about me

I've been alive for 38 years, and I dont know shit. I couldn't tell you the first thing about making someone stay, or keeping someone happy. I have one rule in my life, "Everyone leaves". Knowing that rule, is both a good thing and a bad thing. For starters, you know that since that this person that you care about isnt going to be around forever, you appreciate things more. You do more. You want to try to cram every last bit of enjoyment out of the time you do have together. But its exhausting. I get tired of starting anew with people. People that I know are going to eventually break my heart. But it doesnt stop me from trying, from hoping beyond hope that eventually that there will be someone who'll want to hang around. To build something instead of just smashing it all down, taking their ball and going home.

I wonder sometimes if my life is meant to be one of an observer. To bare witness to humanity, to feel things beyond the scope of what a normal person feels. I do things in my life that I don't tell anyone about. Things that I know that if I told people would change how they view me, would make me more vulnerable. People have a way of turning even the good things that you do into something shitty.

Case in point, my mother, while no saint, did things for those less fortunate than us. One of the things that always stood out to me about holidays growing up was that there was always some strange older person that I never met before. And there was good reason for that, they were strangers to her as well. She'd go out and find some elderly person that didnt have a place to go, and invite them over for christmas and thanksgiving dinner. She'd even buy a gift for the person so they didn't feel left out. She may have had her own demons to face, and we may not have had very much money at all, but she gave with her heart. My brother is the same way, as am I.

A week before Christmas after getting off work early, I was on the red line train and there was surprisingly a car with very little people on it. I stepped on and happily grabbed my seat, and sat down with my headphones playing my going home music. Then the most awful smell in the god damned world hit me. It was almost nauseating. It was a homeless man that was in such god damned disrepair that he had shit himself so badly that you could see it on his shoes.

A black woman walked up to this man and berated him, telling him that he should be ashamed of himself, and that he was ruining the train ride for others. Like this guy didnt feel like the dog shit existence of the bottom of everyones shoes already. I stood up and told her to leave him alone. The mans eyes were welled with tears, and it broke my god damned heart. So i asked the man if he was hungry. He said he was. I said, "come on pops, let me buy you something."

We got off the train at wilson, and I told him I was going to buy him some new clothes that we needed to do that before I took him to eat.  I got his sizes, out of him and bought him thrift everything, down to the socks, shoes and underwear.  Took him back over to target and had him strip down everything and have him take a hobo bath in the bathroom as I stood guard.  When he came out it was like a different person.

We went to the corner and I bought him dinner, and asked if he could make it to the YMCA that was close, I had called them and asked if they could save a room for him. He said he could, and I gave him the cash to get there and have a nice out of the elements and a hot shower. He thanked me, and repeatedly told me that I didnt have to do it. But someone should.

I havent told anyone about this. Why? Because I dont want the thanks. I dont want the awwwwww...what a nice guy. I did it because while I dont know what its like to be homeless, I definitely know what its like to feel unwanted by the world, like something easily cast aside. I just wanted the guy to know that not everyone is a monster.