OUTREACH HAS BEEN LIFELINE FOR WOMAN

Rachel Smith, 22, has been homeless, off and on, for much of her adult life. She’s been going to Outreach for about three years, first for a meal and a shower, but now for help finding a job and getting necessary papers.

Although Rachel doesn’t regret anything she’s done, she doesn’t wish her life on anyone else. In five years, she would like to be enrolled in college with her own car and house and be a certified nursing assistant.

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 “I signed myself out of high school in the 11th grade. I was missing a lot of school due to me being in and out of the hospital and my mother being in and out of the hospital.

 “Before I hit 18, I was in and out of juvenile, but I still lived with my mother, so I knew everything was safe and cool. But when I hit 18, I was in and out of jail about three or four times. So I’ve been in jail about four times.

 “About a year and a half ago, (my mom) got married to a man in the service, and he got stationed in Kentucky, so they moved. It was very traumatic. That’s when my life took a real big toll on me and it went really bad.

 “I started staying in abandoned houses.  I had to hop from abandoned house to abandoned house. I’ve lived in what you call a black hole, where it’s a legit house, but there are no utilities.  There’s no water or electricity.

 “You sleep in abandoned houses that don’t have security locks, so now you got to sleep with knives. You got to sleep with bars on the doors. You don’t have a stable place to go to the bathroom. So if you have to pee, you pee in a cup and throw it out the window or something. You got to walk in cold weather to just to get a sandwich and a bag of chips.

 “But a typical day would consist of me going to the library, putting in job applications, going over to my friend’s house sometimes, making or trying to get a meal.  I’d probably go downtown sometimes and go to the homeless feedings.

 “After that, I’d probably meet up with a couple of friends, just hang out with them for a little bit, try and get to a phone, call the guy who I claim as my grandpa, see if he’ll let me stay the night.  If he does, he comes and gets me. I take a nice hot shower, get a nice meal and I’m able to sleep there. If not, I go to an abandoned house and lay my head down and pray to God I wake up the next morning safe.

 “I’m not happy that people know me by being homeless. But at the same time, I’d rather somebody notice me. My mom always told me, ‘Any attention is better than no attention as long as you make it the right attention.’

“And that’s how I live, day by day.  I live every day like it’s my last.

“My mother moved back into town in November. My father, he lives a couple streets up with somebody else. I don’t know where one of my brothers lives. The other one lives up north in Castleton, and the younger one lives with my mother.

“Sometimes I’m uncertain that I’ll actually stay on this good path.  I’m uncertain that I’ll actually fall back off and go do something stupid.”

Copyright 2011 Y-Press