“I SEE YOU BUT DO YOU SEE ME?”
That’s the sign I used to fly when I was homeless.
It served a double meaning for me. One meaning was to get the attention of anyone who just walked past without even looking at me or acknowledging me – like I was a piece of trash. You could see people thinking that every homeless person is the same, thinking that we all have the same story, that we all wind up on the street for the same reason. They couldn’t be more wrong.
In January 2014, I was 19 and in a hospital. When the staff decided I was ready to leave, I met with a social worker who gave me the phone numbers of shelters. She did her best.
I walked out of the hospital and onto the street. Soon after I left, I went to a pay phone and called some of the numbers. I was hoping someone would help me figure out where I could sleep that night. But, no one answered the phone. I stood at the pay phone feeling embarrassed and hopeless. I’m not the type to ask for money or other necessities. I wandered around Cambridge, hoping that something would happen.
During the holiday season last year, my son and I were staying in a small church-run shelter. From 8:30 am to 5 pm, I had to leave to sit in an old church basement adjacent to the shelter’s office
It was a big room with some tables and chairs scattered around and a corner with some kids toys and a couch. The room was cold and dusty, and there was mouse poop behind the radiators. It smelled the way you would imagine an old church basement would smell. My son was just learning to walk and would often crawl across the floor, leaving his hands and knees dirty.
More than two years ago I detoxed out of a medication assisted treatment program after 15 years on methadone. Methadone helped me stabilize my life after a 20 year run with street opioids and just about every other “recreational” drug that was available. Over the time I was in the program, I enjoyed a very robust recovery.
When I withdrew from methadone, I experienced--and continue to experience--a recovery within a recovery. The last two years have provided me with some insight into trauma, recovery, and ways of learning to cope with the events in my past that would have triggered me back into substance use. (Read more about Steven's experiences with trauma and recovery.)
