Alone

Today I spent the day alone.  In a Homeless Shelter, this is a difficult thing to do, but not impossible.  The life of our brothers and sisters out in the streets, the act of being alone is a constant, but within the walls of a shelter you rarely have a chance to be alone.

At the Old Savannah City Mission everything is corporate.  We ate together, shower together (and the water is generally cold unless you are one of the first few taking a shower), and slept together all in the same dorm room.  When I first became Homeless, Old Savannah was my starting point.  Broke and unemployed with no prospects, I remember being very skittish and close to tears many times that first night.  That night I felt utterly alone, like an astronaut adrift in space desperately calling out and no one hearing, no one listening.  At the Old Savannah City Mission, someone is always standing over you barking orders ushering you from fellowship hall to cafeteria to shower to bed. Vague memories of "Roots" and "Holocaust" flickered through my mind where people with frightened, shocked expressions were shuffled rudely from place to place, never sure of where they are going.  Within the system that is one of the first things you realize, there is no more autonomy of action.  Out in the world when you don't like a movie you can get up and leave.  Here the motto Go Along to Get Along is a stringently enforced mandate written on stone tablets 10 feet tall.  You are told when to come in, where to sit, when to eat, when to shower, when to sleep, when to get up and when to get out and there is no personal control of these activities. 

And those in power say that this is the way that it needs to be, the strict structure of the emergency shelter environment keeps people safe and relatively peaceful.  But the immediate stripping away of one's individuality is instantly attributable to the breakdown of self esteem and self reliance.  The real tragedy here is that the system does not necessarily have to work this way.  Just a few kind words and well intentioned courtesies could go miles in helping the residents of the system retain their self worth.  I am an advocate for sensitivity training for any and all people who work with the homeless and disenfranchised.  And I am not stating that some expensive program be put in place...just show people that saying "Hello, How are you?" and waiting and listening to the response is a kindness.  Saying please and thank you, calling people by their sir names and watching that "Brutally Honest" thing (which is often just an excuse to be cruel to someone else...you know what, the Homeless don't necessarily need your brand of "honesty" because, guess what, life is being BRUTALLY HONEST with them on a daily basis!)

There seems to be a feeling in the Homeless care community that the ways the homeless are engaged works.  Is there any other program that you can think of that believes that after 20 - 25- 30 years that some change is not warranted?  So many of the Homeless in the Streets (we say that they are 'In the Wind') don't want to deal with members of Savannah's Continuum of Care because they feel that they are looked down upon and made to feel like less than a person for asking for help.  When you have social workers telling clients that if they don't do such and such a thing "No one will save them." or have administrators continue to turn a deaf ear to the plight of clients and residents instead of letting go of staff, that are cited regularly for grievances, for their detrimental and demoralizing actions and words toward the people who have no choice but to come to them for services. But Go along to Get Along still is the prevailing wisdom used to quiet the rancor of the Homeless...the threat of removal from the line to get services is real and constant.  "You had better be humble and subservient to be deemed lucky enough to partake in the blessings I (personally) bestow." No one should feel beholden to a person or to a specific building/business to get the help that they need to live.  So many who help the Homeless have set up their own little 'office monarchies' that deliver services to the poor as if they were Yahweh sprinkling manna from Heaven...so superior, so untouchable...so sad. The Bible says "And be ye kind on to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake,  has forgiven you" (Ephesians 4:32).  But so many who administer help to the disenfranchised forget that they were ever in need of help.

Today I was alone...by choice.  But so many of my Homeless brothers and Sisters (and their children) are alone because they don't feel that they are worthy to come in.