Devil on your shoulder

I have been working around addicts since before I had less than six months clean. I consider myself to be relatively jaded however my walk to work today provided some new levels of sadness. First of all, in the San Francisco Bay Area we have a train system known as the Bay Area Rapid Transit or BART. This BART is not to be mistaken with the other BAART. The other BAART is a string of methadone business well honed into a money making machine. Anyway, upon arrival at BART, the smell of piss is completely overwhelming. Three of our four escalators are out of service. It was recently documented in sensational headlines that the escalators are breaking beacuse they are getting clogged up with urine and feces. I hope you are not eating breakfast readers. That is the reality.

As i got a few blocks closer, there was a man standing in front of the donut shop. I smelled him long before i saw him. he smelled like feces from a half a block away. This many clearly had a devil on his shoulder.  He has some sort of mental illness tormenting him. The devil sits on his shoulder whispering hateful things into his ear. And all the while he listens, unable to to raise his voice loud enough to create a silence. San Francisco is full of people like this man. they can function JUST ENOUGH to stay out of the hospital but have issues taking care of them selves on a daily basis.

Finally, as I turned the corner, I saw a homeless nest where a woman was camped nect to her wheelchair shooting dope next to her dog. None of these things should shock me anymore. I see all of them on a daily basis. I try to help my little corner of the world. The saturation here can be so overwhelming at times. Sometimes, I cry for the dogs because I can no longer relate to the people. I have lived in many states, many places. I have visited slums, housing projects and crack dens. But this is all out in the open. When people focus on the tragedies of the world, I see the tragedies at home- the devil  on the shoulder.

Comments

  1. AnonymousApril 27, 2013 at 6:44 AM

    At least this person had the courtesy to put the cap back on the needle he discarded. Hehe

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. traceyh415April 27, 2013 at 10:49 AM

      I think it the same guy from the stray cat story

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Black Tar Heroin 10 questions answered

Image
I want to get this in one place. Here you go When was the film made? The film was made from Dec 1995 to Dec 1997. Originally the film was supposed to be for one year but I believe when HBO picked up the film they wanted two years. How were you picked for the film? Steven met a bunch of different people at the youth needle exchange. He wanted subjects that were slightly younger than me. He filmed a few other people  that never made it into the final film Were you paid for the film? No. I was not paid for the film. he bought me a hotel to stay in for a week and bought me lunch a few times. I think they left some money for me when I was in jail too. Documentary film makers, in general, don't pay their subjects. Was I friends with the other people from the film ? Sort of. I never knew Alice. I met Oreo when he was 15 or 16. He was VERY young when the film was made. His mom used to work the desk in one of the hotels I lived in. Jake and I used to hang out. At one point h...
Read more

Ben (revised)

Image
Ben was heroin addled fantasy from a time when I would rather be with someone that barely loved me than be alone. I had just been released from jail after six long months. I had been using in the jail up until the last 45 days. This is did not give me much time to construct any type of recovery. I had spent most my time of planning for things that would never happen. My first week in jail was spent recovering from surgery. When I was arrested, I had four large abcesses. An abcess is a place where bacteria gets under the skin and the flesh starts to rot. I had to have surgery on my arm. When I took of the bandage, I cried. Not because I was in the hospital, not because I was in jail. I cried because they had sliced open my tattoo! The horror of it all. I used to take a sterile needle and cut them open myself. Needless to say, my nickname was the abcess queen. When I was back on the streets, I felt hopeless. I gave up my homeless encampment living for a hotel with some financial ...
Read more

Jamie

   Being able to fall apart is a luxury many people don’t have. They carry their burdens until it breaks them.  Miss Jamie was one of the most aesthetically pleasing  women I had ever seen in my life. She simply glowed. When she entered a room, everyone had to stop to pay attention. She took that space over. Her smile was radiant. Her energy was infectious. She was a fireball of a human. Her petite frame was always draped with carefully selected skirts, dresses, and form fitting sweaters. She paired this with her signature plum lipstick and acrylics.  She always came late in the day, usually when I had the lowest energy. Yet, I never refused her entrance. I was happy to see her. Happy to listen to her while she held court in my desk area.      On this day, Jamie was wheeled into the clinic by a person I had never seen before. Instead of scrubs, he looked as if he had woken up on the streets. He looked left like a caretaker, more like a pe...
Read more