Day Ninety-Four

   ****NAMES CHANGED TO PROTECT PORTLAND'S STREET KIDS****

I'm just not feeling up to life today. I try to hang out with Kitten Lady in the morning. It's Labor Day so nothing opens for us until eleven. I try to hang out with her and two other girls but I just can't take it. I just can't. I don't want to be around her. It's nothing mean or hateful or even angry. I just don't feel I have any strength left to continue this relationship. I don't have the strength to support her right now. I don't even have strength for myself. I give Tweak a kiss then quietly disappear before she even notices I'm missing.

I go to Safeway to try and fill my prescriptions. The pharmacist refuses to even run the prescription for my wrist brace. I've tried so hard to do this the right way. I tried to get one at the clinic, they didn't have my size. I tried to run the insurance, it won't go. I need a brace now if I'm ever going to finish this blanket. I'm irritated with the pharmacist for refusing to even run the script so I grab a brace from the first aid section and walk right out of the store.

I go to #1 and eat breakfast while I crochet the baby blanket. The case manager who crochets comes out and lets me raid her yarn stash. I take a few skeins. I want to get out of downtown before my head explodes. It sounds weird because it's so big but sometimes the city can be suffocating. You see the same people do the same things day after day. You see the same places, the same everything.

I text Baby Mama and she says I can spend the night there. I ask Bernard for the night out so I can stay there. "As long as you don't get arrested," he tells me. I roll my eyes at him, "At least my mug shot looked good."

I crochet another row then ask him for bus passes. "For what?" he asks me.
"Did you think I was walking to Baby Mama's house?"
"I was thinking about it."
I stick my tongue out at him.

I leave to go to her house. When I get there we go to the store and get stuff to make nachos for dinner. I help her cook in the kitchen. She asks me why I haven't gotten a job yet and I shrug; I don't even know why anymore. I'm kind of out of excuses. "You're playing," She says, "Get on your shit and stop playing so you can stop being homeless."
"I know, I know." I say, "Now I'm just worried about that fucking mug shot."
"Just let someone give you a chance M," She tells me, "You just gotta let someone give you a chance."

I realize that part of my problem is the people I hang out with. I've been surrounded by people who aren't even trying to do anything. I've picked up bad habits. I put everything off for another day when I should be working my butt off to get out of shelter. I need to hang out with people like my old friends and Baby Mama. People who are motivated. Growing up I was often told this saying: "Show me your friends and I'll show you your future." I've thought on it many times since I've been here. I know that there is at least some truth to that statement and truth is I haven't been making decisions to set me up for anything good in my future.

It's not that easy though. If you saw someone you cared about drowning and knew you would go down trying to help them would you let them drown or would you try to fish them out?

I work on the blanket most of the afternoon and hold it up to her belly for Cire to feel. Baby Mama says she won't let him use it if I insist on using a tiny bit of pink which I did. I figure when he comes out she'll be so tired she won't care. If she doesn't stop insisting I can dab a little bleach on it to fade it.

I smoke a roach with her boyfriend Turk before we eat the nachos. I go to bed at about 10:30pm, crocheting and watching zombies until I can't hold my eyes open anymore on the couch. It's a quiet night and we don't do anything special. It's just nice to be away from the frustrations of shelter living.

--mm