COCO AND CHILDREN

PHOTO BY RANDY BACON

COCO’S STORY

AND HER CHILDREN

There’s not one thing that led to my homelessness. I guess I would say I was ill prepared for life. I was told I was a ‘nobody’ and I was treated like a ‘nobody’. And   when you have an addiction and you don’t care about yourself and your homeless and nobody cares about you and you lose family and you lose friends...in my situation I lost everybody. I lost the only person that ever laid it down for me and said, “I am your safe harbor, you are a good person”. And after I lost them out of my life, I decided to change. I was still homeless after that, but it was the beginning of me wanting to change and become a better person. It made me stop drinking and made me stop being such a liar. It made me start identifying who I actually was and taking accountability. What ultimately made me not want to be homeless anymore was because I couldn’t lose my kids. Now I am happy to say, I am no longer homeless.

Despite the situation I came from with a very, very poor childhood, I care more about other people than I do myself. I think that shows sometimes. Like my love in unconditional and it doesn’t even have to be me knowing you, I love you even if I don’t know you.

The hardest thing about being homeless is being invisible and not existing in normal society. People overlook the fact that you exist because you are an inconvenience - you ask for things, you need help.

If I could sit here with ‘three years ago Coco’ I would tell her to stop lying to herself. And stop lying to her family and friends that were left. Because if they were left after all of that, then they were the real ones. Stop drinking. Stop running away. Stay present. Stay on top - it’s not as bad as it seems. You’re going to be okay. It’s not the end of the world. Nothing’s the end of the world - and when you hit rock bottom, just remember you don’t have to die just because you suck. There’s still good in you. It’s not the end. You can do this. I would encourage her that she could do it. That she didn’t have to settle for other people trying to do it for her. Or being in a codependent relationship because she doesn’t think she can do it alone. She can actually do it. I don’t even think three years ago I believed in myself - In actually know I didn’t, but now I do. I can now literally change the way that I’m thinking just by asserting the positive knowledge I have and I had never been able to do that. Which is cool.

My dreams for me and for the kids? I have all the dreams, because I now know everything is possible.