Diary of a Homeless Man Pt III

Day 3 in the bedsit house...

Well maybe not so much in it as out of it. We decided to venture out to church today so my mom picked us up. We ended up spending the day with her and my niece which was nice because we ended up with a nice, warm, home cooked meal. Little things like that we tend to take for granted are a rare and precious treasure when you lack the ability to have them on demand.

Oh! I almost forgot. We now have a working fridge in which we can keep things and boy was it needed. We have the window open all night (as well as one eye to make sure nobody climbs in said window) to get rid of the smell of tobacco as well as to try and cool the room down, but you may as well through an ice cube into the desert and expect it to become the arctic for all the effect it is having. Picture this if you will: you buy your wife/husband/significant other a chocolate bar as a treat and leave it on a shelf overnight. When you wake in the morning what you discover is that you did not buy your wife a chocolate bar but a chocolate milkshake. However it isn't all that bad having such a hot room. Drying clothes is quick and free!

We have decided that we are going to remain positive through all of this. Someone said to me today "These are the things that will bind you [me and the wife] together.". Although how they would know this seeing as they are as likely to be homeless as a black homosexual jew is likely to be Grand Dragon of the KKK. And if I am totally honest, i have to admit that I disagree with the sentiments of such a statement. Where as I do not believe it is things like this that will bind us together, I do believe that if we allowed it, it is things like this that would pull us apart.

It is this thought that makes me contemplate the different needs for different groups that are made homeless, and although there is a lot of help and concern for young, single people nobody seems to address the needs of the couples out there and the added stress and complications thatsingletons do not have to contend with. I can understand how people can become despairing and depressed if they find themselves in a similar situation to which I find myself.

But even now as I look at my little man curled up asleep on his mothers chest (who also happens to be asleep) I know despair is a luxury I cannot afford and depression is a road I will not travel. I have hope.

I have them.

Diary of a Homeless Man

Day two in the bedsit. (Imagine that said by the narrator of Big Brother!)

Well I guess its pretty apparent that nobody climbed through the window last night and killed us, although with the amount of sirens that I heard last night statistically speaking at least one of them should have been for me. The noise of emergency services sirens was incessant and did keep me up tossing and turning a fair bit in between changing diapers.

It was a pretty rough night for the little one. Perhaps he was feeling displaced or maybe like his parents he knows he shouldnt be here. Still, should and shouldn't dont play a part in any of this. All that matters is what is; and what is is that I and my fledgling family are homeless.

Everytime I say those words there is a flush as crimson as blood that floods my face whilst the searing heat of embarassment rushes from the soles of my feet to the crown of my head. the irony is not lost on me - a beggar with a crown? Could anything be more humiliating than having to say those words to anyone? Could anything de-masculate a man more than the failure to provide for his family their basic needs?

But self pity has no place in my life and my shame and embarassment is no longer for myself but for those that profess to be Christians. Those that would stand up and teach what it means to be a christian, those that would claim to baptise in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit yet at best be so cold, callous and insensitive? My plight is not of my own making and I will not let my circumstances allow me bury that fact under rightous self pity. The shame is on Newbold College and a number of people in positions of power within the Seventh Day Adventist Church to bear; it just so happens that my burdens arise out of their shameless actions.

The four walls that surround me will never dictate my worth no matter how small or how expansive they may be. Nor will the actions of loveless and compassionless people.

And so, for these reasons and a few others of which boredom was one, we spent the day walking around the local shopping district window shopping and talking. Ladies, if you feel like your husband is not listening to you then become homeless. then he has nothing else to do but listen to you! Still all things considered it was a pleasant day.

Now if I can just get past all the sirens, who knows - it may even be a pleasant night!

Diary of a Homeless Man

Well it is the first night in the bedsit. It is bigger and cleaner than I expected, but no matter how much air freshener they spray it cannot mask the smell of stale cigarette smoke that lingers like the pain of a bad break up.

After some creative packing we have managed to get our belongings arranged in a manner that will allow us to move around without stubbing our toes. That said, it would be a brave man or woman to walk around this place barefoot. No matter how pleasantly surprised I am by this place it is still a dive and I have no idea what happened in this room before we moved in. But judging by the drug dealers dealing without shame or fear right outside the door, and the young man high on the sofa in the foyer, I would understandably prefer to err on the side of caution.

There is no source of entertainment in the room, and seeing as the wife is still recovering from giving birth, there truly is no entertainment in this room! I guess I will ask my mom to drop off my TV and Playstation so we can watch some DVD's.

I have been debating with both the wife and myself whether its safe to open the windows and let some fresh air in in an attempt to shift the smell of tobacco that clings to everything in the room. Our final conclusion is that we are more likely to die from the overpowering smell of cigarettes than somebody climbing through the window and murdering us in our sleep for our possessions. Imagine that: if we don't open the window we will possibly become the first people in Britain to die from fourth hand smoke; and if we do open it and someone kills us for our possessions, well we actually found someone worse off than us. Damned if we do... Damned if we don't.

