship to life.”
Becoming homeless allowed him to see that his identity was bigger than his job role, his car, or the clothes that he wore. He was forced to confront the question “who is Lee?” and find out who he really was.
He also saw the world around him in a different light. He reflected:
“We have very busy lives, we run past from here to there, and we don’t see much of the in-between. This ‘smell-the-roses’ thing. One of the advantages of having tumbled to the street was I began to see some of the in-between stuff. I began to notice things more.”
At this time, he was still in the throes of addiction.
He ended up living on the streets for 12 years. To get through the winters, he sheltered in a gap beneath the platform at Grand Central Station.
Almost by Accident, He Came Across a Gift that Saved Him
One day Stringer sat in his hideout beneath Grand Central. He had no money, and no energy to find any.
More than anything, he wanted a fix. He decided to distract himself from the cravings. He picked up a pencil he carried around in his pocket. Then he began writing about a friend who was deathly ill.
As he wrote, he felt a strange sensation:
“This thing happened… it’s like you’re taking dictation. I mean the words are just coming out and you’ve totally surprised yourself. It was like a whole different high. It was like sitting shoulder to shoulder with God. It’s an incredible feeling.”
A whole article poured out of him.
Stringer submitted the piece to the New York newspaper Street News, which published the article.
In writing about his life, Stringer found something bigger than himself. He loved creating and he wanted more of it.
He Integrated the Experience on the Streets into His Life Story
“A lot of people when I tell them I’ve been on the street for 12 years see that exclusively as a tragedy. But to the extent that it is, that’s not all that it is. I was not only a victim. For me it was a journey, at the end of which were was really something for me.” — Lee Stringer
Street News commissioned Stringer to write other articles, and he eventually became editor of the paper.
Living on the street, hitting rock bottom, led Stringer to his creative gifts.
Writing His Story, He Found a New Beginning
Living through his pain, and telling his story, Lee Stringer found meaning in his life:
“Those who’ve not also failed, those who’ve not also been disappointed and gone through hardships have not lived a full life. Because those are the things that grow you. At the end of those things, there’s always something for you.”
Writing saved Stringer. It became his path out of addiction. It gave him a reason to get clean.
When he decided to check-in for rehab, he was determined to succeed. Writing gave him a buzz that he wanted to keep coming back to.
His Journey Began with a Question and Ended with a Purpose
Lee Stringer’s journey into homelessness began with the question “is this it?” It ended when he found his purpose.
For Stringer, the purpose of life is becoming. He says:
“We always wonder what’s life about, why we’re here and all that, and my own personal conclusion so far is that we’re here to become. To start as something and become something.”
Stringer found who he was to become by picking up a pencil and telling his story.
The Hard-Won Wisdom of Lee Stringer
Here’s the wisdom of Lee Stringer from 12 years living on the streets of New York:
- See the in-between stuff. Smell the roses. Notice things more.
- Writing is a whole different high, like sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with God.
- You get to define your story and what it means — not other people.
- Failure and disappointment are the things that grow you.
- Life is about becoming — you start as one thing, and become another.
Sources
- Lee Stringer, Grand Central Winter: Stories from the Street (Washington Square Press, 1998)
- Lee Stringer’s Book Talk (YouTube, 2009)
- BBC World Service, The Paper that Helped the Homeless (BBC, 2021)