How Being Homeless Gave Me Empathy for Others

Running away at age 15 and living on the street is not all that it's cracked up to be

by Jason Cross

Young homeless people on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. Lydia Gans photo

In the summer of 1998 I ran away. I was tired of other people telling me what to do. I lived in various places. I "couch surfed" (sleeping on different friend's couches every night) for a while, until most of my "housie friends" didn't want me to come around anymore. This is because I was using them for food and housing, yet was doing nothing in return.

Also, my parents called their parents, and they would get in trouble in the end. I remember one day when my mother came to my friend Eric's house and talked to his father. The father came back to Eric's room and asked me to come talk to my mom in the living room. I walked out there and told her that I would rather live with friends or on the street than return home to where my father would abuse me. (My dad used to throw my siblings and me around when he got mad).

She cried and begged me to return home with her and promised me a better life and told me how hard she would try. She reminded me of the warm bed waiting for me, clean clothes, unlimited access to the fridge and how she would take me shopping for whatever food I desired. My mom said she missed me and would cry often. She wanted to hug me but I wouldn't let her. I told myself that I couldn't feel close to her or she could use psychology to trick me into giving in and returning home. I wanted independence from my household and all its rules, even if I had to starve and be homeless.

I told her no, I didn't want to go home with her, and not to call or come around my friends' houses again. Eric's dad told me that I would have to leave and that he would not help me run away. I walked out of that house with my mom crying, asking me where she went wrong raising me. I was stone cold to her, as though she were a stranger begging for change.

I ran away to downtown Berkeley when I ran out of places to sleep indoors. I slept on a bench at Provo Park during a school night a couple times. I would be drunk, hanging out at the park with some buddies. I would check my watch and, if it was before 12:30 a.m., I could still catch the last #43 bus back to my neighborhood and walk to my house from the tunnel. If it was after 12:30 a.m., then I had missed the last bus home and my only choice (in my mind at the time) would be to sleep downtown.

I could have caught a cab (I did it once at 4 a.m.) but I never had any money and I didn't want to cheat the driver by running away from the cab and evading the fare. I could have called home for a ride, but I was trying to be independent, remember? The last thing I would want to do was fall back on my parents for support.

The buses didn't start again until 6 a.m. It was a good two-mile walk uphill that 1 didn't want to do alone, and being a smoker didn't help me either. So I prepared to sleep by moving my wallet from my back pocket to an inside pocket in my yellow puff coat. This way I wouldn't get it stolen while I was sleeping, and at the same time I would have the comfort of not having my wallet between my body and the bench.

The park is the hang-out across the street from the high school downtown. I remember one morning waking up on a bench in the park to see my "friend" Nadirah throwing water on my face and my yellow puff coat that I was wearing. Her friends were gathered around laughing at me with my wet face, hair, and jacket. My hangover didn't brighten my mood. That's how I would start my day.

Things sucked. I began to realize what I took for granted at home: a shower, food, clean clothes, and above all a warm bed with a pillow.

Sometimes I would sleep on the freezing concrete porch at the post office downtown with my friend Sergio. He was a runaway too. We hung out a lot and had fun together. We had similar interests: cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, girls, and staying away from the police.

Sleeping on that hard concrete porch at the post office, I realized how much we humans are similar to animals. We have basic needs like sleeping and eating. Those of us without money cannot stay indoors, but must stay outdoors. We try different places and sometimes the police move us and other times they leave us alone. We stay in places where we are left alone.

Upon my arrival at the post office, I sat down on the small piece of pavement between a sleeping stranger and my friend Sergio. I immediately felt the cold shoot up my spine like an icicle. Looking around, I envied those who had prepared and brought cardboard with them to act as a barrier or a kind of mattress to protect them from this unforgiving, cold concrete. Also, as I looked around, I envied those who found a doorway to spend the night in with its protection from the wind or rain.

Running away at age 15 and living on the street is not all that it's cracked up to be. The world is brutal and savage at times. People rob one another and fight for the resources that help ensure their survival or their next fix. For many on the street, it's a nasty dog-eat-dog world, rarely seen by those living indoors.

I was robbed for drugs that I was selling to support myself. My friends got arrested and I didn't see them again for weeks, if not years. Fights were a weekly occurrence and drama, a daily one.

We didn't want to be outdoors necessarily, but if we were indoors we would get in trouble for using drugs by our parents. But some people's parents weren't around or didn't care, so we went indoors at times.

Reflecting on this time, I realize that I wanted to see the world outside of the bubble that my parents had limited me to while growing up. I was spoiled. I always had a bus pass or a bus ticket or a quarter to call home and request a ride. My parents paid for and cooked plenty of quality food. They supplied the roof over my head and the clothes on my back. I didn't have to do physical labor. My only job was to study and attend classes.

But I got bored and curiosity about other aspects in life took over. What was another lifestyle like? What's it like to disobey curfew? What's it like to spange (ask for spare change) and live off 99-cent whoppers from Burger King? What's it like to walk around North Oakland and wait for a bus there alone in the dark?

It's not a glamorous life. It's a hand-to-mouth life of survival, like an animal in the jungle, except I was the inexperienced animal in the urban jungle called the East Bay.

My life at home was comfortable, but I wanted to see what else was out there and I wasn't going to accept mere explanations. I wanted to experience it and learn my own lessons. I didn't want some adult telling me, "Life on the street is dangerous and dirty and scary. Stay in the comfort of your own home." I had been told things by adults my whole life and the time had come for me to test if their advice held true. After being homeless, I learned to appreciate the indoors and follow rules set by my parents.

Being homeless had a profound effect on me because I now have empathy when I see homeless people on the street. I try to offer them food if I have some. I don't like to give cash because this can be used towards drugs or alcohol.

My 60-year-old black friend Roy panhandles three blocks from my house. I have given him four rides home to north Richmond at night when he is done asking for change. (He usually calls it a night somewhere between 10 p.m. and midnight.) I pick him up in my mom's car and we go grocery shopping at Food Co. in Richmond's iron triangle.

To avoid the embarrassment of pulling $20 in change out of his soda cup at the checkout, he puts his earnings in a Coin Star machine that takes a 9 percent fee. He gets a receipt that he trades in for groceries. I feel empathy for Roy, remembering when I was a runaway, homeless, and barely surviving. I learned that the world is brutal. Now I take whatever steps necessary to avoid being homeless again, even if it means a 63-mile commute.

Following homelessness, I began to appreciate even the smallest thing. Earlier I had dropped out of school and then I was able to become serious about school again. I would say that I came of age when I became excited about life, about learning, curious, grateful for the smallest things, in the moment, in grace, and really aware and present in the moment. This is what the Swami Dayananda called "awareness."

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