“I was that guy yelling at you on the street for no reason, the one the police knew by name. I’m sorry about that. I really am. That’s not the person I wanted to be—but there was no telling me that. My mother tried. My sister tried to tell me. I wouldn’t listen to anybody. I thought everybody was trying to poison me with their words. When I look back now about what I was thinking then, things just didn’t make sense inside me, but you could not tell me that.
I was homeless; it came to that. I’m not ashamed to say it now. Here’s one thing about being in that situation that I bet no one has said to you: I knew that I smelled bad and that I was dirty. I was so dirty even to me. I couldn’t stand it. But you have to stand it, so you just kind of push yourself deeper into yourself, far away from the stink and the bugs and all the filthy mess of living feet- level, with the gum wrapper you dropped without knowing it. That was me down there, against the building, looking at the underside of your shoes as you walked by me.
I did something important last night. I was asked to talk about the Carson Center and how the Circle of Friends and all their services helped me turn things around in my life. I was invited to a restaurant to talk, and it turned out that it was the very same restaurant where I used to wash dishes years ago. But here’s the thing: the time I was washing dishes at this restaurant was the very same time that things had started going very wrong. In fact, I had quit my dishwashing job at this restaurant, storming right out of the kitchen, yelling into the dining room—through the very same swinging doors they sat me down in front of last night to talk to people about how I had changed. Leaving the dishwashing job years back was the last step before losing my apartment and becoming homeless. It was my fault, not the restaurant’s. I had stopped taking my medication.
There I was, years later, back in the same restaurant, being asked to talk about how Carson had helped me change. I was facing those same swinging doors. Isn’t that something? I kept looking at those doors when I was telling the group how a guy from Carson’s Circle of Friends kept coming by my street corner and inviting me in. I talked about how I tried his group and I left it, but then the Carson people asked me to come back and I did–I tried again and it stuck. Carson’s doors were never locking me out.
I did what I needed to do. It was hard, but not as hard as living the way I was living. Medications have side effects that I don’t like, but I can’t help it if I was born with an imbalance. I need the medicine to stay balanced. I have another job now. I organize things in an animal shelter. I love being with the animals. And I have my own apartment. I had my sister over for lunch that I made for her. I look good, too. Smell pretty darn good. I get that soap that smells like orange flowers. Holy cow, you’d think you could practically eat that stuff it smells so good. Now I help other friends like me in Carson’s Clubhouse program. I can tell when someone is stuck way inside there, the way I used to be. I will just sit right down next to them and tell them that together we can make it back.”
By JAC Patrissi
