A Tale of Two Homeless

There's happy and sad in this entry.

I've mentioned in previous posts that one of the former Tuesday night regulars has gotten back on his feet and is currently working as a truck driver transporting goods all over the US. We hook up when he's in town. He hasn't minded my sharing things we've talked about which I have done, but he has requested that he not be identified by name. I will refer to him as Rob going forward.

When Rob was still here in town, he developed a friendship with another homeless person (whom I will call John) which led to their sharing the same campsite and becoming frequent companions during the day. I thought it a somewhat odd pairing at the time, but I've since discovered that they're shared the same trauma of having been molested as a child and having spent most of their childhoods in foster care..

I suspect that the shared trauma was a factor in Rob inviting John to join him on the road riding in his cab. My understanding is that John was essentially a passenger the entire time, dependent on Rob for meal money, etc. This and other things led Rob to tell John that he had to come back to Pasadena, and Rob dropped off John in S. Ca, gave him some bus money, and Rob went back on the road.

John never showed up for dinner on Tuesdays, prompting a bit of concern on both my part and Rob's part.

Rob came back into town and we spent some time together yesterday. It turns out that he's been offered a chance to take a job in Las Vegas where he'd still be driving a truck, but he'd be based locally and have a place to call home. More importantly, it would give him a chance to explore opportunities to help the homeless himself, which apparently has become his long term goal - he also now considers me a mentor - which definitely blows me away - so he wanted to go over the pro's and con's of the situation with me.

We also took some time to check out Rob's & John's old campsite (there's another story just about this that's waiting to come out) to try and determine if John was there. We found evidence of John having made it back to the campsite, but the place had been ransacked (another possible entry about that) and looked like it had been unoccupied for weeks.

Rob did a online search this morning and found out that John had been arrested on a felony charge back in August and currently being held in lieu of $130,000 bail.

And there are the stories of two homeless people, both having experiencing the trauma of being molested as a child.

I admit that I am woefully ignorant of how molestation can affect one's life, but I do know that it's common for those who were molested as a child to become molesters themselves. This was John's choice, and as a convicted sex offender, homelessness was obviously the easiest option - even if he found gainful employment (the only job John ever had was delivering the LA Times), he would have had a difficult if not impossible time finding housing as a registered sex offender. And now it looks like he's going to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Rob, on the other hand, while contemplating marriage to someone with two little girls, had already confessed to me a fear that he would do the same and knew that he needed to get help to ensure that that didn't happen. And now his long time goal is to help the homeless in some way.

I'm motivated to get this out there, but I confess that at the moment I'm not sure why. Part of it is to mourn the choices of someone who clearly had some bad things happen to him that were beyond his control, and he was unable to get past that. Part of it is to celebrate someone who clearly had some bad things happen to him that were beyond his control who is fighting the good fight to not let what happened in his past define him and his future. There's resonance with both stories here. I've made some poor choices, which I can't undo, but nothing that limits my fundamental freedom to dream about goals I may not be able to reach but am still free for which to aspire. But tweak a few details, and maybe I would have made a choice that would have irreparably repressed my freedoms. There but for the grace of God go I?