Gratitude
Grateful for a warm bed and a roof
Last night I started reflecting on where I had been, after being grateful for a warm bed to sleep in and a roof over my head and thinking about all those without one, people out on the streets, the homeless ones.
I remember when I wasn’t so lucky to have these things. In 1997 I was released from prison and had no where to go. My brother picked me up and offered to let me stay at his home in San Bruno, and a friend of the family had a job lined up for me in the Teamster Union’s office in San Francisco. This was not to be as God had other plans for me. I had always had a place to go and a job lined up, one way or another. This time was different.
I was on parole and the conditions of parole were that I was to reside in the county that I was paroled to. I did a lot of sniveling to the parole officer but to no avail. They gave me 48 hours to get back. They didn’t care that I didn’t have a place to live and told me to go to the Homeless Shelter. As I had no choice if I wanted to stay “free”, I did as they demanded.
This for me, was about as low as I could go, but when thinking about this today, I had been in much “lower” places in my life. At the shelter I had a place to sleep, shower and eat. There had been times in my life when I had none of these, sleeping in a parked car, on the beach next to a river, under an overpass on the highway and in other places unmentionable, without a dime in my pocket.
It took me 5 weeks to find a job and a place to live and hope I never find myself in that predicament again. One thing it did show me was that a lot of folks end up in the shelters from events that they have no control over and not just alcoholics and addicts.
Living a life of alcoholism and addiction takes some of us to places that most people only see on the news, a time when someone dies from the weather conditions, beaten by thugs and many other events that happen to those unfortunates. Be grateful for what you have.
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