Sometimes Unnerving, Often Beautiful
The homeless women I see every day have no place of their own, no time to their selves, and so it is not uncommon for some to become totally undone once they close the shower curtain and turn on the water. For them, the shower is a place of soul-bearing honesty and comfort in a world of harsh public vulnerability. A person who seemed lucid and strong a minute before can easily dissolve into raw emotion. I hear them talk to themselves, laugh, cackle, cry and sob, one woman howls rather heatedly, another moans in what sounds like pure agony. But regardless of their state prior to showering, and the weirdness projected during, their spirit is always noticeably higher afterwards. The dirt-and-sorrows-of-the-world analogy is quite obvious, but it really is wonderful to witness.
January 24th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
I wonder if this is kind of a context specific equivalent of singing in the shower.
January 24th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
I guess. Some of them do that, too.
January 25th, 2007 at 11:40 am
When my wife and I would eat at Carrows, often a homeless woman would wait outside and ask people for their left overs. The stuff I couldn’t eat at one setting, might be her big meal for several days. I always gave what I had to her. It’s amazing how much a home shapes us, how much a comfortable life shields us from what it must take to sit outside a Carrows and ask strangers for their left overs. I walk thirty feet from my work room and I have a shower.
To be homeless has to do something to your humanity, how you hold the world in your head in spatial ways. I remember looking at that woman like she was a lost pet or something ,and I was feeding her from the table . Only reading about what a shower could mean to a homeless person now (however they celebrate it) helps me realize the Carrows lady was always a human being. I feel bad that I forgot that for one minute. How could that happen? I hope I never do it again.
January 29th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
From a homeless persons point of view, a shower feels like a nice little trip back from your feral surroundings. Followed shortly by the rage inside that you’ve gone this long without it. Self loathing, bitterness. It’s a nasty fucking cycle. Most of us wanted to feel like animals. We wanted to drive ourselves further into that ditch. The pain was the only thing that kept us alive, because we could no longer see the good in ourselves. No longer look forward to things that used to make us happy. I used to look at my fellow street urchins and feel myself reflected in their own eyes. That dead feeling you just want to go away. And the happy ones just made us sicker. But now that I’ve sought mental health treatment, etc.., worked to put my life in a far more managable light, It just makes those instances when I can help all the more richer. That’s what it’s really about.
February 27th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
Even the shitty days are rewarding.