I hope this joyous morning of awakening finds your thoughts open and your hearts grateful! I begin my day... 

                          bowing my head in THANKS for the blessing of YOU! Woke up WEEPING! Do you ever do that? My knees rose to my chest, I rocked my cradled body back-and-forth, and beneath the ruffles of my covers escaped into the sanctuary of my tears.

         Reverend Rosalind Russell, the founding president of R Star Ministries, a dear friend of mine from Laguna Beach moves into a tent today. No, I did not say HOUSE or APARTMENT or ROOM, I did indeed say ... TENT. She is homeless. Who is this person and how does one become one of THE OTHER AMERICANS - the invisible ones who society avoids with vaguely suppressed horror that seem to leap from people with homes like some great drowning of rats.
READ my July 4th article  titled ' Crippled Minds ' and learn the realities about Reverend Russell : she singlehandedly STOPPED poverty, trafficking, terrorism and illiteracy in 27 villages in Nepal, and three years ago her house burnt to the ground. She gazed as her entire life smothered in ashed spread to the wind. She can go up against poverty, trafficking, terrorism and illiteracy but when you are up against our Insurance Companies well ... you will build a tent before you break ground. 
           Although homelessness is a difficult number to measure definitively, a study by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, estimates 2.3 and 3.5 million people experience homelessness.( 1% o the entire U.S. population or 10% of its poor) According to National Coalition for the Homeless, 643,067 people will experience homelessness on any given night in the United States, and about 18 % of the entire homeless population will experience chronic homelessness and end up living in shelters and transitional housing, with 42% unsheltered … living in their cars, sleeping on park benches, on beaches etc…..  These numbers suggest that roughly 1 in every 200 persons in the U.S. will use the shelter system at some point in their life.

I am one of the 200, therefore I empathize with these figures and Rosalind's situation:  in 1972, in what seems  like an eternity, I existed off raw nerves tombed in the tight atmosphere of an old yellow Pinto parked behind a park in a dark vacant alley in Dayton, Ohio. Nerves teetering on the edge of sanity and insanity. No sound ... No movement ... Nothing, but waiting, watching and listening to dead silent torture, and a taunting stillness nil to the rapid beating of my shattered being.

      Time crawled, seconds took a lifetime, and my suffering seemed beyond the vastness of intelligible … my salvation beyond reach. Whispers breathed down my back daunting spells drifting within a gargantuan abyss.

           I was not living. I was not even surviving. I was drowning, and the rescue rope was too short to pull me in. I was in thick, slimy grime; too deep ... too far out of reach. I was not eating;  what little I ate was from cans: beans and tuna, tuna and beans - half a can a day, every day. My stomach is too upset to eat and my nerves too shattered to think of eating. I was a months shy of 19, and in the last trimester of pregnancy. Do you honestly think my childhood dreams or goals included living inside the boundaries of my scariest nightmare? Do you seriously believe me, as an eighteen year-old woman, ENJOYED the tomb of a car and the premature death of a childhood? Is this what any sane child or individual wishes for? 

               I was still human. Was I not? I still bled. Did I not? Why could not somebody, anybody see me bleeding? Had I become invisible?

I left my car for a short period to wash my hair in a gas station’s toilet - orange with rust stains and reeking of urine.  The gas station’s stained cracked sink I sponged my body in was barely hanging on a graffiti decorated white wall. Yet, in that split second somebody stole all of my worldly possessions from this lavish life hemmed in by such iron fences of invincibility.

 It was my fault. I did not know the rules. I did not know it was assumed what was mine was theirs because my things could not possibly have any value or meaning. How could it possibly make any difference? Even if somebody stole my only blanket for nights so chilly the winter frost encased me in a frozen tomb of hot breath and shivering bones.

Ah! To be alive ... to live ... to breathe ... to stop the demons in my head from convincing me for one moment, just one precious moment, that I was not worthy enough to live respectively in the land of the free and the home of the brave!

My esteem hungered for the liberty to choose my own blooming battles without the force of a fist in my face ( I ran from a home where I was strapped to a bed and beaten) , or stalking words being crammed down my throbbing throat. (Verbal/mental abuse is REAL and far more serious than physical. Depending on the severity of the physical abuse, time will heal; whereas mental abuse plays like a nightmarish movie repeatedly in your unconscious mind.) ALL my life’s honor craved the liberty to tend my own child and the freedom to raise my progeny with the same pursuit of happiness pledged with the right hand proudly over a devoted heart.

The dream: the American dream of ' The Other Americans ' - the invisible ones who crawl through the shadows in the middle of the darkened night desperately digging for survival, only to rot like fruit with the coming of the burning sun, with their invisibility forever branded by the isolation of the burning rope society has wrapped around their already scarred throats. In the depths of the winter, their tracks began to drag with the weakness in their souls and the weight of their heavy crosses and the truth begins to howl from some uncertain abyss, inhabiting a little seed that society never allows to grow because to articulate the truth about “The Other Americans”, the invisible ones, would surely cast a stain upon the pure and flawless snow.

Their blood is fresh and crystal clear, as we grind them into the heavenly earth while we wipe our perfectly polished shoes, clean our dirty hands and turn our shaded backs to all the ballerina princesses living in the shame of a glass castle, parked in an alley, behind a park, without any constitution and avoided in a vaguely suppressed horror that seems to leap from people like some drowning rush of rats. 

My body weak from hunger and my eyes heavy from the pulling of things other than sleep, rain pounds down on the hood of my car, and I shiver not for a stolen blanket, but the warmth of a human heart and the longing of one glimpse of salvation. 

        One long week in one short lifetime - between homes – between runs. Longing and rummaging for that which ‘normal’ people assume life blesses to one and all - a simple place to hang your hat. Alone, devoured with sorrow, lying curled in a fetal position, cuddling myself like a child cooing for comfort, rocking back and forth, my head hidden in my hands I wept uncontrollably. I wait for the cars … listen to the tailpipes ... rattling ... hoping somebody, anybody will rescue me!

    The streets lay in slumber ... vague shadows gather solitude with the pain stretching out for the peace that cradles babies to lullaby of dreams. Time crawls backwards … I find myself anxiously missing the youth of yesterday while simply holding on tight to the raw and ragged fragments of now until dawn kisses the hope of tomorrow ... a tomorrow in which Reverend Russell, like millions of 'THE OTHER AMERICANS', will awaken to the simple cradle of a warm bed and open heart.

    

'♥'•.¸`'•.¸*♥LiVe,L♥Ve,Be♥*¸.•'´¸.•'♥'AWAKENED!

 Nishli-nil, d.

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