Homelessness

On the streets of downtown San Francisco, mostly men wrapped themselves in tattered coats and blankets, and sleep on collapsed cardboard boxes—a cold, hard sleep. They wrapped themselves so tightly, all dreams seemed tucked inside their empty pockets.

I stepped over the puddles of their urine, ignored the undeniable smell of their humanity, discarded, too disheartening to acknowledge. These men, mostly men, lacked a house. I cannot call them homeless.

What is home? Is it the place where we keep our stuff? Is it the place where I press my head to pillow and experience the night’s restless “out of body” dream life? Is it where my parents live?

I am homeless.

My childhood home, where my parents still live, does not feel like “home” anymore. I go back, but I feel the tensions beneath the surface. Holidays are difficult. My parents, perhaps, wanting to recapture the innocence of that space before they lost a son and felt their daughter slip from their hands—or maybe fists, confess to a deep sadness that I do not stay at their house, do not sleep in my old bed, do not retread the old, creaky memories of a home broken and dilapidated by grievances, loss, and intolerance. The wooden floors were not built for such burdens that we carry now. I am not the daughter they hoped for—no going back can erase the years of emails and deep sighs and regret. I am not the person I thought I’d be when I grew up. They are not the parents I thought they would be when I grew up. We disappoint each other. Home is not home anymore.

The apartment where I live and work is not my home. This is where I live. I keep things packed up in boxes, a sleight of hand meant to trick my heart into believing that a home might still be found.

I do not know where home is or what it feels like. Sometimes, when I am with someone, my heart swells, and I think, is this love, or does that tickle of warmth to my cold heart deceive me?

I come from pilgrims. The first pilgrim child born in the New World was Peregrine White. My family claims to share his blood. Perhaps this is why I have moved every two years for the last eight years. It is simply not in my DNA to be “at home” anywhere—at least for long.

I thought I had a home once. The time I spent in Findlay, Ohio in a small house on a modest street felt as much like home as anything ever has. Maybe “home” cannot be sustained.

We define home with words like belong, harmony, warmth, safety, comfort, love, sweetness, the place where we keep our hearts…

I am homeless.

The men on the streets of San Francisco would wake and begin a day of walking, wandering, asking the tourists and passersby for change or cigarettes. Maybe they would get enough money and goodwill to survive another day. I admire their unbreakable will to survive. Life may be bleak, but they will tenaciously wake each morning. I have a brother who could not do that. There are few people I respect as much as those who seemingly have little to live for, who could lay down on those streets and fade into the warm embrace of Death, but, world, Fate, maybe even God, be damned, those men rise from those spots each morning, and they will survive another day. Is this the audacity of hope?

Maybe I, too, beg for change—not coins, not anyone’s spare change—but a place to change my perception of home. Is it something in the future?

I do not believe I have had a home now for several years. And, yet, I am homesick for a place that no longer exists. I cannot go back. The emotional space within me—which might be home—has been broken.

I am thankful for my apartment, for the bed where I sleep. Anyone of us could so easily find ourselves without these walls to keep us safe and warm.

As I sit here, I wonder if those men, mostly men, in San Francisco were as homeless as I feel.

Somehow, though they begged me for food and change, I feel as though I might be the one who received something from them that I never realized I was asking for.