Small Victories

I was living out of my car for the first two and a half years after graduating high school

Me, my cat, and all my worldly possessions crammed into the back of a toyota camry

I worked cash jobs where I could, panhandled when that didn’t work, and if all else failed

I would steal foodstuffs for me and the cat from local grocery stores

It was late in the summer in Los Angeles and the car had been out of gas for weeks

I had been camped out in the back of a large discount shopping center parking lot

In the merciless heat of the day my skin bond unnaturally to the fake leather seats

And I would stare unblinking for hours at the cigarette burns in the cars interior and pray for death

A friend who had heard about my down and out living situation gave me a Bukowski book

And I, having no other means of entertainment, read it

He was a filthy alcoholic boozehound, but he had a way of making the mundane powerful

He gave meaning to the empty gestures people make, and it resonated with me

I began to keep a record of the world around me, the strange and the beautiful

And all the anger that had me so twisted up inside began to dissipate

Writing cleared the festering thoughts from my mind that were eating me alive

And set the stage for the next big change

I took a deep breath, sold the car, enrolled in college, and got a full time job

I have since been living to learn, an honors student who always makes the deans list

It has been many years since my last arrest, or 72 hour psych hold, or night spent homeless

I am still writing to maintain my small, hard won scrap of sanity