Well, I can tell you life as a homeless, starving, scared child with social anxiety was easy. But, then I would be ling. It was cold and painful curled up on a flattened out pee stained cardboard box. It was absolutely horrid during the cold winter nights such as this one. The wind was blowing through my thick red hair that was falling out from lack of cleaning.
What I can tell you is what it's like every day of my life. You wake up roll around on the box for a bit to warm up, check your cart, walk around looking for some scraps or some water, hang out by and shop to find something to drop out to run up and snatch it up, then return home and eat whatever you got, and then sleep. I stayed between two apartment buildings hidden in the dark alleyway hidden from the naked eye.
But, I saw some people walking out laughing and you were scared that someone may want to talk to you and ask you questions. But, you wanted to talk to them. What if they were laughing at you? What if they knew you were here all along? What if you were being judged and made fun of and pushed around without even knowing it? You shook your head and laughed.
Life for me wasn't easy at all. It was very stressful and busy. Every day it feels like I have an extra heart in my throat. I can't stop shaking when I walk to my home. I can never be calm. Everything is just so nerve-wracking. It was going to snow and I just knew it. It was getting very cold. My fingers were freezing from my wrists to my very finger tips. My finger nails were black from digging in dirt and split from scratching on the walls and chewing on them from anxiety.
It felt like the gray and black brick walls of the alley were going to close up and crush me to pieces. So, once I liked to crawl out and get a deep breath then scamper back to hiding when I hear the slightest sound. I can hear my heart pump in my ears and my palms are sweating. I never want to go back out but for some reason I still do.
I needed to get fresh air every once and a while without roaming the streets before hours. My shoes had split open anyways so I didn't want to walk around. My toes were frozen and wet pretty much every second of every day. I shield out from contact from everyone in fear of being judged and hurt. I'm weak and boney. I can't fight back. I was always way too weak to.
I was a petite freckled-faced ginger 19 year old child with a small boney waist and small little hands that allow me to dig up and burry some bones of the animals I eat. How I ended up like this was quite sad and embarrassing. I ran away from home when I was a child of the bright young age of 12. My dad had kidded my mother and was starting to go out to get drunk. I was afraid he would kill me, too. So, I walked off far away from those horrid people to this little town and settled down between these apartment buildings.
Though, I was dirty and weak and barely surviving I was still alive. Nobody had noticed I was ever here yet. It's been 7 years of a life of solitude and pain. Other hobos didn't try to pick a fight with me because, hey! I'm only a little girl! I didn't even bring any food but the food in my lunch pail when he dropped me off at school that day. A tuna sandwich, a juice box, and a cookie are what I lived off of for the first year. Then I started hunting for animals. Then I started stealing. Now, I do both.
I do a cute face and hold out a broken tea cup I found in the trash and try to get money now, too. But, sometimes the glass cuts my fingers and I start to bleed and cry. Then, everyone tries not to look and cover children's eyes and shake there heads and I hear then whisper and point to me saying. "See, you have it better then her." That's right. They do have it better then me. I'm a poor 19 year old for god sake.
Stray cats would stride on the streets freely before I came along. I ran up and pushed them onto the side walk. I didn't want to see a dead cat. I loved cats. I didn't want to have to eat a cat, too. I ate whatever was freshly killed like birds, raccoons, and mice. Thanks to Jr. High animal safety science lessons I know if the animal was sick before it died so I don't get any poisoning in my system. That's pretty much the only thing I learned in Jr. High that really helped me in my life so far. How to write ratios or the outline of a story isn't really helping me survive real life.
My hair was getting long and fuzzy and dry. I should go find a beach or something. Move out of this alley way onto a beach. Eat some fish and be able to use public bathrooms. Collect shells to sell for lunch money. Sounds good but, I love this little city. It was nice and warm and full of trash. I didn't ever want to leave. It was amazing here. Even if the beach is easier to live at it was far away and crowded and too hot and stressful. Plus, here I know the streets better. Where the most people crowd at and where it's more quite and less busy.
I noticed collage students like to rent these apartments and sleep here instead of in dorms. I guess they don't like the idea of dorms. Two beds, a person you don't even know, sharing a closet, having to put a ribbon on the doorknob when you have company. I wouldn't like it one bit. Collage seemed stressful and annoying. Why would you even want to go to collage? Oh yeah, jobs. I don't want a job. Jobs are too stressful and busy for me to handle having one. People are constantly judging you writing down your performance rate and telling what the saw you do to the big man.
I liked being independent and free like a bird in the sky. There is no limit, no rules, and no big man that watches everything you do. Well, there still are some rules. Laws of the U.S. are stupid. Like anti-gay marriage laws and no laws against guns? What are you guys thinking? Ugh, and they don't even care about the homeless. They think we're trash and ignore us and talk about puppies to get people to forget us. But, we're still roaming your streets eating whatever we find. Including dead animals and trash you threw away last night.
