"Hell"

Skip past this if you want. I'm reliving my time of Homelessness again...this happens as you know by now.

Being out there was for me a lonely experience. Unlike my brother's Vietnam war experience. He told me that at least he was with others. At least even if he were killed he'd be with people he knew.

The contemporary Homeless experience, it's near 10 years ago for me. That experience was mostly an individual one. Unlike a soldier's or the Depression era Hobo's experience. There are many reasons for this I guess. The break-up of our sense of community as a nation, and such.

Though I met others, and was given advice by old timers I was we were nonetheless on our own.

This just made it all the more a brutal, and lonely thing.

Like being in a war the experience was an exquisitely intense one on all levels of human emotion. One that will never cease.

In the same way soldiers take their wars with them to their graves. I have found it's the same for others that have had extreme experiences in their lives.

Battered wives abused children assaulted inmates. I'm thinking also of firemen cops emergency workers health workers. The whole community of frontline, and abused peoples

All the forms of human tragedy live on after the events have happened, and outwardly seemed to pass. This over the last 100 or so years was vaguely understood. Only now is taken more seriously. There are millions of walking wounded among us. You see us every day everywhere. You see us, and even know us.

If the scars were visible there would be a national even a world wide shock at how many are walking with hell within them.

All of us quietly coming to terms with our individual experiences of a living death on earth.