For being late May, it was pretty warm as I slowly walked back to the Denver homeless shelter, sadly this is where I lived. I was feeling less pitiful today, mostly because I had spent a considerable amount of time at the Jefferson County building at the social services department filling out applications for subsidized rent programs and hopefully all of my hard work would soon pay off and that would be my ticket off of the streets!
I didn’t even see it coming; one moment I am walking towards the homeless shelter and the next I am getting my ass kicked! As I look back, I wonder why would someone rob a homeless person in the first place? I didn’t have much other than my laptop, but these bums didn’t know that, or did they?
I fought back as hard as I could but let’s face it, I was in no condition to be fighting in the first place, and I was up against three very healthy street people, so I was fucked from the very start! Once I was on the ground my attackers didn’t waste any time taking everything I owned, which was in a small backpack.
These scumbags had also taken the last of my money which was less than ten dollars, along with my pack of cigarettes and my Denver area bus and train pass.
I wasn’t too badly hurt, but the beating had taken everything out of me. My body was only slightly bruised, but my manhood was hurt more than anything. I was a grown man and a few years ago I would have put a beating on all three of these shit heel thugs, but my current health was not that good and it took me twice as long as a healthy person just to walk the four or so blocks up hill to the New Genesis shelter from the Denver library. I sat down against the cement wall and just tried to recuperate from the beating I had just received.
While I was sitting up on the wall trying to regain some strength to walk the rest of the way to the shelter one of the men from the shelter walked up to me and offered me a cigarette, which I gladly accepted. The man from the shelter was nicknamed Pops because he was he was close to seventy and had the outward appearance of being fatherly. Pops asked me what had happened to me because he said I looked pretty bad. I quietly told him I got jumped for my laptop, money and bus pass. Pops shook his head as he got up from the wall and told me as he walked away if I needed anything to let him know.
Although it was now close to 9 PM, as long as I showed up at the shelter before midnight I would be ok. I didn’t feel like moving at the moment because my hip and back really hurt, and I didn’t know it, but my nose was very red, swollen and bleeding. I decided to stand up and begin making my way to the shelter so I could set my bed up and go to sleep, but as I was trying to get up, the Denver police stopped in front of me in the street and hit me with their spotlight.
I continued to stand up, and ignoring the police I began to make my way towards the shelter. Before I could take more than two or three steps I heard the voice of a police officer identify himself and order me to stay where I was. I turned around and I was immediately bathed in the police car spotlight, and before I could say anything the cops had ordered me to the wall I had just come from. I went to the wall and without being told to, I assumed the position.
As the police came closer to me they saw my bloody nose and my general condition being that of one who has been beaten up and not a drunk. At this point the police were very kind, they called an ambulance for me then called the shelter to let them know I was being taken to Denver Health room. Within a matter of about 15 minutes, I was at Denver Health Emergency, in a room waiting to be seen by a doctor.
While I waited to be seen, the whole dirty thing that had just happened to me came flooding back…Here I was now a victim while years earlier I would have been the perpetrator the police would be looking for. I was only 51, however, in my present condition I felt like a man much older…It slowly sunk into my head…I wasn’t the man I used to be. With the years of drug & alcohol abuse now taking their toll along with a major motorcycle accident and a few other serious auto accidents, my health was now on the decline and adding in diabetes, high blood pressure and chronic pain from years of abuse I was also physically fucked. I guess I might as well be totally fucked, after all I was now also homeless, had very little money and few prospects so I guess this was just one more ugly sprinkle upon my shitty cake of life!
I considered myself lucky that the doctor who saw me in the emergency room decided I needed some rest because she didn’t discharge me until around 6 AM, which allowed me to take a nice nap. Along with my discharge papers, the doctor had given me some pain medicine, a prescription for 30 pain pills, and a small bottle of six pain pills to help me until I was able to get my prescription filled.
I wandered out into the early morning and fumbled for my cell phone. I was fortunate that my muggers didn’t find that while they robbed me last night. I called the homeless shelter letting them know I was just discharged from Denver Health and was going to go to one of the day shelters for a meal. I wasn’t hungry and I knew they wouldn’t let me stay in the shelter if I was able to walk on my own, so I was going to a quiet spot in the park I knew to try and get some sleep sitting on a park bench!
While I slowly walked out of the hospital I was determined to get out of Denver, I didn’t know how, but I was leaving and that was all there was to it. I didn’t like this city, and as far as I was concerned anywhere had to be better than where I was at the moment. I felt like a total loser, but I knew that at 9 AM I would go to RiteAid at the 16th Street Mall to fill my prescription and I would then make my way to where all the dope fiends hung out at the park to sell these pills so I could get some cigarettes and a cup of coffee. I had that small bottle of six pills the discharge nurse at Denver Health had given me and that would have to be enough because I didn’t have anything to sell, and I really didn’t have any panhandling skills.
I wouldn’t get my monthly state disability check until June 2nd, so I had to make it through Memorial day weekend on whatever money I could hustle off of these 30 pain pills I would soon have, and that would have to be enough…While I didn’t think it could get any worse, this was only the beginning of my downward spiral of being homeless!
The post The Downward Spiral of Being Homeless appeared first on The Nocturnal Writer.
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