You are reading this right now maybe in your warm home, at work, or maybe on your way to lunch. Not taking into recognition how much you have and how easily accessible your daily means of surviving are.  I’m not saying you are taking things for granted, for all I know you’re a virtuous person, with a good heart.  When you showered this morning and had a quick breakfast, you didn’t take into account how lucky you were to have these things every day, you weren’t washing your hair or eating a piece of toast being thankful for what you have.  Everyone has seen the unfortunate downtown, whether they were drunk and making a scene, or wandering up to you asking for the change in your pockets.  A lot of the time you are startled by them, and maybe even scared.  These people don’t get to wake up to a warm shower, or to a warm meal, they have to struggle to maybe even consume something that day, even then it’s not enough to be healthy.  The clothes on their backs are their wardrobe, and money in their pocket wasn’t earned but from pity.  There are adolescents on the street these days who don’t get a warm bed or a loving family.  They don’t get to play sports. Every day is a day to survive and get by.  It’s really unfortunate how it isn’t their fault they are struggling to survive, most of the time they were brought up in a broken home, were around drugs and alcohol a lot, or their family just couldn’t provide for them any longer, and some didn’t even have a family to start out with.  If you haven’t seen a connection in the adolescent and usually older people who hassle you on the street, you should realize:  they start off as young people in youth shelters, and are usually broken inside and give in to drugs and alcohol.  They go on and on like this until they have lost all their ties, and they are alone in this world.  Struggling to have one decent meal, having issues so deep and vast that they have turned to drugs just to get by and ease the pain.  When a strung out person confronts you on the street asking for your well earned money, you are not thinking about what this person has gone through, you are maybe panicking and trying to avoid them at all costs.  I’m not saying you should give them money, for all we know they are just going to get a quick fix.  I want you to take into consideration that these people didn’t have the push to be successful, or the right people to turn to when they were in the dirt.  They didn’t have a loving family to teach them the right path, or the means to even get by.  They usually started off as teenagers who were viewed as criminals and druggies, who had no one to talk to about their issues, so never did.  They kept going the only way they knew and ended up alone.  I was on the streets for a bit of my life, yes me.  My mother passed away when I was very young and until then I was always around drugs and my abusive father.  I was soon taken away and put in foster homes where I was also abused and not cared for.  At a young age I knew I was a smart kid and I was going to amount to something and I knew none of these people were going to help me.  I was soon on the street fending for myself and also struggling to get by.  I was forced to sell drugs and steal and commit crimes just to survive.  I always had good friends I could go to but lost a lot of them because I fell into drugs and alcohol, but why?  I knew those would never get me anywhere, but why did I always feel so much better when I was high or drunk?  I knew there was a tie in these two so I sought out a psychologist to help me figure myself out.  This man told me I’ve bottled everything up in my life and I used drugs and alcohol to ease the pain I’ve kept down inside all these years.  It all made sense to me now, it was maybe different for some, but I knew I didn’t want to end up like my mother or dad.  I was inspired by this man and realized what I wanted to do with my life.  I wanted to help people like this man did and to do this I needed schooling.  I knew I could get there easily so I aced high school and was easily accepted at the U of C where I am now majoring in psychology.  It doesn’t always just take someone to assess you and help you with your feeling, it’s a major turning point where you change paths and get on track.  Youth need a turning point in their lives…

-Anonymous