CAROLE

CAROLE’S STORY

Well because I was very young when I got kicked out of school for being pregnant, my son actually went to go live with his dad since I wasn’t old enough to hold a full time job and take care of him. And then I got pregnant again with my daughter 8 years later. Her and I did really good for a while and then I got really sick with cancer, and I had a very abusive husband, so I sent my daughter to live with my mom. I finally managed to get away from my stalking, abusive husband, who I am still technically married to because he won’t give me a divorce. But with a seizure disorder, the cancer and the spinal fluid that builds up in my brain, I can’t get a full time job. And I’ve been denied disability several different times and I’ve had my Medicaid taken away from me because I don’t have an eligible child in the home, so it’s real hard to get ahead, to do anything actually. I just recently got my Medicaid back but it still won’t cover my chemo. I’ve been through it twice already and had two surgeries but I’ve gotta go through it again, and the Medicaid won’t cover it. Without a job or other income I can’t pay the extra so I can’t get my treatments. Without treatments, there are days I can’t even get out of bed. So I couch surf, thank God for the friends and family that I have, street family that I’ve made being out here on the streets for five years that let me sleep on their couch, especially when it’s cold outside.

My little girl, she’s 15 now, was out here on the streets with me in the beginning. We stayed in a tent city out by Walmart. We helped build that place. I had DFS called on me a couple of times but they told me she was better taken care of out there than most kids are on the inside. They never did take her. But then when the cops took that camp away from us and bulldozed it down, and I was floating around with no steady place to live, I sent her back to my mom because it’s better for her.

It is so hard being homeless and not knowing where your next meal’s gonna come from, not knowing if you’re gonna be safe each night. I’ve been raped twice out here in the last three years and my little girl was raped a year ago. You know it’s the fear of not knowing if you’re gonna be okay. Also, if people are not part of our homeless community, they are so judgmental. And that’s what we call it, our community, because if we don’t stick together, we don’t survive. We’ve lost several because they split off to go do their own thing and inevitably we find out that they’ve died somewhere along the way, because they didn’t have somebody else there to help them. Society is very judgmental. And like I’m sure you’ve heard several times, we’re considered drunks and dope heads, and don’t get me wrong, most of us have had our ups and downs with alcohol or drugs of some sort. But when society shuns and refuses to help you, you end up in the hospital, you look for something to kill the pain or something to keep you warm. And inevitably it’s drugs or alcohol that does it. I’ve had my ups and downs with methamphetamines off or on for the last 10 years, and I have to say it’s the only damn thing I found that helps kill my pain, the actual physical pain of the cancer, so that I can get up and function. You know, does that make me a functioning addict in some people’s eyes? Yes. And in other people’s eyes it just makes me a dope head.

I’ve learned that there are lots of ways to survive off the land. It’s not all about technology or what you can get from other people, because God actually provides what you need, if you just open your eyes to it. There are ways to get by with what we are provided but you have to look for it and know how to use it. A lot of us, we live without our phones, we live without TV, we live without all that. And we get to know each other on a personal basis. You see these other people that were born with a silver spoon in their mouth, but we were born with a wooden spoon across our ass, pardon my language. However, we can’t just sit back and let things happen for us. We have to go out and get it.

I want people to know that no matter what my physical ailments might be, or the hardships I’ve lived, that I still do my best to show everybody an equal amount of love and do my best to help others, whether I’m in a position to do so or not. That’s what it’s supposed to be about. Mankind helping mankind. I just wish to God that everyone could learn the things I have without going through the hardships that I’ve lived through.