What I Learned Being Homeless: Seagulls Are Tough ASF

The last two weeks I’ve been watching my YouTube Channel, and there are probably over 40 videos of me chronicling the worse year of my life. The year I became homeless, unemployed, and alone. Looking back on those times I am reflecting on the many things I learned about homelessness, people, society, myself, and ultimately God’s grace.

What I Learned Being Homeless: Seagulls are Tough ASF

Seagulls

No one gives seagulls any credit. In the Disney movie ‘Finding Nemo’ they are hilariously depicted as brainless creatures whose only drive is to get food. But, from the view of my car window they are much more than mere scavengers.

The white, pudgy, birds swoop down onto the Wal-Mart parking lot. Each one of them is on a hunt for nourishment. One of them drops by my mint green Volkswagen Beetle. I can see it outside of my window. It’s feathers are speckled with bits of brown dirt.  He pecks at a piece of wadded up gum and spits it out. Then he hops over to a half empty bag of popcorn and finds some kernels left. The seagull devours the remnants of the popcorn, then other white birds see him and start swooping in. Before long they are everywhere;searching, searching for anything to survive.

I pray that cold January morning that I have the resilience of a seagull to keep searching. It is 5:00 a.m. and I’ve just spent the night in the backseat of my very small car. I hid myself under a layer of borrowed blankets, comforters and towels to stay concealed and warm.Temperatures dropped into the 30’s and I spent most of the night shivering. Fear escapes me in these moments. The idea that someone could break into the car, pull me out, rape me, or kill me crosses my mind, but I can’t linger on those thoughts too long. After all the gambles I’ve taken to survive this past year, fear is not something I possess anymore. It would be a detriment to my survival. These days I don’t pray what may come, I just pray whatever it is I have the strength to endure it.

Somehow I’ve grown to feel safe in the confines of this two seater. Some days it is my storage bin, lunging around the few material things I own in this world. Some days it’s a dining room where I take my food stamp approved food, turn up the radio, and pretend I’m sitting in this car for a lunch break and not because I have no place to go. A lot of nights it’s my bedroom. And, this morning it’s living room window. The sun is rising breaking through the clouds, and shining down on a parking lot of seagulls scavenging for food. I think for a moment how easy it would be to escape this life;find a means for an overdose, jump off a bridge, or swallow antifreeze in the backseat of the car. Instead, I decide to pop my anti-depressant, and keep trudging along one more day, searching, scrounging, surviving.

But looking at these little birds, creatures no one respects, or likes even; I have a moment of hope. If these puny birds can find means for survival in every season, in every environment then maybe just maybe I can too. I have no one. No friends to take me in, and no family to open their doors to me. I want simple things now; a hot shower, a good breakfast, and day without worry. Today, I will settle for whatever my EBT card can buy inside the Wal-Mart, a makeup wipe to clean my face, and a day spent in another book store looking for jobs. And, I feel a voice in  me whisper to hold on a little longer. As I swallow the little orange antidepressant that keeps my serotonin levels high and spirits from tanking, I try with all my might to believe God has my best dreams at heart, and will send me the strength to endure.