Up From Homelessness

Image of four quarters stacked up on top of each other.

Raymondclarkeimages / Flickr

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, for some people becoming homeless can be an earth-shattering experience. However, I believe homelessness was the best thing that happened to me because if I didn’t end up sleeping outside, I would still had a mindset that government is responsible for my well being.

Today  I consider myself a stronger person because when I needed government it rejected my requests.  I never did care for the federal bureaucracy, I hated waiting in long lines nor did I care for probing questions when I needed assistance. Because I had contempt for government bureaucrats I believe they purposely denied me public assistance. such as  food stamps, unemployment and  public housing. This forced me to make life and death decisions such as whether to live on the street or stay in a shelter.

I decided to live on the street and lucky to be alive. The streets are a dangerous place, I been assaulted several times as well as beaten and left for dead.  However, being hospitalized may have been the best thing to happen to me because it showed me that people loved and cared about me.

What I discovered being homeless was that I couldn’t rely on anyone not even Washington.  It was the  start of my evolution from being dependent on government to self-sufficiency. Although I believed in self-reliance, I still consider myself radical . Although I personally abhorred food stamps & Welfare I didn’t look down on others that received it.  I never wanted to eliminate government I just wanted to limit their power.  I didn’t blame the programs, but the people that ran the agencies. What disturbed me about government was the people that were in charge had power of life and death over you.

Most evolutions to the right don’t start with the dislikes towards the President or Congress It starts with local politics.  My drift rightward started not from being successful but from being homeless.   After being homeless, I managed to save money from selling newspapers. I worked long hours sometimes from sunup to sundown. When I finish sometimes I would see these Human Rights people. One Day one  approached me about world poverty breaking down In tears,I lost it.  I asked this idealistic college kid of privilege.  Why are you so concerned about the world’s poor when you have people right here in your own neighborhood eating out of garbage cans. I got flash backs, I served my country and had to get grief from a welfare administrator about food stamps. Only to see people forking out dollars for the world’s poor while showing not a care for the homeless here in America.

That’s when the scales came off my eyes,  I saw Liberalism for what it was worth, our institutions are failing our children!  Our education system is producing children that have no concept of the real world. These kids don’t see the poor and the homeless as Human Beings but as noble savages to be studied and examined like animals for a research project.

After that  encounter with an idealistic leftist, I began to reexamine my life.  What does a man do when he realizes everything he’s been taught was a lie?

I had to come to the sobering reality that if you’re born poor in America you are like a salmon swimming up the stream.  You are going to be indoctrinated with ideologies that seem normal and harmless. It’s hard to break away from ideologies when you don’t know you’re being  manipulated with nonsense. How do you break away from an education system feeding you lies when they have the power to pass or fail you.  How do you break away from an all powerful state when they pass laws which redefine and undermine traditional values and morality. .

I feel lucky Today because my eyes are wide open. If it wasn’t for being homeless I wouldn’t had the time to be by myself. Being homeless  gave me the time to write reflect and educate myself.

Today I have no tolerance for people that tell you that the game is rigged because that’s not true.  I came to Washington DC with a quarter in my pocket slept on the sidewalk went to the government and they rejected me, if I listen too progressives I would still be waiting on government handouts.  I took the bull by the horns pulled myself up and now am on the road to self sufficiency.


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