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Thursday, August 4, 2016

I am OK but...

If you noticed the title of this post there was a "but" there. Well the fact is that I was employed to be a Community Health Worker by a local hospital specifically to do homeless outreach. That was in 2013. Today I am retired....

Now with all that said, I was doing work I had never done  before (I am an electronics technician), coming off a 10+ year stint of homelessness and camping in the woods. I had 10 years of habits that were not necessarily appropriate for returning to "normal" life as well as addictions to alcohol and drugs that I was battling before leaving the woods.

So here I was going back to school to learn a new trade, working hard to stay drug and alcohol free (I had been 5 years clean by that time) adjusting to apartment living and best of all, trying to adjust to living again with money in my pocket.

When you have been in survival mode, as are all homeless people, for over 10 years and that was my whole focus with small side trips along the way that sort of creates habits that not only are hard to break but are in fact automatic reactions you later don't even think about, I had a real challenge ahead of me.

The first year of working I was doing fairly well making the adjustment but I still saw myself reacting as if I were in the woods more often than I cared to see. At that time my focus was more on my job than it was on myself. After 2 years of working it was still an adventure just going to the store for groceries! But I was not spending enough personal thought and time breaking those habits I had developed being homeless. There are many reasons why I was not spending more time working through my homeless issues but I did discover one really important thing that is absolutely necessary when attempting to return a chronically homeless person back to society. Counselling, a good person to talk to who knows the ropes or problems adjusting. Unfortunately, I did not have that. Oh sure, I had friends who let me rant and rave about the problems and barriers I was running into but friends do not have the answers. In fact good friends, true friends can't help because of their love for you.

What happened to me was I threw myself into the deep end of the pool to sink or swim and IT WAS ALL MY FAULT! I should have looked for a mentor who could guide me though the mental pitfalls that were ahead of me. I should not have immersed myself in the new job as I did. I was working hard to do my job and spent no time on myself.

Then to add insult to injury, I moved into an apartment complex that was in the beginning quite nice but towards the end after 2 years had started taking in people whom I had once know from the street, people who were my old drug dealers, people I had used drugs with and they started to knock on my door.  It was most temping and most disturbing. So I spent more time at work and less time working on me just to avoid those temptations. I was becoming a mess and didn't know what to do about it. I tried, belatedly, to get counseling but they did not have a clue about the homeless mindset. A mindset that I still had not eliminated.

My personal solution was to retire from the work a day world. I was old enough to retire and start receiving Social Security. Soon a pension I had established way back in the 70's and contributed to for almost 20 years will start up too. I'm not without money nor am I back on the streets. I'm doing a little travelling and looking for a place to settle down. Probably a room somewhere here in town. What I will not do is return to the streets!!!!

It's been 8 months since I retired. I now have a better idea of all the areas where I went wrong. The one extremely important thing I discovered was that most homeless people are never homeless for more than a single year and usually less, nor do they have the adjustment issues that chronically homeless people have. For us long term or chronically homeless people another path has to be taken. There are less than 10% of the homeless population who are chronically homeless and I was one of them. For us the transition is much more difficult. Other means to assist us back into "normal" life have to be taken.

I've used these past 8 months to work on myself. I found a mentor who was willing to talk to me and in fact he really has. I've also used these 8 months to look within myself to determine where I want to go. I had deliberately divorced myself from the homeless world even though I thought I could help there. I don't go near the shelters and although I have run into a few homeless campers along the way I tend to refer them to an outreach team. I have some of the tools to be a homeless camper mentor now and I may start doing that. I've thought of working with some of the local homeless outreach teams but I'm still not sure if that is where I wish to go in the future. One friend once told me I should start writing a book about my 10+ years as a homeless person. Another friend said that I should start doing homeless outreach again. One friend even said that I should just travel around and continue to work on become sane and "normal" again.

Which ever way I go in the future, my homeless experience will forever be with me. I don't intend to quit on this blog even though I haven't posted much these last few years. My only excuse is that I have been too busy :-).

I can be contacted through my blogging email address. homelessinftw@live.com

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