Sunday, September 14, 2003
last night was heller long. when i went to bed at 4 a.m. after listening for over two hours to constant talk. angel, 27, lover has left, doesn't know where he is, using speed, wanted me "to get him off drugs." his body is bruised and cut up all over from injections, and he is just grasping for straws.; jh, 21, talked to me about his guilt over things he had done, fear of going to hell, and cannot let go of his past, he has much self hatred. i talked of our humanity, that all of us humans have pasts, and that we have to let it go to the grace of God and move on, that from each new experience we learn and how i have found him to be loving and caring. he talked of how he only feels comfortable in areas of like polk street, santa monica blvc. where "i am accepted for who i am." true, that is one is accepted but that acceptance is also one that has indifference, in that most people are in their own worlds trying just to survive. there is a romance to living on the edge, and when there is an addiction to that romance. i often joke that i have found an appropriate way to live on the streets. i find myself really quiet bored and at loose ends after a while in a straight edge environment. for my friend here the reality is that he has lived in this world so long, has no job skills, uses drugs to self-medicate and has so much self-hatred that it will be almost neigh unto impossible to move beyond the world of the streets. he is so filled with the bull shit of heaven and hell, sin and damanation, and to journey with him in finding a God of grace is a very slow and long process. it is in finding that God of grace that he will find release and hope. i think even though they drain me that moments of entering into some ones journey in that intense a manor are moments when i find Jesus so real. in that suffering there is a sense of that divine presence suffing in the ups and downs of that pain. and so to those who wonder if people on the streets are spiritual my answer is hell yea, that is where God is the most real, because that is all they have is God.
and then my young friend josiah, who just got out of prison, who insists on "how much he has changed," is back at the bars, doing dates and my guess is drugs. there are such demons within him that draws him back into the scene that leads to his self-detruction over and over. such demons of loneliness, of self hatred, of finding a place to make money. jobs for an ex con are hard to find, and so it is so much easier to return to prostitution, and for him the streets are exciting, and he is coming out, but has so much internal homophobia that he just turns it on to himself and resorts to these self-destructive ways. it really tears me a part to see someone i have loved since he was 13 to cycle into behavior that will lead him back to prison and to so much pain and misery. he cannot or will not look into himself to face those demons. and so now i must ride the monsters with him, oh the pain.
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