Where do we start? Some months ago, I returned to visit the place of my birth, to my family home in the Midwest. I grew up on a “rural non-farm”… in the “greatest country in the world”, the “richest, strongest, best” country. Lately, I had not been able to escape feelings of doom and gloom, that our country is lost and that we are in for really hard times.

After having ignored everything about my country and the world, including pop culture, modern literature, news and politics for my entire life, I then started to do some “research”. After escaping from a situation of narcissistic abuse, I got a phone and started to just scroll through videos. Basically, I just tried to put my finger on the pulse of humanity. Hours and hours, I looked at everything. I saw people playing pranks on each other. I saw people arguing with each other. I saw people trying to make money off of each other. I saw people just trying to distract each other and themselves. I saw people just being annoying. I saw people being serious. I saw everything in between. I just spent weeks looking at everything. I wanted to know what the heck is going on in the greatest nation on earth and the world at large…

Very slowly I started to see people who seemed to genuinely care about things and who wanted the truth, as I did. But these content creators seemed as if they were very few and far between. That was quite a shock to me, to find out how things have deteriorated, how rudderless is our boat, how beaten down people are after decades of the decay of society and after two years of acute attack and isolation. Then I started to move, but my trip to the Midwest wasn’t entirely voluntary; it had not been my intention to travel, but my sister contacted me and asked me to come and help her out. She was bedridden and her aging husband was also sick. So I got in my car and made the best of it.

Traveling east from California on I40 through the desert of Arizona and New Mexico, I suddenly thought to myself, “I’m not really enjoying this…” and then I knew what it was that I was missing. I got off the interstate and onto a country road, a county highway, just on the outskirts of Albuquerque and immediately I was able to relax.  First, I sat down in a little Mom-and-Pop restaurant and had a home cooked meal. Then I made my way through the night into the panhandle of Texas.

From that point on I was hooked. I stayed off the main thoroughfares and kept to the county roads mostly. Driving through little towns, every few miles there was always the opportunity to slow down and breathe. It was really tempting to stop and take photos, talk to the locals and order a sandwich in little diners along the way. This is the life, at my own pace, I thought. From that moment I made it a point to only use the small roads and stop in the small towns. In contrast to what I had been seeing on social media, I found out that in the heartland, relatively little had changed from the days of my childhood. People are still good. And so I found out that America is still a great country…

I went to see my sister and visited relatives I hadn’t seen in decades. Ultimately I ended up in my home state. One afternoon I was in a convenience store at a gas station, buying some milk. I went outside and a woman approached me and asked me for a few dollars. She said she wanted to get a soft drink. Normally, being pretty marginalized myself, and fearful of not having enough, I would never give money to strangers, thinking they just wanted to get drunk or do drugs, etc., but this time there was something in the woman’s voice that made me feel that she was sincere. She was just thirsty.

I should mention here somewhere that I was not really the happiest *camper* at this point. I was living out of my car, and I had been doing this off and on for a good while, several months. I didn’t have any perspective for my future. I was depressed, anxious, fearful of what could happen to me, alone, without any support of friends and family. I knew that I had issues that needed to be addressed, but I didn’t know where to turn for help. I had started traveling more or less just to have something to do, to be able to say, I’m going to xzy town today… rather than having to wake up in the morning and ask myself each day, “now what?”

How I came to be in this situation is a story in itself. Maybe we can get into that later. So, this particular day I met a woman; let’s call her Diana. We spoke for a few minutes. I found out she is homeless and lives outside. I asked her about her situation, and later, a few days after this I think, I took her out to dinner at a local pizza parlor. She didn’t have a phone, but I did run into her again. It was a smallish town near a larger metropolitan area and the place was so incredibly run down. There are boarded up houses everywhere. My brother, who lives in the same town, told me that due to de-industrialization, there were no more jobs. So, there were a lot of homeless, and the place had started to look like a ghost town. You could tell, from going onto street view on the maps app. Things had gone from kind of normal to looking to really seedy in just the past couple of years.

Diana told me about her life. First, she said that she had come back to the area from out West. I don’t remember where she had come from; was it Arizona? Colorado? A native of the area, Diana had come to back to the Midwest again because of her mother’s illness. Her mother ended up passing away and she had remained there, somehow not motivated to return. Then she started to reveal intimate details of her life. I learned she has 3 daughters, one set of twins, I think. And they all live in a house together (the girls), but they don’t have room for their mother. Strange, how strange, I thought. How unthinkable in many cultures it would be… the children live in a house, but the mother is homeless. I asked her, do you drink? No. Do drugs? No. She didn’t seem to be lying. I didn’t spend much time with Diana that day, but I learned enough about her to feel that she was telling the truth.

