Lacking a Home, Not a Soul

I’d like to share a lesson it’s taken me years to learn. That homeless people are people too. That may seem odd to you if you’re in another nation, but here in America, it can be quite the realization.

There are a lot of homeless people in the town in which I live.

I attribute this mainly to the local soup kitchen and homeless shelter, both of which are just across from the post office, about two miles from my house.

It’s on the same side of town and I drive that road almost every day.

You see, there are a lot because the next closest soup kitchen and shelter are in a small city, about an hour away. So, everyone who’s homeless in the area collects themselves in my town for a free noonday meal and second portions if there are enough to go around. There are so many in fact, one froze to death two years ago trying to sleep on the ground behind the soup kitchen. The shelter was full.

I don’t mind the homeless. That’s not to say at one point I didn’t.

In fact, some of them used to scare me.

When I was in high school, I was confused as to why people didn’t live strictly on soda if they were poor. It had calories in it, so why couldn’t you just live off that? In fact, my closest friend at the time and I tried to live off Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew one weekend and both felt horribly ill after several cases were gone by.

I say that to illustrate just how unformed my knowledge was about the issue. I knew nothing about nutrition, as today I still know nothing about many things, but I know more about homelessness that I feel others should understand.
Because many people know about homelessness today what I knew about nutrition. Absolutely nothing, or gross misconceptions.

As part of my college education, I’ve learned that forty or so percent of homeless individuals have mental health issues, while another forty or forty-five have problems with drugs and alcohol. The rest, victims of a bad situation, previous wards of the state, veterans, or disaster victims.

You see, I was scared of homeless people, because we seem to have a disproportionate amount of them with mental health issues.

Just the other day, there was a thin black man stood by the railroad tracks which must be crossed to go into town. You could use this to surmise I live on the bad side of town if you wish. I do. Some less exposed would call it “the hood.”

This black man had no shirt and dirty blue jeans, was rail thin with ribs exposed in the sun, even against his dark skin tone. His salt and peppered hair stood about crazily, and he pointed his finger furiously, screaming at something down the railroad tracks.
I gazed out, looking for who or what he was screaming at, but nothing was there. Still the man talked, raging as though someone stood right in front of him. Then, he even swung a punch out at thin air.

It was then I realized this man was schizophrenic and was suffering from a common symptom of the illness: hallucinations. You see, this man was most likely homeless because he had this illness, something that predominately effects men and shows signs in early adulthood.

These people can experience visual or auditory hallucination, have fixed false beliefs that seem absolutely wild to others, but most worrisome are command hallucinations. Sometimes, these schizophrenic individuals will have the voices in their head tell them what to do. If they refuse, the command becomes more insistent and boy, it never goes away.

You see, that man on the railroad needed lithium, or another type of anti-psychotic drug. In fact, he was likely well adjusted and on a controlled medication at some point, but the side effects are awful. And I mean awful.

Most people with the illness stop taking their medications because it changes how they think, how they perceive their own thoughts and the world around them. Often, they stop because of cholinergic effects, which can range from simple dry mouth to muscle issues and even a type of paralysis called tardive dyskinesia, hallmarked by one’s mouth fixed wide open till it feels like their heads will snap in two.

I say all this because… I didn’t understand that they were just people too. People whom society has failed completely. One could argue that people like this wouldn’t have been able to survive at all back in older versions of society, as charity and resources are trickled down in this system so that even those with nothing have a little. I would argue that not enough trickles down and at it’s core, our system is based on the greed that divides and drives humanity to some of it’s worst ends.

Photo credit: https://www.istockphoto.com/photos/homeless-black-man

My guy wasn't coherent enough to give me permission to take his photo.