There is one homeless man I have observed for going on five to seven years now; I first noticed him at my bus stop out front the Senior Center, looking healthy and fit. Possibly in his late twenties, he had that clean and pleasant demeanor of the well fed. He carried a military pack and the only reason I guessed he was homeless was because it was stuffed full, and included a sleeping bag, and he wasn’t coming or going to the Greyhound station.
Everything pointed to a young man just out of the military with nowhere else to go. Pure speculation of course but I would put money on that bet.
(It’s easy to learn the tells, if you look closely, if you care.)
I’ve watch him deteriorate, slowly and inevitably. There is no other word for it. He’s unraveled from society and, I think, himself.
He’s aged decades in a few years, becoming gaunt and leather-skinned. He lost the military backpack a while ago, either stolen or confiscated by cops, along with everything in it (this, I have found, is common — homeless people don’t get to keep things). Of course he’s dirty, and his clothes stained and ripped.
He travels now with a woman who may or may not be his age, but is just as decrepit in posture and appearance. Yesterday, for the first time, I heard him yelling like the stereotypical “mad man” outside of Circle K; seems they were thrown out. She was trying to drag him away.
I found them this morning sleeping under a blanket on the stoop of one of the cottages at lake ella, curled up together, trying to keep warm and at least out partially protected from the high winds whipping around.
We don’t help these people. We, as a society, simply don’t give a damn about a healthy young man being chewed up and spit out by homelessness and poverty.
Instead we give them this, the newly installed “park beautification” features designed for one thing and one thing only: to let that young man know that he is unwanted, unwelcome, and unnecessary.
