A full-time job you never want

So you've had uncomfortable or regrettable interactions with a homeless person.

Poor you.

Writer John Connolly paints a poignant picture for people who don't understand or don't want to understand homelessness. From Connolly's novel The Wolf in Winter:

"It's a full-time job being homeless. It's a full-time job being poor. That's what those who bitch about the underprivileged not going out there and finding work fail to understand. They have a job already, and that job is surviving. You have to get in line early for food, and earlier still for a place to sleep. You carry your possessions on your back, and when they wear out you spend time scavenging for replacements. You have only so much energy to expend, because you have only so much food to fuel your body. Most of the time you're tired, and sore, and your clothes are damp. If the cops find you sleeping on the street, they move you on. If you're lucky, they'll give you a ride to a shelter, but if there are no beds free, or no mats available on the floor you'll have to sleep sitting upright in a plastic chair in an outer office, and the lights will be on full, because that's what the fire code regulations require, so you go back out on the streets again, because at least there you can lie down in the dark, and with luck you'll sleep. Each day is the same, and each day you get a little older, and a little more tired.

"And sometimes you remember who you once were. You were a kid who played with other kids. You had a mother and a father. You wanted to be a fireman, or an astronaut, or a railroad engineer. You had a husband. You had a wife. You were loved. You could never have imagined that you would end up this way.

"You curl up in the darkness, and you wait for death to kiss you a final, blissful good night."

Even as winter gives way to warmer, hopefully brighter days, we say "thank you" to all who offer a hand up to those living the nightmare of homelessness.