Kind people look at me and think they have to teach me.  I had a foster parent who thought this once when I was like ten.  She wasn’t the first or the last one to think that.  They looked at me and saw a fixer-upper, a broken person they wanted to put back together, an ignorant person who needed to be taught to see the light.  A person who needed her.

They were wrong.

The truth is, I see the light.  I always have.  But I’ve lived most of my life in the dark, a place concerned with little more than getting by, and it shows.  It shows in my ragged edges, my idea of “recreational activities”, my impatience for small talk and gossip.  It shows in my disdain for the comforts of life which stems, even I recognise, from having been deprived them for so long.

I see both the light and the dark, a privilege afforded only to those who have lived in the latter.  Those who have lived only in the light are unable to see the darkness that hints at the edges of their existence.  They spend their lives incapable of recognising the reality of a life lived within that darkness.  Any hint of it frustrates, angers, and terrifies them.  Just as all things they don’t understand frustrate, anger, and terrify them.

It’s like this — you can survive on a diet of HoHos, Doritos and Slim Jims.  It’s not the healthiest, to be sure, but you can do it.  You may not be as shining a specimen as the person sitting beside you who’s had a life filled with bananas at breakfast, apples at lunch, and vegetables with dinner, but you’ll survive.

The shining specimen sitting beside you probably looks upon you with not a little bit of disgust.  Looks at your unkempt appearance, your undernourished shape, your messy lifestyle, and wonders — Why are you like this?  Because he or she can’t, or won’t, realise that for some people there aren’t bananas at breakfast and apples at lunch and vegetables with dinner.  There are HoHos and Doritos and Slim Jims or nothing at all.

And that has been my life.  Panhandling gets enough for the aisles of 7-11.  Packaged junk food slips into pockets easier than produce.  Keeps longer and better hidden in the back of a closet of a house with a padlock on the fridge.  HoHos and Doritos and Slim Jims or nothing at all.  I chose the former in order to survive.  In order to make it to the next day, the next hour, the next minute.  Is this healthy?  Even I know the answer is no.