Where Is Home?

(picks up a quarter on the ground) Nothing is worth a quarter anymore. Why would I even need this? I’m pathetic.

I don’t want to do this anymore. I know that I can be better than this. I don’t want to be the person I am. I always wonder what people think of me as I sit here. I know they look at me with such pity. ‘Oh, the poor homeless girl. Look at her. Maybe I should give her money so I can feel like a charitable person.’ No, I don’t want to be pitied. I shouldn’t have to. I should be in a home and with a family and not here… Under the bridge with my makeshift bed and pile of clothes.

The man in the red pick up truck has given me singles a few times a week. Sometimes he has a little girl in the back seat. I wonder if I could have been her in another life. I wonder what their life is like.  They’re probably driving to a playdate or going to her grandmother’s house. At the end of the day, he’ll pick her up and they’ll have a nice meal in their dining room, laughing over something that happened earlier. The dog, a golden retriever of course, would sit next to the little girl, waiting for her to drop some of her food. At the end of the night, he’ll tuck her into bed and maybe even read her a stupid bedtime story.

Why was this my fate? Why couldn’t I be born as someone else? Out of all the people in this damn world why was it me that had to end up like this? I never asked for any of this. I never did anything wrong in my life to end up this way. It was my mother. She had to leave my father. She had nowhere else to go. My father was abusive. He controlled everything to the point to where when she left, she had no one else to turn to. We slept in our car for a while and it’s been that way ever since. Where is she now? Probably helping Ronnie sell on some street corner.

(points into the left) I heard she sells on Carlyle Street past the Burger King and a few blocks over. She does it to get some cash. Ronnie doesn’t give her much. Just enough so she could buy herself a new shirt or food. I’m starting to resent my mother more and more each day. I understand she was abandoned once she left my father. Everyone shunned her because of her 17 year old pregnancy and controlling boyfriend. Before she had me, she was warned. She didn’t listen. When she realized her family was right, it was too late. They already forgot about her. She could have tried to pick her life up by now, but she hasn’t. I don’t want to repeat her mistakes.

I want stability. Everyday is different. I never know how much I’ll eat or where I will end up at the end of the night. Or when it will get too cold, that my quilted blank won’t keep me warm anymore. The unknown is what I’m scared of. I want the unknown, but at the same time I don’t know where I could end up. I don’t know where to start. No one is going to give a job to a girl who smells like cheap dollar store perfume and has several knots in hair, that was washed in the train station bathroom. I think I can do this without any help, but I need it.