[caption id="attachment_7771" align="alignnone" width="497"]
Two sides of someone who may be going to pieces.[/caption]
On the street most love is tough love so I feel for the person who made this sign, but I'm also wondering if they're taking their meds.
This ratty piece of ripped cardboard was in a business' doorway just on the southwest side of Broadway and Granville. It may or may not have featured in someone's attempt to panhandle. Another homeless person pointed it out to me. Yet another homie who saw it declared, "They're losing it!"
Maybe, but it does at least seem to me that this person is trying to work through some anger management-type issues. The important thing is that they're trying.
We're social animals, and I don't mean just homeless people; I mean all people. But -- and now I do mean homeless people -- we don't cope equally well with the isolation, stigmatization, or any of the other "ations" which can accompany homelessness. If a person can't let go, then all the perceived slights -- real or otherwise -- and discourtesies, and averted looks, build up as stress until it overwhelms a person's ability to cope. Then the little thing will set a person off; the pebble triggers an avalanche of emotion. You don't have to be homeless to experience this, but it helps, apparently.
Not to tug heartstrings, but we're coming into the homeless person's true season of discontent: the Christmas holidays. This is a time when many homeless people will feel their otherness most sharply. It can be a particularly emotionally hurtful time for a homeless person, especially if they grew up, as so many have, with each Christmas being about the warm embrace of family and friends.
And then there's the fact that legal holidays mean no social services. No libraries. No community centres. Christmas and New Years' Eve represent the longest services drought of the year, when homeless people will have days to themselves. If the weather's bad and they have little money to spend on restaurants -- even just a cup of coffee, and if they're not so resourceful, then, well, they might not be happy campers.
Like I said at the beginning, my heart goes out. But I'm not going to be giving out a lot of hugs. That;s just me. Click the images to enlarge them.
Two sides of someone who may be going to pieces.[/caption]
On the street most love is tough love so I feel for the person who made this sign, but I'm also wondering if they're taking their meds.
This ratty piece of ripped cardboard was in a business' doorway just on the southwest side of Broadway and Granville. It may or may not have featured in someone's attempt to panhandle. Another homeless person pointed it out to me. Yet another homie who saw it declared, "They're losing it!"
Maybe, but it does at least seem to me that this person is trying to work through some anger management-type issues. The important thing is that they're trying.
We're social animals, and I don't mean just homeless people; I mean all people. But -- and now I do mean homeless people -- we don't cope equally well with the isolation, stigmatization, or any of the other "ations" which can accompany homelessness. If a person can't let go, then all the perceived slights -- real or otherwise -- and discourtesies, and averted looks, build up as stress until it overwhelms a person's ability to cope. Then the little thing will set a person off; the pebble triggers an avalanche of emotion. You don't have to be homeless to experience this, but it helps, apparently.
Homeless for the holidays (cue the violin)
Not to tug heartstrings, but we're coming into the homeless person's true season of discontent: the Christmas holidays. This is a time when many homeless people will feel their otherness most sharply. It can be a particularly emotionally hurtful time for a homeless person, especially if they grew up, as so many have, with each Christmas being about the warm embrace of family and friends.
And then there's the fact that legal holidays mean no social services. No libraries. No community centres. Christmas and New Years' Eve represent the longest services drought of the year, when homeless people will have days to themselves. If the weather's bad and they have little money to spend on restaurants -- even just a cup of coffee, and if they're not so resourceful, then, well, they might not be happy campers.
Like I said at the beginning, my heart goes out. But I'm not going to be giving out a lot of hugs. That;s just me. Click the images to enlarge them.
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Sad but true. I experience the same emotion of loneliness and I'm not even homeless.
Karen