This is a journal of my time as a homeless college student in Boston.
In the morning I kept telling myself that if I could survive two nights, then I could survive the day. It had been five days since my last shower, and the gym and my school did not open for another day. I would have to drag out another day with a burning scalp and dry, ashy skin. But I live in Boston, where people are kind and polite. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll find someone who’d be willing to give me a job.
Although my feet ached and blistered, I continued on. This time a direction opposite from the area where I looked for a job. West from Boston Common, are many stores and restaurants. Unfortunately they were the higher end stores. Channel, Michael Khors, etcetera. The point was that I did not fit the mold of someone working in any of these stores. How were these people blessed to live in a city so beautiful by day, work in jobs many yearn for, regardless of money, and somehow go to a home, with a warm bed and a pillow to hold their heads high.
What little money I had began to diminish and I knew that if I didn’t find a way for money soon one of two things would happen. I’d go back home, tail between my legs and seven thousand dollars in debt from a private student loan, or starve in the streets, dirty, and possibly go mad like may of the homeless here. Some of them bark at people who we cannot see. Others recite the same speech over and over, as if they’ve taken brain damage and that speech was all they could articulate, the rest, however, shut themselves from the world and murmur to inner voices that speak to them in demon’s tongues.
God, how I feared my own demon speaking to me. I feared losing the line of fantasy and reality, with my writing possibly being the only thing that holds the balance with great effort.
I gave up my job search for the day. I couldn’t take another “polite” rejection. I sat alone in the park, on the verge of tears while tourists took pictures and talked amongst themselves. Occasionally, some would look upon me, and in their minds, I knew they questioned my existence—just like I have since I got here.
I want to be successful. I want to write the millions of books in my head, and somehow touch billions of lives. I want to have many friends and learn to laugh and love. For most of my life I’ve spent pent up in a box that was my room, writing stories of other’s lives. I would like to not end my life so soon and return into a wooden box under six feet of dirt, and broken dreams.
I couldn’t take the eyes of tourists. I left, to a graveyard nearby. No one was around. It must have the tour guide’s lunch break. I looked at each headstone, both admiring and questioning the authenticity. I knew maybe two of the forty dead men in this grave. But at the back, up against a brick wall I noticed two headstones, with a mound, between the two, broken and missing the top half where names would have been written on. The distance from these two particular graves were closer compared to the rest. Then, I realized there was a stump in the mound. Wooden and very old, and almost petrified. The wood itself was a dark black, save for a feint marking of a red letter.
“Be True! Be True! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, some semblance whereby the worst may be inferred.” The scarlet letter. I felt it weight heavily down in my chest. But what did my ‘A’ stand for? What crime did I commit against this city?
“Be True! Be True! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, some semblance whereby the worst may be inferred.”
Night slowly approached. I returned to the bus station, but before venturing behind the train station, I decided to enter the terminal. No one sad anything. No one batted an eye to me. I found solace for the time being, still keeping my thoughts to that scarlet letter. I pressed my hand against my chest and thought of a word—a strength so I could bare with for the upcoming days.
And then I thought of it.
Aberration.
Aberration.
Aberration.
I am an aberration compared to anyone in this town. I am homeless yet I do not beg. I am well off, yet I have no sanctuary. I do not fit into any of the molds of anyone in this city. As I left the terminal and returned to my concrete bed, I thought of my new identity. I smiled at what many could think of as a flaw. And if it is a flaw in our society, so be it, I will not show any less of my worst to the world.
When my eyes opened to another day, I was met with light rain. Something I hadn’t seen a long time. I had hoped, that this was a sign from God.