Misconceptions About Homelessness

    This is how I am feeling today. I am noticing there is relationship between a misconception and misperception. Let me refer to Gemini from Google. Here's a way to remember the difference:

Misconception: Incorrect conception (idea) in your mind.
Misperception: Incorrect perception (interpretation) of sensory input."

    I've been spending a little time asking people for some support. Couple of their most frustrating responses, remarks have me here today addressing them:

"Get a fucking job!"

    I cringe at the reaction people give me when they have the audacity to say this to a person without understanding what circumstances lead a person to begging for money on the street. If a person has the courage, standing up to hundreds of people at a traffic light without any regard of what people are saying: that's a job to me! That's an actor's activity. It's an exercise I believe requires a lot of focus, commitment, and restraint because there are laws being broken when someone is panhandling for money and we can't always act on behalf of all our disagreements.

    I believe when a person is begging for money on the street, that's a call for something more than just something to eat. When a person like me says, "All I need to do is make $100 a day, for 10 days out of the month, and I'll be able to have $1000..." -- It doesn't seem like an attainable goal as a panhandler. However, if I were to take $100 and buy a pair of boots, then maybe I'll be able to have a thousand dollars in 2 to 4 weeks? But what should I eat till then? That's my problem-- I know!

"Tell me your story, why are you homeless?"

    What does this even mean? Asking this question seems as if it's implying I chose to be homeless. Did we bring Univision as well? Or CNN? If someone really wanted to share their story with us, it's because we might be in rehab. Also, because we are just dealing with someone who doesn't know any better. We shouldn't be asking these questions to a person on the streets, much less at a stop light! It's really hard to believe people in Miami enjoy acting like they don't know what's going on and this is what's frustrating with my story. 

    I feel like a piece of shit because I know what it's like to be on their side of the line-- I've thrown change at the floor at someone who was begging for money while I sat at a traffic light. 

     I never would've thought I'd be begging for money at that same street corner. This could happen to anyone! There are people who end up in jail, lose their families, file for divorce, go bankrupt, lose a spouse-- the streets are the only places waiting for someone without anything else to lose. It's sad to maintain the perspective of, 

"Oh, Well, don't do the crime if you can't do the Time."-- 

    If people had what they needed to be able to start working, I don't think we'd be dealing with a problem as significant as crime.

Thinking I don't want to work, that I'm choosing to be homeless, are insults. I was fixing up this thought this morning,

These 👆 are misconceptions.

    "I love this country because I am allowed to make money doing what I like to do...not what other people think I should be doing. There are people who make money entertaining people on OnlyFans, no one fucks with them. There are people making money having sex on Chaturbate, no one fucks with them. I'm looking for a way to tell my story, people yell from across the street, "Why don't you just go do Gay Porn?" -- "

    It's really a bad thing how I'm trying to make a difference in this world by drawing out a perspective to a problem no one else seems to have a solution for? There are many Organizations begging for money to solve this problem, and sometimes I think it's not being managed the way it ought to because we don't know how to change our way of thinking about the problem.

    Instead of focusing on the impact peoples behavior have on us, why don't we focus on why a person behaves a certain way? This is why this topic is becoming such a big deal to me. People think a homeless person who isn't in their right frame of mind is just going to pick up a Macbook and magically speak on behalf of their experience dealing with the biases and prejudices on the street?

    I've reached a point where I don't even care to take the bus sometimes nor the trolley because these people aren't even reliable. Honestly, they take away our desire to wanting to work. I have more chances hitching a ride from a stranger in Brickell and making it to work on time than I would taking the trolley on a weekday evening. We all know I can't get hired at a 9-5 now with a conviction on my criminal record, that's just the way things have been paved out for me. I'm not complaining. It felt like just yesterday I was sitting on a bunk watching the news from Metro West. I never would've thought I'd be free and using my computer again. I can't even complain because I know things could be worse.

    At times I am in denial about the story I write, but there are things I just cannot deny. The other day I was waving a cup at this one dude sitting in his car at the light, and he looked me up and down, noticed my ON-branded shoes, and started to scuff. If he had known these were found thrown on the ground on my way to Publix, that they were also a half size smaller and killing my feet, and that they were the last resort to solving my problem of not having a good pair of shoes-- I think he would've given me a dollar. Instead, he just kept grimacing at me and making me feel uncomfortable. I know he doesn't owe me anything, why do I owe him the satisfaction of allowing him to make me feel that way?

Am I misperceiving things?

    The same people telling me to go and find a job, are probably the same people who go out to buy a scooter or a bicycle, without really comprehending what the lifestyle of riding one entails. There are going to be days where we have to ride in the rain if we commute with a bike to work. There are going to be days where we encounter a pinch flat on the way to work. Sometimes we might be too tired to be pedaling through a windy day. There are many, many, reasons why I don't ride a bike today and the most important one would be: not wanting to get hurt.

    I've always thought about what I do before I do them. This phenomenon of self-awareness was developed through processing the array of mistaken choices I've made life in order to be a better person. I know better than to be walking around the streets of Miami harboring a lie. A lie can kill you. It seems, though, as if the people from the City of Miami are not only suffering from not being able to tell the Truth about who they see in the mirror, but also this sense that life here is a movie. The people who don't know what my story is about because they don't know English, are the ones who are making me doubt my reality. Don't be that person because it is just going to make me work harder..

    At times I think people perceive I am over compensating, but I think this is being projected onto me from people who don't want to change the quality of life their world is causing us to have.

    I don't like the idea that because I am homeless, I should put my head down and prove I'm not gay because I could to out to the club and find a girl to sleep with, thus, finding a place to stay. That's not a realistic way of thinking about things.

    The idea that Sex is a Trend/Sexo es La Moda mortifies me because what are we really doing? How are we leading an example by this way of thinking? I'm not saying to be acting like a bunch of nuns...but this is beyond pornography now. Pornography used to be something my uncles hid underneath their beds. They probably still practice discretion, but the kids coming out of high school today and enrolling into the local colleges in Miami....?

Why are we setting a double standard on the way we talk about sex and the controversial issues it draws to the conversations at the table?