A couple of months after I became homeless, I befriended a guy who had just gotten out of jail. We were around the same age and had similar “complicated” backgrounds. We were both of the same mindset of wanting to change our current situations and spent a lot of time looking for work or any legal means of making some money. But with the “complicated” backgrounds we both shared, this proved to be very difficult.
One day he came to me and said he was tired of this and wanted us to go “fly a sign” (panhandle). I told him good luck, but it wasn’t for me. So, armed with a black sharpie and a piece of cardboard, he left. A few hours later, he returned. Beaming with joy, he told me he had made $23. He said, “It’s free money”. I replied, “There’s no such thing as free”. He told me I was crazy (the truth was my pride is what probably stopped me from joining him). But after that day he was hooked, every morning he would head out to an interstate exit ramp or city corner to wait for his money. After a while I noticed a change in him, his attitude was becoming increasingly irritable. He became short tempered and would constantly storm off. Finally, one day he broke down and told me, “I absolutely hate having to get up every day and beg for money”. I could see in his eyes that he had reached that point where he had traded all confidence and dignity for stranger’s well-meaning dollars. And what was now left was pure shame. I told him, “You don’t have to do anything”. But that’s not the way he saw it. I wished at the time I had known about the Contributor; I would have suggested giving them a try. Maybe he could’ve sold papers instead of his pride. But he had gotten to that point where he felt he had no other alternatives. Eventually this eroded all self-worth, and he began to “self-medicate”. It got to a point where all the money he received was spent on this “medicine”. I remember thinking how ironic it was that the shame he felt panhandling was now causing him to go out and panhandle. Like a Dog chasing its tail, the cure was now causing the disease.
Eventually all of this caught up with him, and he ended up back in jail. He’ll be there for another 2-3 years. I hope he can get the help he needs and won’t repeat the same process when he gets out. I pray anyway. Unfortunately, this is a scenario I see being played out on a daily basis. People standing on street corners with their brown cardboard signs and gray defeated faces. It’s like watching someone slowly drown in quicksand and refuse to take real help.
Shortly after my friend went back to jail, I painted “Rita”, I tried to embody that same defeated look my friend had.
Thank you for buying this paper and not part of my dignity.
