‘I Will Ask Myself More Compassionate Questions’: Readers React to a Story About Homelessness

Mar 12, 2018 · 2 comments
Johannes van der Sluijs (E.U.)
The core issue making us feel forced to drop out: a lack of trust whether our contributions and our beingness will be valued, received, appreciated, rewarded; that there's enough to include us in the pool of recipients of what's available from generous hands. If everybody struggles to notice fellow human value, especially the one that's already eschewed as dysfunctional or unworthy by an unsuccessful socializing process in the past, and if everybody feels chronically left with a poor supply of quality time, shared in friendship or love, or of other gifts to share or to reward with, we the drop-outs are the last to feel entitled to bother you with what we have to offer, so we voluntarily sideline ourselves (in borderline clothes, to corners, sidewalks, comment sections), inviting you to mirror that perception and sideline us right back in your act of passing. If you bite our invitation to role play, you show you think there ain't enough for everyone either and that you don't trust your contribution to us will be valued properly and make a true difference either: you unconsciously play perfect mirror, sleepwalking right past an opportunity to awake. What a beauty you are to fail to kiss the daily beast into beauty! Restoring what fails at core here, trust, begins with showing trust that your effort in communicating humanity and interhuman appreciation will not turn out a waste. How come you ever acted as if such an outcome could be the case? Do you have a trust issue? Oh, burn!
Eugenia Renskoff (NYC)
Hi, I myself am and have been a homeless woman. My situation is still insecure. I feel that many people don't understand homelessness and what it can do to a person. Sometimes the most important thing is to be able to take a shower and feel like a human being again. The experience of not having a home marks your life forever. It never goes away, no matter where you go or what you do. I never met Nakesha but I would have enjoyed talking with her as we have/had the same tastes in literature. For whatever reason, she had demons that would not disappear. I feel that when she talked to herself, she felt comfort in some way. May she rest in Peace. Eugenia Renskoff