Being Homeless

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Leeroy Fairhurst

Being Homeless

I awake to the sound of the trains in which who’s yard I had spent the night. The bitter wind had eaten at my fingers and toes during the night and it was extremely hard to walk. I staggered to my feet and collected my belongings well if u could call a 4-month-old blanket and a mangled tin-cup belongings. The morning are always hard for anybody even those top notch lawyers that earn thousand of pounds a day but for me a “tram” or a “Disgrace” as people stereotype me as, it is four times as difficult. It’s worse when it rains because it releases the rotten odours that lay within the woven cloth or my rotting garments that I call clothes.

My life even though it doesn’t have much meaning anymore does sometimes but not very often have its tiny little perks, for instance the other day I was sitting at the steps up to a post office in surrey and a man looked at me and asked me what I had done to become homeless. Now this is a hard question for me, as I hadn’t done anything “wrong” all I had done in my life was fail my exams and not being able to get a job was forced to apply for a council grant for an apartment. The grant fell through and I was left without a home, nowhere to go, no friends, no family, nothing. I explained this to the man who then offered me a place to stay for the night. Almost before the words had left the man's mouth my eyes were alit with joy, I couldn’t explain my excitement even if I wanted to.

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The man lead me to a special hostel for the homeless and there he said they would look after me and give me a good meal, some fresh odour free clean clothes and a warm bed to sleep in. There were boys, girls, men, women and entire families all staying at the hostel and I got to know all of them quite well in a matter if minutes. Many of them like me failed exams or were made redundant by companies and ended up in the circle of homelessness, I say a circle because it is once your homeless ...

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