That was the thought that ran through my head when I first met Susan (a composite character sketch made up of several homeless individual’s accounts). She had tragically beautiful eyes and little hands that looked even smaller when she balled them up into fists, a habitual tic she seemed to do unknowingly.
Susan was homeless when we met last week, though I hope she has found housing in the time since we talked. At the time, she was close to escaping her predicament – so much closer than the hundreds of other homeless individuals who, even now, cannot escape these cold and rainy days in November.
Susan could have been my mother. She had all the conventions of a successful middle class woman: a job, a car, a house, a family, some college education. If you had told her, two years ago, that she would be sleeping in a rescue mission someday, she would have said you were crazy.
But then she got a divorce. She began to hear voices. She got cancer. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia. When her father died suddenly of a heart attack, she broke down and woke up two days later in a hospital. In her distress, returning to her job proved to be too difficult. She was let go.
Suddenly the job was gone and the car payments were harder to make. One day she asked her son to drop her off at her sister’s place, saying that she would stay there for a little while. It was a lie; her sister could not take care of her, and Susan knew as much.
As soon as her son receded from sight, she started walking toward North Broadway. Susan began to live as a homeless person.
Listening to her stories – the horror of group showers at KARM, the disappointment of having her clothes stolen, the hope her case worker gives her – was hard for me because Susan reminded me so strongly of my own mother. Her sadness hung around her like a cloak, and she wore it like my mom wears hers.
Tragedy has visited my mom, too. She lost her only sister and both her parents in the span of two years, and all three deaths were unexpected and unconventional. Grief has transformed my family, bringing us closer together, and I am confident we will get through the tough times. Still, the holidays are a little less cheery than they once were.
What happens to people like Susan and what happened to my mom are not the same, but in their pain and chaos, they are similar. Why, then, is Susan searching for affordable housing and my mom is still living in the suburban household I grew up in?
I don’t know. Maybe it is the support group that has rallied around my mother and the absence of one in Susan’s life. Maybe it is the presence of my father, a testament to the power of a strong marriage. Maybe it’s a combination of socioeconomic factors I don’t understand.
But whatever it is, it’s thin. Susan’s story proves how close we all are to homelessness. You see the men in beards and bulky backpacks smoking cigarettes on Cumberland Avenue and you think to yourself, they are different than me. They are homeless. I am not. But what you don’t consider is the story behind the smoke.
The truth is, homeless people are not that different from us. We create differences in our minds to reassure ourselves that we’re safe from the world they live in, but they know the truth.
We are all just a few mistakes – or catastrophes – away.
R.J. Vogt is a senior in College Scholars. He can be reached at [email protected].
