Hopeless to Hope

September 14, 2009

Tom writes:
Before coming into this program I was living in homeless shelters and on the street for two years.  I had no job, no real friends and no desire to live honestly.  My life was a living hell with no purpose at all; I would wake up every morning and have absolutely nothing to do but go panhandle or pull scams in order to feed my drug habit.  I had no desire to find a job because it would take away time from me getting high.  I also didn’t feel good enough about myself to put in the effort to find a job.  To try and find an apartment seemed impossible because I didn’t have any references and whenever I’d had apartments in the past, I spent the rent money on drugs instead of rent. 

Every step to a normal life seemed unbearable to me but then I found Caritas.  Through the program I slowly began to learn the basic skills I needed in order to live the normal life that I didn’t have before.  All the little things that I neglected before, I found out, were the things that were keeping me from living a good life.  Things like personal hygiene, cooking, cleaning, human connection, communication, work ethic, and so on.  That I was neglecting these things left me feeling so low about myself that I couldn’t take on bigger things. 

After being in the program seventeen months, I now have a much better grasp on all these things and look forward to continuing to practice them as well as many others I will learn in the rest of my months here and the many years I have left after the program.