Project Homeless Connect 6
I woke up on Friday morning with this funny feeling in my stomach, the kind of feeling you get when you’re about to give a speech in front of the entire class. I think it was due to the fact that I really didn’t know what to expect of the day. I walked to the Ritchie center at 8 a.m., ready to take on anything the day threw at me. A little bit later, a bus pulled in and all the volunteers started to form a line. As I watched the people get off the bus, I realized that the bus was full of teenagers, kids my own age. I couldn’t believe the number of kids that got off the bus from Urban Peak. As I stood there, I got paired with an average height girl with medium length brown hair, wearing two sweatshirts and baggy pants. We made our introductions, and I found out very soon that she was a very independent girl. As she filled out her own form, I realized that she and I shared the same birthday, hers only a year after mine.
My day was basically filled with taking my client to different stations and waiting for her during her cigarette breaks. We started at the Aid for the Needy and the Disabled table, where she was able to get some benefits from them. We then stood in line for housing for a while, when we finally received our number in line; #86. She and I sat around for about another half hour before she got annoyed and decided that she could receive housing at another place. I asked her if she wanted to apply for a job, but she basically told me that she wasn’t very interested in getting a job, which I found peculiar, because if she didn’t work, I didn’t understand how she would make any money to support herself. After that, we moved to the health center, where she was able to talk to someone about her bipolar disorder and get her check-up. I didn’t see a lot of her disorder appear while I was helping her, except for her impatience with the whole system.
During my day, I think the thing that most affected me was the fact that my client was 18 and had the same birthday as I did. It made me look back to where I was when I was 18, and what would have happened to me if I had been kicked out of home and had not finished high school. At one point, as we were sitting at the A.N.D table, she told me that she was trying to get pregnant so that she could receive Medicaid. It just shocked me so much that she would go there, just to receive some more benefits, which she really wouldn’t need if she worked and had a steady income. However, she didn’t want to wait to receive anything, so it made it very difficult to understand her at times. She also talked about how her sister had graduated from DU a few years ago, apparently as the class valedictorian. It really made me question my client’s position in life and her views. I think her situation was very different and it made it harder for her to adjust to PHC, because she told me that she was bipolar, and having that kind of illness can make it hard for people to be patient and to deal with certain situations. I gave her all the help I could give her, and all the resources she could use, and I feel now that it’s up to her if she’ll use them. I was a little annoyed with her because it felt at times like she had decided to come to PHC mainly because all her friends were there, and that she didn’t care to help herself out. It was a pretty emotionally draining day, but I was really glad that I had the opportunity to help another person out. At times, I felt sad that I couldn’t do more than empathize with her and show her around PHC, and other times it made me so upset to realize how many people had shown up that day, showing us how many people are homeless. I think that it’s made me a better person, and it has helped me open my eyes to how many teenage kids are homeless. They really are hidden, because they dress just like us and have many friends. If you didn’t know any better, you would think that they were kids hanging out with their friends out on the town. It really made me realize that any one of us could end up being homeless, whereas before I thought it was just a saying that “we’re all only one paycheck away from being homeless”. It was so important for me to realize this, because it made me open my eyes to how many people were homeless and how I could end up like them due to many different circumstances.
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