Homelessness and the Holidays Are Some Of The Hardest Days.
100 For Christmas Dinner
I am lucky, I never spent Christmas living rough. Easter was bad enough.
As everyone gears up for whatever festive season that has come, the contrast and tough parts of your life are highlighted when you are homeless. It feels like a weight has come over the world and a depression seeps into you from the very air you breathe.
I recall an Easter weekend approaching when I was living rough. I had been alternating couch hopping between a few people's places I had met. Other nights were spent finding a warm corner outside, near a vent, to hide from the world. The literature calls it episodically homeless. I called it shit. It would get worse.
I had caught a bus from somewhere to somewhere at the end of everyone's workday. People were happily chatting about the extra days off and Easter weekend.
Sitting there and listening to the people around me talk about their upcoming weekend became this slow-motion hell that pulled humanity from my soul. The talk of food, the talk of family, and of getting together became reminders of how unloved I was.
I don't know why I did not just get off. I imagine it was because I would scrounge for a transfer pass someone has dropped and ride the bus to the end to stay warm — not easy to get off. Maybe it was because at times I just wanted to remind myself how pathetic and useless I was.
Happy Easter! Everyone!
I can’t imagine what it would have been like at Christmas. The holiday of holidays. All the shopping, the excess, the songs of joy and happiness. AHHH!
Poverty in a world with so much is the shame of humanity.
I have come to understand that there are different faces of poverty. It is easiest to see and measure economic poverty, however, it is the social poverty and emotional poverty that hits so hard.
I have had times when I have had so little economically, however, surrounded by friends, and people that love me, I never felt poor. Those were wonderful times.
In homelessness, it is the alone, the self-worth, and the feeling of being garbage that no one loves, the social and emotional poverty, that hits the hardest.
How should you feel?
I am not suggesting that any of the joy and excitement for a holiday anyone feels should not be embraced fully. I think it should be cherished and felt in all its greatness.
In feeling everything, I think it is being mindful of the experience and going all the way through it that should be part of a good holiday. It is more than gratitude, it is the feeling of those moments that should seep deep into your spirit, it should fill your eyes with beauty and show to all you love.
Understanding the contrast with others less fortunate should humble you to feel the beauty and richness of these moments.
Maybe it will find your appreciation and kindness flowing out to others over the holiday seasons. If you can give, please do, if you have a smile and kindness for someone less fortunate — those gifts of humanity are often more important than anything you can give.
Alone at Christmas with a 100.
I will spend another Christmas season and day alone. The kids will reach out and we will chat. Friends will check in and have invited me for dinner. However, all of them have their lives and it is their time.
The days of my family have passed, any extended family has passed into the next life. I stay to remember the simple and beautiful times.
I lack for little and live in so much abundance. The gift of being held by the person that loves me is not mine to have.
However, I will not be alone for dinner. In the city where I once slept hidden on a street, there is an organization that serves Christmas dinner to the homeless. Every year I have been able, 100 more are fed Christmas dinner.
Every year I can, even though hundreds of miles away, I have dinner with my 100.