I was stressed out for my own reasons, could not figure out why the heck I’m here. I always had this question in my mind, “What the heck? Why am I here?” After my conversation with Diana, I took a deep breath and realized, again, that the answer to that question is ALWAYS simple: We are here to help each other in whatever way we can. In our conversation that day, I started to see that my misery, my pain, which I am trying to avoid, which I am trying to lessen, is never going to leave me, that I won’t be able to sleep at night until something changes.

If I am struggling to find a room for myself, I can just as well struggle to find a room for me AND Diana. That’s what I thought. I thought about it a lot. In fact, what happened next was interesting. My entire life I had been struggling. I had been homeless multiple times. I suffered from depression and PTSD a lot.  Sometimes I had had a vehicle. Other times, I had been on the street, sleeping rough. I had been homeless both in the States and overseas. There had been very little security in my life.

I was looking for a place to live, but on a limited budget. Housing was not affordable, and I then found what I thought was a promising opportunity. A young couple were developing a type of BnB in the city, and they needed someone to take care of it for them; the room would be free in the bargain. I wrote to the couple.  They responded a few days later and we set up an interview. I ended up getting the job and taking the room, but I was conflicted. I knew that I would be ok, at least for a while, if I stayed there and managed the house. It would solve my immediate problem. I would have a roof. But something in me didn’t feel right about it. I kept thinking of Diana and the two young girls I had seen that day near her. They were just starting out, getting into drugs, maybe even prostitution, in their late teens.

I played along with the BnB situation for several weeks, but I was torn. It’s a horrible thing when a person has to choose between being homeless and following what they believe, or being comfortable and compromising with the heart. Nevertheless, I started to settle in. I put in a little garden. I started sweeping the place, trying to make myself useful. I went and found some furniture for my room. I was going through the motions on the outside, but on the inside I was not content. I felt certain that I was making a mistake. I was sure that this would not only lead to nothing, but that it would be my absolute downfall.

My brother, on the other hand, told me with urgency, and my sister confirmed, you need to stay there… Other friends told me also, stay there… Everyone wanted me to be logical, to take care of myself. But I couldn’t. I could not think of the homeless people living next to the river bank. My friends were worried about me, knowing that I was living in my car. But I could only think of that woman, living outside, and her own children not even offering her a place on the floor to sleep… and those younger girls, getting into drugs, contracting STDs, becoming pregnant, being exposed to exploitation and violence, uncertainty, ruining their lives. These thoughts continued and became like an alarm bell ringing constantly in my head morning and night.

One day after a long conversation with a good friend, I just said, I can’t stay here in this BnB, it’s not right. The feeling inside that had been whispering and remanding had become louder and louder, and finally it had surfaced. I had been having all of these conflicting thoughts and emotions. Finally, I said it out loud. My actions were not making “sense” to my heart. I could stay, sure; that would solve *my* problem for the moment. But the bigger problems are not going to go away. And even so, what will happen to me should I ever get sick? I’m getting older. Won’t I also be right out on the street again? I am aiming for momentary stability here. But is that going to work in the long term? And what about these people?

Homelessness is increasing. It’s turning into a REAL pandemic. What I knew was that I had a HUGE need. And my need was not necessarily that I should be in a house. Sure, I needed that also, but what I really NEEDED, was to do something for others and think a little less of myself. I needed for my life to have meaning. I knew that this giving attitude could be my only strength in life. Diana had confided in me that she really wanted to run a soup kitchen. And I felt the same way, let’s just feed people. We can start with that.

So, I started to look for a place to live in that small town. After some days I was not making any headway in finding a place. I had been calling around and nothing was opening up. I thought, we will find a place with a kitchen and just start cooking for the homeless. I envisioned Diana in a house and these two young girls off the street, as well. The problem was, I was out of resources. I was out of energy. There is only so much I could do alone without any support, and struggling.

I was driving back and forth between the city and this little town, about an hour away. Then, suddenly, I gathered strength and told the owners of the BnB that I just can’t stay here any longer. It was a very awkward conversation. They really seemed to love me and I loved them. But I just couldn’t stay there. I told them I am probably crazy, because here I am homeless myself, but I feel like I can’t stay here as long as I know those people are sleeping on that river bank. Even though I feel pretty helpless, still I have to try and do something. I left then, that very day.

At first I freaked out. After about 48 hours, I was calm again. And, even though things seemed bleak, I felt very sure I had made the correct decision. I had every intention of staying in the small town. I returned there and started looking around for an apartment or a little house to rent.

But then something happened, extenuating circumstances intervened. I came back out West. On the way back I got sick and couldn’t move or do much of anything for quite a while. I was exhausted. A year of living in my car had taken its toll on me. So, I just stayed in Cali then, too weak to even think of driving the 2000 miles back to the Midwest and being homeless in my car some more. I found a place where someone offered me a room for a few days and I just collapsed.

But I kept thinking about the homeless people, about our economy, about people in pain, suffering mental illness, depression, fear etc. and what to do about it. And I came up with a plan…