Once when I woke up on a freezing winter night I saw a cat digging in my trash. Thinking it was a raccoon I clawed its sides paralyzing it. It growled at me hissing and clawing at my hands. It wasn't like the other angry pissed off cats I had picked up. It had no collar and was a beautiful long haired white cat with a cut left ear. She was still wet from yesterday's rain. It stopped growling so I let go of her. I called her Fly because she could eat the flies that flew around the trash. She grew fond of me very well.
Fly was very helpful and very friendly. Well, to me. Every time someone came in or out the to apartments she jumped up and growled. Apparently, someone brought this to the attention to the owner of the apartment buildings because a fat lady with a sunflower dress stepped out while she was on the phone with a animal rescue place talking about a white cat trying to attack her costumers and wanted to have it taken away. I held her close and ran to the back of the alley may till the lady and the trucks were all gone. I didn't want to lose my only friend to a fat old fifty year old lady in an ugly dress.
But, when I stepped up and let Fly go he ran into the streets. I tried to run to him but it was too late. One of the trucks ran him over. I covered my mouth and felt a tear roll down my cheek. I had lost my only friend to a truck. I wasn't fast enough to help him. Why? Why did he run away? I left a rock by the side of the road in his memory. Fly, my one and only friend was gone forever.
I started to stay out more. I didn't care what they did to me anymore. I had nothing left to do but die. I didn't help the cats anymore. I let them die. I didn't care at all. It was all so pointless. My life was pointless. I didn't go out walking any more. I stayed at my little house chewing on the bones of dead animals that I didn't burry anymore. I started painting the brick walls with the blood of dead animals. I painted Fly's name next to the rock with blood, too. But, it washed away from the rain.
The lady who ran the apartments must have gotten a complaint because I sat out and stared at the people who walked in. I know this because she came out and asked why I was here. I simply told her I had a home here and gestured my head to my flattened out card bored box. She didn't like that I was there but let me stay because I was still so young and may move to some place else. But, I didn't plan on moving out of this alley. I stayed here for too long to move out now.
This little alley was my one and only true home. I knew some people you lived in these apartments. I didn't know them by name but I knew them by face. The owner and her daughter are two people I knew. Also, I knew two young boys who stayed there, too. They were all in the same collage. The mom owned this place for years and lived in one of the apartments in building A. The one on my left was A and the other one was B. I bet it was hard to run two apartment buildings all by yourself for years.
She didn't seem to have a husband. She didn't have a ring and I never see a man around her. She raised a child and runs two apartment buildings by herself? Man, she must be really busy. Thinking about this made me think about my mother. So I crawled to the back of the alley and cry by myself. I missed my mom. She was wonderful and caring unlike most people in the world. She was there for me when I hurt myself. She was there to tell me it was all going to be alright when I was crying. But, she was died now. My dad was a horrible man I hate him so much oh my god. I'm so happy I ran away.
I would have died too if I hadn't ran away and went to a whole new town and hid myself away from people. People would probably know I ran away and ask if someone lost a kid and my dad would punch me so hard if he found out I ran away. He probably didn't even notice I was gone. He probably just shrugged his shoulders and smoked a cigar and opened a bottle of rum. He had to do it himself because I wasn't there to do it for him anymore. I remember running and having to grab a glass bottle and open in up for him every night.
It was absolutely horrible. If I did it wrong or got the wrong bottle he would punch my arm and make me sleep outside. I remember having no blanket and no pillow sleeping in the tall grass outside. I'm glad I got used to it because now I sleep outside all the time. No pillow and no blanket. Well, a flattened out cardboard box isn't really a blanket. More like a rain protector for when rain drips through the cracks of the ceiling other then that I just slept on the asphalt floor. It wasn't as bad as you think though. Unless it's winter I can handle it. My feet get cold and numb on winter nights and it's hard to fall asleep at night.
My life was pointless now. My dad may find me one day. I have always lived in fear of him coming to find me curled up in a ball and he would probably start to pound me with a stick and yell at me for running away. He would do that to me. He was aggressive and pushy. He wouldn't just sit me down and take away my phone. I didn't even have a phone. He never bought me one. My mom would have got me one if she was still with us today. She was the nice parent. She was kind hearted and good with animals. I got my personality from her and got my looks from my dad. Well, that's what I believe. I was nothing like my dad but I did sort of look like him. I had his thick red hair and green eyes. Everything else you can thank my mom for, including the fear of my father finding me and beating me. Before he had killed her he would beat her for not cooking what he wanted or talking back to him. I wanted to help my mom but I was only 10 when it started. I was weak and didn't know what was happening at the time before it was too late. It couldn't be helped. The rest of the family was too scared to tell him he needed help. So, I did what I could and ran away as fast as I could. Once he dropped me off for school and drove off, I started walking.