Part of me wonders why I am not more angry at Newbold or even the Seventh-day Adventist Church for placing me and my family in this position. I have been telling myself it is due to the fact we have a written apology from those heartless people that willingly and actively made me, my wife and my newborn baby homeless, but as I lie here in this squalor, displaced, poor, crowded and without a clue as to what tomorrow holds, I realize that I am strangely calm on the inside. I am at peace with myself, my God and my family despite the storm around me. Perhaps this is the peace that the bible talks of; a peace that will pass all understanding. Perhaps this is what it means to smile at the storm when Jesus is in the vessel. All I know is that more and more as every day goes by I become more and more aware that I am poor, but despite my poverty I am truly blessed beyond measure.

God has promised to provide my needs and I know he will.

Piggy Flu and X-Factor... Talk about sweet and sour!

Well well well... life sure is funny. Just when you think it can't get any harder, it suddenly does. My plate has been full of many personal issues right now, and despite having deadline to make, I get laid low with swine flu. That's right the dreaded piggy flu.

And ladies, if you thought man flu was bad... well wait till you see your man with swine flu. I swear if it came to a choice of swine flu and castration I would need about 2 seconds to consider my answer before I chose swine flu. But the mere fact that a man, any man - gay or straight - would even take the time to consider castration as a viable option should demonstrate the potency of this deadly disease!

But lets be realistic... although it might be considered, castration will never ever ever ever ever ever ... And once again I stress the ever, be chosen as a final outcome by any man. After all without his mini me a man is not a man, he simply becomes a woman in pants!

Anyhoo.. I am feeling much better as you can tell, so on to another topic... and one which is going to make me want to bang my head with frustration in the coming months... X-Factor! It is finally back... but what are those judges doing? Some of their decisions for the final twelve contestant would make a crackhead ask them where they got their 'good stuff' from. I mean come on Louis! Those twins. Seriously?

Simon Cowell was understating the matter when he called them vile and commented that they would sell their own mother for a chance on X-Factor. Not only are they vile they are talentless... So why Louis? Why??? The only explanation I could come up with is that Louis has a fantasy involving twins, and rather than sell their mother, those two Irish Chucky lookalikes sold something a lot closer to home.

Well I guess if they ever win X-Factor they could be the new face of Huggies diapers!

My money on the winner has to be Jaime. Thats right. I am making the early call for Mr Afro to come up good. I sure hope he does, because I don't think I have seen him cry yet... And I hate cry babies. So, let me translate that... I can't stand the rest of the contestants 'cause they cry to much. Waaaayyyy too much. Some of them I think auditioned for the wrong Simon Cowell show if you ask me. I think they got confused with Britain's Got Talent... To cry as much as they do is undoubtedly a talent. Forget Justin Timberlake's river, some of them have cried the Pacific Ocean and we haven't even reached the live shows yet. In the coming months expect a sudden and dramatic rise in sea levels!

Oh... this years Diana Vickers has to be that Welsh girl. I can just tell she is going to irritate me. Not that that is saying much. I get irritated by most things....

The Time Machine...

If one existed, would you go back in time and change your life? If you did what would you change? Would the butterfly effect be true, and if so what impact would it have on those around you?

Life is a funny thing. Often we make decisions without knowing their true consequences, and then for the rest of our lives we are forced to live those consequences. Some are positive.

Some are not so positive.

If I had a time machine, there are somethings I would want to do differently, but how do I determine a starting point, without having a detrimental effect on those that I care about?

I don't know the answer to that question. And I dont have a time machine either.

But what I do have is right now. This very second. This very minute. This very hour.

I don't have to go back in time to try and rectify my mistakes.

I can begin this very moment.

The Marginalization of Men

Let me begin this by saying the oppression of women throughout history is wrong. To deprive them of a voice and not give them a vote is wrong. To feel and treat them as worth less than men due to their sex is wrong. There is no excuse or justification for how they have been treated. Having established this, I hope that any women reading this will keep that in the back of their minds and hopefully see the point that I am trying to make. I would also like to make it clear that for the sake of brevity I am not elaborating on a lot of things.

It is my assertion that with the feminism and its associated brand of equality, that men have become displaced and increasingly been pushed to the margins of society to the point that it is necessary to take a long hard look at gender roles within society and either return or redefine them.

This all begins with women gaining, and rightly so, the vote. However it is not this alone, it goes hand in hand with them gaining education, the right to work, equal pay etc etc without addressing or looking how these will impact on roles within society. Any of these rights on their own would not have caused a dramatic shift in the status quo, and as said some were rightly needed but the culminated effect of all of these would in turn have a catastrophic effect on society as we know it.

