Anna’s Story – an interview with a homeless child Posted on April 9, 2008 by jianxli Homelessness to me is a feeling of death. There is nowhere to go, no one to see and no one cares. People generally believe you are dumb and are always meant to live a homeless existence. Besides the feeling of shame and uselessness is the feeling of terror and hunger. Every day I wonder, “Where am I going to get my next scrap of food?” How am I going to manage sleeping out in the rain for yet another night? Hunger can turn a person into a madman. When my father lost his job and my mother went insane, I was going through rough times, but I never realized that hunger can bring me so close to acting like a crazy person. When both of them abandoned me when I was only 15, I did not know where to turn. Now I am scraping the streets trying to keep my sanity. The desire for food takes control of every moral thought of right and wrong, and in most cases I have to steal to survive. The streets have become my home. I don’t want to accept that this is where I am going to be for the rest of my life. I don’t have any family and no one to believe in me or support me. I used to be a good student. I remember in 4th grade, my father was so proud when I won third place in the science fair. He never had much time for me, but when he did, he was always proud to see me do well. My father wanted me to be an engineer just like him. Every day, when I search the trash cans outside of the apartment buildings, I think of the families that ate the food that I am now about to finish for them. How could they throw away the very thing that I desperately depend on to stay alive? I will never understand how people can live their lives and not even think for once that there are people out there starving, dying, struggling, just to get some rice or stale bread in their stomach and that’s all the food they’ll be eating for three days? Why do they look at us as if we like the situation we are in, as if we “asked” to be abandoned and in this world with no one to protect us but ourselves? I can only pray and ask God, if he is even listening, to spare me at least some food or some type of safe, dry shelter for the night. That’s all I ask for. It may not be much to those people rushing by me onto a destination far more fortunate and brighter than mine, but it means a whole lot to me. It means everything to me! It means that I will survive just one more day. “Why?” you may ask. “Why keep on going when you have nothing to live for?” I will answer that question for you. It is because of hope. Hope is all I have. Hope is what keeps me alive. And maybe hope will get me out of this live one day.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 15:12:08 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015