The Things To Expect While Coming To A Homeless Shelter

No Rest For The Wicked, and Starved:

When I came back half covering the tears that could produce, I fought that feeling until it hurt.  My head hurt; my body aches, and my emotional situation stampedes my attempt at finding a place in my own mind where I can feel like I can be myself.  The fact is that you can't be yourself when you're living in the squalor of a homeless situation.  The dungeon smells that come from being here for two minutes makes me sick to my stomach at how hard it is to live here.  It smells like men's old sweaty wet balls.  You cannot get away from the scent that it produces to be in this place, and nevertheless fear when you're ever going to live a "normal" life outside of this dungeon hell that it is.  You go to the bathroom and stare at the wall, where your thoughts melt into a depression and a hoax of feelings that you have a real shot at living in this life.  You feel as though you don't and these places will make sure to suck the life you've felt you had left to live, right the hell out of you.  

14 Minutes Late For Signing in:  Not My Fault

I came back in at 10:14pm, and I sign in on the sign in sheet.  I just wanted to leave again and go to the nearest bridge as somehow I believe I'd have more going for me there then here, but nevertheless, it's a bed.  A very expensive bed for that matter, that's quite taxing to your emotional well-being.  You go back into your room filled with 6-7 other people, and set your stuff down on the nasty carpeting.  You flip the combination to your locker, 26-7-22, and open up your locker.  You again smell the old woody smell of an ancient building where 4,000 other people vacated their stuff to go and do whatever they needed to do.  You set your stuff inside, hanging your head down low - you go and brush your teeth in the rusty dingy fluoride-filled water and go back in your room and set your stuff down inside your locker, and lock up as it's time for bed as well.  The doors are locked, and you're locked in.  You can't smoke a cigarette, so you know when you do get the chance, you're going to chain smoke.  It's part of their money making machine, and ultra cash cow to tax the shit out of cigarette smokers and make them stay in places like these so that your addiction is just added to the count.  You are going to smoke more.  Everything you do wrong is your fault, and never anyone else that would do such things to you.  The reason you're here, is that somehow "you" fucked up.  You did something wrong, or you're a mentally ill person that needs guidance from your slave neurotic government.  

We're all a little neurotic, it's just bigger or smaller triggers that brought you to this place, and it isn't anyone's fault that ends up homeless as I've had to go through.  Just remember that you're not alone, and not as alone as you may feel you are.  But, nonetheless, it feels lonesome as a night alone for the last day of the year when you're not celebrating with anyone that makes you matter.  It's as lonesome as not having anywhere to go on the fourth of July to celebrate what independence that you may or may not have in this life.  It's as lonesome as ever, but, no one cares as much as you'd ever think that they would.

You look up to the ceiling and trying to ask God why all these things are happening to you, and you know they are happening to you where you can't get the feeling of independence, or "out."  You want to feel free, or like you once did, that you had a real chance at living this God awful feeling through life, but you can't bare the single smell, the breath of someone else breathing down your neck, and the sounds that will drive a man crazy.  The tones of people losing their souls; their hearts, their homes and families and most of all their dignity and ability to thrive.  You hear it all, and just how bad the groaning gets, you hear the souls of people literally disappear.  Half the people in these places don't remember after 2 weeks what life was like outside this place, or that there ever was one.  Most people have become so estranged in the way of life here that they sit around, not quite knowing what to do, or feeling fucked out of the shot that they once felt they had.  Had; to become the person that they wanted to become, or to live the dream that they wanted to keep dreaming.  You hear the hearts almost screaming out for joy, but cannot find any.  No truth in the happiness that comes from the voices and the minds that created it, as everyone is dying each day to be free.  To be free, once more or to have the opportunity to do more with their lives.

The Hell I Feel Inside:

Scorching my inner heart, is a tinge of hope, the lack there of and the wish that I was gone away.  Sometimes you almost tinge so corrupt and so sour that you just wish to disappear for forever.  You're not necessarily depressed, but you're put into a depressing place.  You can't help but feel as though you want to shower off.  All that grows around you and all that buggy feeling that never goes away once you're in a dirty place, and can't feel clean as you should be able to feel after a shower.  

The showers feel like hell, smell even worse then a normal bathroom, and no one does a great job at cleaning them because they don't care... they don't want to be here... they just have this careless attribute about who they are when they're in here, because they aren't going to get away from the stench and the hurt heart that is already there or there to come more and more.  

Here is the showers in here...

Here is the sinks, where you can see the rusty water that has dripped over the floor, where not long ago the place just had a new floor put in, and it was white.  Days later it's peeling, and this is what you see.  The white after one day where it has turned from bright white into a rusty tarnished look of disgust.  

Dingy Hands From A Dingier Place That Feels Like Hell:

Nevertheless, you've got your smelly hand soap that you're not sure if it's real or if it's some kind of joke.  It smells like a gross hand soap that when you smell your hands, you almost feel sick.  Oh, well... nothing to see here, just more of me ranting about the ways that life gets in a shelter so, I took a picture of the emotion that I feel when I'm back in this place after being away for more then a day.

The bathrooms toilets are like this, and normally they are cleaned, but - minutes after they are cleaned they'll have piss and sometimes poop on them and you don't even want to go to the bathroom in this place.  The more that you try to continue to live life in a homeless shelter, the more that you will wish you'd escape or just die.  The feeling that these places give off is like a odor of death.

The air quality is so bad as well that you can barely breathe at night without choking.  You hear the sounds of 7 other people snoring where I remember my first day here, I thought I was in hell.  I sat up in my bed and cried softly to myself about all the things that I felt I was wronged about.  I went through the list in my mind and prayed to God to change the life so that people never had to live like this ever again.  I wanted to do something about a lot of things in my life, and others lives, but - where I fell short was just how the system doesn't care about people, doesn't care how they are feeling nor how they are forced to live by the wrongs of other people and other peoples psychological abuse.  

If you want to ever feel free, my heart says - run - run - run and keep running and don't come back.  So I get away any way that I know how to.  I just want to free myself from the hell that is this place.