Reflections from Life on the Streets

With love from Brook

Previous post:
https://steemit.com/homeless/@brookdemar/homeless-but-steemit-welcomed-me  
Inches from Death

Several months ago I was in front of CVS pharmacy and I noticed a blue nylon bag by itself in a planter box by a tree. No one was around so I thought somebody left something behind or something and I looked inside and it was a five dollar bill and some little radio inside. I looked around and it seemed to just to be abandoned by itself. This guy comes out of this store 6'7" I'd seen him before, another homeless person. He started yelling at me, "leave that bag alone, put that five dollars back, that's mine" and I left it there and he was inside the doorway of the store. He came right out. I left it in the bag and I stood up, and he stood in front of my face, about 3 inches away and was yelling at me schooled me left to right. I wouldn't back down, I just kept staring him down and looking at him, and he didn't like that at all. So he backs off of me for a second, and he yells out and says, "I'm going to kill you". He reached underneath his shirt and pulled out a 12 inch blade, knife, and he proceeded to plunge it forward and about two inches from my heart I backed off like to the left and missed the blade by just a couple inches or so, he almost went through my chest. He pulled the knife back. He didn't go into a frenzy or run after me or try and kill me. He had stopped at that point. I turned around and went back to my car with my friend. I told the police by kmart, I found an officer, and he was going to check the area. He asked me to wait a half an hour. I waited as long as I could, and no one came back. Nothing came out of this event. I was just told if I ever saw the guy again, I should call the police. Next time I saw him I called the police but they didn't arrest him or nothing. Next time I saw him he started bobbing his head back and forth, he's some gang guy, he says, "don't call the police, don't call the police." He was getting wound up, so he knew I called the police. I saw him another time at night, he was drunk and he was walking towards me where I was holding my sign. I can hold up a sign sometime, even though I got hurt from my job. He started spurting off, "I've got a gun in my purse", he had this draw string thing he calls a purse. He started talking about his gun, but I tried to be cool. I just knew better and to shut up and wait until he goes away.

Day to Day

People have given us money. One time I was sitting in our car, and a man walked by the front. He stopped and kinda did a double take or something, and pulled out his wallet and gave me a brand new hundred dollar bill, and said please go take your friend to breakfast, buy her a breakfast and I did. I went to stacks and I bought a big breakfast for my friend Katherine. Money helps. People give us a bag of incidentals, tooth paste, sock rolls, candy bar things like this. Creature comforts of the word of the lord, and tell me god still loves us, or maybe a go between person when your faith is weary and wavering and you're not sure where you stand. You're so down graded in the streets and feel so hopeless, and you don't count. Sometimes we get food from the dumpster. I guess when you come around full circle about this and you don't know if you're gonna make it or not, the horror stories, the shelter stories, people just take money, a lot of abuse goes on in the system. The best people do for us is leave us alone. I go to a dumpster to eat, and when people leave us alone and we try to survive that way it really helps. When people just go on by and don't judge you.

Fixing the cracks

There needs to be a support system like for FEMA or somebody for injured or homeless people to get emergency debit card or something to stay alive. The police have a problem with you signing. If they don't like you signing they going to give you a ticket which costs three or four hundred dollars. If you get three or four tickets in a row you go to jail. It seems like the police are the last line to decide whether you should live or die. To sign to beg for money to get something to eat. It's perplexing, on one hand maybe the society thinks there's a lot of outlets to get help with agencies. A lot of that is a fallacy, it's kind of a scam, and it kind of pertains to a small sect of a bell shaped curve. For instance, a lot of folks they need money, they can't get a job, their condition, there's no home, it piles up on them. There's either crime or there's signing they might sell drugs who know what goes on.
 
The key thing is it's hard to survive to keep you alive. Water, food, basic life supports. One thing that is starting to turn around about for the positive point, is little miniature homes are being built like pods for people who are homeless in Seattle and Portland. Whether or not that would take off down here, remains to be seen. I don't really envision that. It requires land, property, sanitation, police. It's like this small community of problems itself. Maybe the pressure of crime and stuff would be lifted a bit.

People resort to stealing and all kinds of things to survive, that are homeless. There's a big cross section there. Even one guy said in the morning in the men's bathroom some of us used, "I told my woman, if you steal from me I'll kill you. Well I caught her stealing from me and I killed her." These people are cold, a lot of them are ruthless, they got nothing to lose and everything to gain. They will do whatever they have to do to protect their life. Stealing, breaking and entering, whatever they gotta do to get whatever they need. If they had an emergency card as a debit card to survive that would be one thing. Not free but something interjected in the system as far as emergency help for people. Like burned up people, tornado victims, they get help, they get help from FEMA, they get this, they get that, well we got a sect of society that needs money help, they need food, clothing, shelter, a tent, a sleeping bag, somewhere to roust. Sure some drink beer this and that, it helps alleviate the problem, and shows part of the solution. They won't go to the shelter, there's so many rules, they pick on you, they're weird to you, they just won't go. It's not that the help isn't there, but it's not a 100% full proof system. The mental health money is not there. The hospitals. It's a thousand dollars a day. They're not going to put people on a hold just cause they look mental. There's a lot of issues.  

note from assistant:
@creationlayer I've transcribed this story over the phone. We'll be setting up Brook with a laptop this week. Beyond helping a homeless person out, I genuinely think Brook has some good stories to share, and my goal is ideally he can be autonomous and use steem.it as he continues on his path. If we can take a homeless person off the street and teach him steem.it the possibilities are endless. He's saving now for a motor home, and a place to park/live. With your support in only a couple weeks we may take a homeless person off the street give them a home, and get them started writing for steemit. I am in the process of getting the first funds to Brook, converted SBD and will get cash as soon as possible. I have been providing some of the basics and helping out as you can see with the previous posts, but Bitcoin is slow to USD as most of you know, and he doesn't want one of those debit cards. I will post an update when that occurs, as we open him a bank account and pay off his small debt to the bank. Until I setup his computer I'll transcribe his stories. Thank you all for your support.    

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