As women gained more and more rights feminism cultivated the mentality that men were not needed or obsolete. After all if a woman wanted something, she could get it for herself. And as for reproduction, isn't that what sperm banks and IVF were created for? This poses the question about men: What is their role? It is no longer one of provider. Women earn their own pay checks. It was no longer as protector; as they now vote and are treated as equals. It was no longer as father to a woman's children because now fathers are not essential to the process.

This insular approach that has developed is not limited to women. As women became more insular and believing in the idea that they could do it all alone, men's belief that they were redundant grew, and out of this feeling of being obsolete the idea that they only needed to concentrate on themselves and their own desires grew even greater. (Under the previous status quo men were very much focused on their own desires, this was simply exagerated because of the break down in traditional roles). So faced with both genders concentrating on themselves, the gulf between the sexes grew greater, and this translated even into relationships.

Now the belief is that you can have a relationship where the focus is the individual, and yet you are truly a 'couple' as opposed to simply two individuals that made the decision to live under the same roof and sleep in the same bed. This means that both people feel they can have a career and their home life will not suffer. That both people can lead seperate lives and the bond between them will not grow any weaker. The reality of society today however does not bear these concepts to be true. We are plagued with children that have no supervision. After school they are left to their own devices, nobody is home to help them with their home work. Nobody is home to provide them guidance. Nobody is at home to take the most basic of interest in them. (Admittedly sometimes it is both parents work out of necessity to pay the bills, but many times both work to achieve material dreams that are not essential and are achieved at the detriment of their children.)

It is my belief that the roles that men and women stem from the critical difference between them: namely the fact that one can bear children, where as the other cannot. Logically it would make sense that as there would be periods throughout a woman's life where she could not have children, that she would take care of the home and the man, able to work all year round would do so. However with the changes in society and laws, along with the introduction of maternity pay this is no longer necessary and as such it may be necessary to look at and redefine the gender roles. I am not saying that men should necessarily return to being the bread winners and that women should be pregnant, barefoot and in the kitchen. Perhaps it may make more sense to reverse the roles especially in light of maternity pay. What I do believe is that there is a need for the traditional roles of provider and care giver to be maintained as they will help address many of the societal problems that we face today, but whether they are established based on sex or another criteria... that is not a question for me to answer.

"Love yourself first..."

I am sick and tired of this being bandied about in connection to relationships. I am also sick of hearing that relationships are all about 'me'.

It is precisely these attitudes that lead to the break down of marriages and relationships, and until the focus shifts away from our own selfish desires, people are destined to have yet more and more heartache.

Now don't get it twisted. I am not advocating a relationship in which you are not aware of your worth and so allow a partner or spouse to treat you anyway they feel. That is not healthy nor productive. What I am promoting is relationships in which both parties consider the other person's needs and then desires before their own. In doing so it is possible to reach a compromise that does not leave one party feeling as though what they want from life and from the relationship is of no consequence. By constantly saying and viewing the other parties needs as paramount it builds the self confidence and self worth of the other person up as they constantly feel loved and valued, and in a relationship where both parties adopt a similar approach it leads to a relationship that is full of growth.

The belief that relationships are about 'me' leads to a person entering a relationship questioning "What can I get out of this relationship?" as opposed to a much healthier question of "What can I give to this relationship?". Relationships should not just be about feelings, but they should be about growth; both as individuals and as a couple. However in order to do so, at times hard questions need to be asked. The first one being "Is this person right for me?" followed swiftly by "Am I right for this person?". By as much as humanly possible removing emotions from the equation and looking pragmatically and analytically at characteristics it lessens the chance of heartbreak further down the line. A relationship should be based on more than emotions, it should be based on commitment. How often do you hear the line "I just don't love you any more.", or "We just fell out of love" as the reasons behind the breakdown of a relationship? It is because often, albeit not always, these relationships were built on nothing more than intimate feelings. The problem is that when these feelings had been worn away by working pressures, the passage of time and the inevitable knowledge of knowing what the other person was going to say and do before they did it, people are too often left with the harsh reality that they have nothing in common. In fact they are often polar opposites slowly drifting further and further apart.

There are those that might look at the approach of saying that love is not enough to base a relationship on and say "It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all."; and although there is a strong argument for such sentiments, if you truly love someone, would you knowingly cause them pain to give yourself temporary pleasure?

Loving yourself is not about saying "I am the MOST important person", it is about saying "I AM important", but so often people tend to miss the subtle yet critical difference between these two statements. Loving yourself if about understanding your worth as an individual, but within the context of a relationship it should not have much standing if you have asked the hard questions before entering even the relationship.

Why?

Because you will not need to tell yourself constantly that you are loved and valued, you will not need to reassure yourself that you are important and that the relationship is all about you.

You will feel it.