More Homeless Adventures

On Friday night at a laundromat near the grocery store, I was with a friend and we were doing our laundry where the only other person there was a homeless man who spent most of his time talking to himself.

After awhile, the man approached us, when our backs were turned and started up a conversation of sorts. He told us that he had no place to go, so he stayed there until the cops came and took him away. It's cold, he kept telling us, and too cold to sleep at night on the streets.

I asked about various shelters that he could stay at, and he indicated that they were no good. He spoke very softly, so it was hard for me to completely understand what he was saying.

What I did understand was that he has been living on the streets for years and that he was afraid of what he would do to himself. He told us a story of how Satan (I believe it was Satan) came up to him and told him to commit suicide by drinking car battery acid and told him where to go and do it. He did and was rushed to the Somerville Emergency Room. There they asked him why he did such a thing, and he just told them that he didn't know, because he knew that they'd think that he was crazy if he told him that Satan told him to do it.

It must be awful to have enough sanity to realize that you are slipping away.

At one point in time he made the exclamation "oi, oi, oi" in addition to several phrasings in English that American speakers do not use. He sounded just like my students in Ukraine. A kind woman came in and had bought him some food from the grocery store next door and said, "here Vitaliy." So, when I got the chance I asked him where he was from in Russian. He was confused and responded some stuff in French. I asked in English and he told me Russia. I asked if he spoke Russian, and with a small light in his eyes he threw back his head and said in Russian "of course!" and we conversed briefly, but he switched almost immediately back into English, saying that he has an easier time expressing himself in English now.

Before he left to go and find some basement to sleep in, he left us with some advice: "People create problems for themselves, they fight, argue, drink, and so on. Don't create problems for yourselves." He reiterated this several times, about the importance of not creating turmoil in your life.

I have seen others fall into the hole that Vitaliy warned against, and it is very hard to pull someone out of that hole who can't recognize the problems that they are creating for themselves.

But I suppose that one day, like Vitaliy, they'll discover that a lot of the unhappiness that they have was created only by themselves. The trick is to realize this problem before you get to the point where he is and that in many ways, no one is immune.