7:00 a.m. I woke up at my friend’s house. It’s handball day. My clothes have been washed. My gear is pretty much settled. One thing I want to accomplish today is clean out my cars and prepare my cars more for travel in the winter and camping outside.
8:30 a.m. I drive out to Saugus from Danvers to LA fitness where we play indoor handball. I met up with my friends Patrick, Mike, and Fast Eddie. We play handball from 9:00 a.m. till around 11:30 a.m. Another good friend Nick shows up and plays some games as well.
12:00 p.m. I drove back to my friend’s house in Danvers. The plan is to meet up with another lady friend. Not the one I had mentioned in the last blog who stood me up. Another lady friend who I like and I’m trying to patch up our relationship. I was supposed to be meeting with her at 2:30, around 12:30 she texted me and asked that we meet around 4:30. So now I have this huge gap of time and I don’t know what to do with it. My mother calls me and says she’s just hanging out at the house so I decide to go visit her and the dog.
2:00 p.m. I stopped at a grocery store on the way to my mother’s and got some drinks for my lady friend, and I got a sandwich and some sushi for myself since I hadn’t eaten all day. When I get to my mother’s, Charlie is excited as usual. My mother and I spend some quality time together. I help her out with a few chores around the house. I received some propane bottles for my tent warmer. Some of the homeless people that I’ve met that live in tents told me that I should get that for the winter.
4:30 p.m. I’ve been texting with my lady friend, and she let me know that she would be home shortly so I headed out to see her. It was really good to see this beautiful woman, we spent some time talking and then we went to play pickleball which I love. She is way better at pickleball than me and kicks my ass four games in a row.
7:00 p.m. I spent the rest of my night with my lady friend. Human relationships are at the core of all our existences. We all depend on each other to survive out here. Even those who stay shut up in their home depend on others to survive. I find that the beauty in my life is dependent on the strong bonds and relationships that I’ve built with various people that I feel connected to. There are times when I’m in my tent by myself and I feel at ultimate peace. There are times when I’m all alone in the woods and I feel lonely. My mind is constantly cycling through memories and experiences with different people. I feel that at the core of the struggle for some of those who subsist caught in a cycle of homelessness, there’s a long stream of lost or broken relationships. In some of the stories people lost loved ones, in some stories people struggled with addiction or mental illness and the people they loved turned away from them, in some cases people lost the means or resources to possess a home, and in some cases some people find the company in the street to be the most accommodating.
Really interesting thoughts about human connections and the homeless.