From homelessness to opulence……….

Well, not really opulence but it feels that way sometimes compared to where I have been. I have been reading over the hundreds of past blog posts from my former blog Homeless and Disabled in Alabama. I kind of chuckled and reminisced over how much my life has changed in little over a year. This time last year I was sitting in a tent during a very cold winter wondering what to do. Now I am enrolled in college and soon to have a modest home and car that are in very good shape. If you ever find yourself homeless or destitute never let anyone tell you that it can’t be done; getting a home and turning around your life that is.

I am sure there would be some that would be quick to point out that much of this is due to my families and my friend’s generosity and that is true to an extent. A lot of it also had to do with me getting stable on my medications and staying consistently sober for my medications to work. Staying sober and getting stable on a medication that works for me was, by far, much harder than going back to school or gaining a home. Without those two things none of this would have worked. It showed my family and friends that I was truly trying to improve myself and they soon realized that with their help I could succeed. I was the one that had to do the hard work though.

Tonight’s upcoming cold front reminded me of those colds days last winter trying to stay warm around a campfire. I remember vividly dreading such changes in the weather as they brought discomfort and inconvenience. Now, all I have to do is shut the door to the cold and turn up the heat. I no longer have to resort to crawling in my sleeping bag early in the evening even though I wasn’t sleepy to stay warm. Many hours I spent laying there in that bag with nothing but depressing thoughts and seemingly insurmountable obstacles on my mind.

The other day I was cleaning out my camping backpack and organizing all my gear. At the bottom of the main compartment of my pack was a notebook where I had written handwritten posts sitting next to the campfire when I was homeless to be transcribed into my blog. Many of these never made it to print as I would forget the notebook back at my campsite or wouldn’t have the energy to transcribe them once I arrived here and snuck into the house. Here is one of those posts. Please don’t laugh at my amateurish writing. Much has changed in a year. The only corrections I have done are to fix the many spelling errors and to clarify a few things.

I can’t describe the cold this morning. It was brutal. The little, clip on thermometer on my backpack read 26 degrees. I didn’t want to get out of my sleeping bag but I was hungry and hoped a fire would warm me up. I had a fire ready to go for in the morning but I had a hard time getting it lit. The kindling and branches were covered in a heavy frost. Finally, after much cursing and a sore thumb I got my bic (lighter) to light the pinestraw and I started to pile it on to get a fire roaring.