Discovering Jesus daily

Week of February 7, 2006 - Session 3

Poverty Is Not a Crime: Eddie's Letter

C-1

I’ve known Eddie for a long time. He wrote the following for me. It is a story that explains the struggles of the man and what makes up his heart. It is a poignant response to those who so blithely dismiss the homeless. 

My name is Eddie. I have a disabi1ity. It’s Depression and Paranoia. As a little boy I was beat and punished for wetting the bed. I think I was three or four years old. ‘When my sister and I went to live with my aunt, I think that’s when Paranoia/Depression came into my life. My sister would have to clean up the whole house and I would have to go to work in the cotton fields with my aunt. She said we would have to work for our room and board. I had a bed-wetting problem, to where I ruined the bed. She and my cousin would beat me with a stick/cord/belt across my back, legs, and buttocks. After the beatings she would punish me by making me kneel on the concrete floor all day without moving from that position. She would also punish me other ways. Once she put a live frog down my pants. She said I would have to keep it there all day. I jumped up and down and ran around, thinking the frog was going to eat me alive. I started screaming and crying. I ran to the bathroom and I threw the frog out the window. My cousin ran be­hind me and thought I threw the frog down the toilet and flushed it. So he grabbed me by the hair and pushed my head down the toilet and flushed it several times. I struggled for air and I must have hit him, because the next day I woke up in the closet with bruises on me. My sister was crying, saying, “I will get us out of here someday.”

One time my aunt made one of my cousins pee in a glass and I was to drink it or get a beating and have to kneel on the concrete floor. I didn’t want to kneel on the concrete floor because my knees were bleeding from kneeling so long. So I drank it.

One time I had to use the bathroom and I was too far from the house and I shit in my pants. When I got home, my aunt made me take a bath, but before I was to eat it or get a beating. I put it in my mouth and tasted it. I don’t think I ate it. I woke up in the closet again with bruises.

One time my aunt made me dress in girls’ clothes and sent me out­side where everyone could see me. I was so embarrassed that day.

Another time my aunt called me from the playground where I usually played by myself. I ran home because I didn’t want to upset my aunt or she would either pinch me or slap me. I didn’t know she had cut the cord to the plug of the washing machine. There was a puddle of water on the ground. She also had an audience of people in her room, so I plugged in the plug to the socket and it shocked the life out of me. It threw me about five feet away. They all started laughing at me. All I could do was cry.

One time when I was getting a beating my sister said she would do anything if they would stop beating me. One time someone told me to go out and play and when I snuck up to the back door and I looked inside, someone was molesting my sister. I didn’t do or say anything.

One time my aunt made me sit on the toilet all night long. My sister and I finally ran away from there to my dad’s. At fifteen years old my dad put me to work for him on the fishing boat because I was having troubles at school. [It was that] or go to reform school for bad boys. I cried because no one knew I had a disability or sent me to a doctor. I cried some more. I swallowed my hopes and dreams. My dad asked me why I was withdrawing from everyone and I told him the story and he said I was lying so I was treated like an outsider. I always was trying to be the best that I could for everyone but never amounting to shit. At thirteen years old I was drinking with a man, a wino who would buy my beers for me. At eighteen years old I was a full-blown alcoholic. When I turned twenty years old I left my dad’s home. Before I left, my stepmother asked me why do you have to leave. I said I was going to find my­self. I didn’t go looking for myself. I went to find something more precious than that. I was looking for my spirit that someone stole. I was getting into trouble with the law from the time I was twenty to the time I was forty-five. I also lived on the streets for twenty years. With no education and no skills I first had to sell myself or sell drugs to make it on the streets. No one gives you shit or gives a shit about you.

But I’m off the streets for now. But I know there are others out there like me with mental problems and maybe doing the same things I did. I would love to help them so they don’t have to go through what I did and so they can have a better life. May God bless them.

Sometimes it’s hard living on the streets. And there are some people that don’t understand homelessness. Some of them get treated like shit. It’s sometimes cold outside, but not as cold as people. I am now recovering from alcoholism and drug addiction. But I don’t know if I’ll ever recover from physical and mental abuse. I’ve also been afraid of making a family, because I don’t know how I would act or react.

Stop the abuse! You’re killing God’s children spiritually.

Eddie

P.S. If you ever look into a homeless person’s eyes, don’t judge them. Simply say something nice. I haven’t seen my sister for over twenty-five years. I wish I could see her again.

After all this, incredibly, Eddie has survived. His plea serves as an invitation to those of us who want to understand and as a con­demnation of those fools who write off the homeless as losers who brought their troubles upon themselves. [136ff]

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