44 For 0
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Today is my 44th birthday. I spent last night, a cold rainy night, sleeping on a concrete bench in Balboa Park. It was the first night of my homelessness that I actually slept, though I would not say well. But rather than sitting up waiting for the night to pass, checking my phone periodically to see that only 45 minutes have passed when I thought that it must have been two hours, instead I slept for about six straight hours and woke up surprised to find that it was already 6am. By then, I had forgotten that today was my birthday. I didn’t remember until after I had returned to the park after getting breakfast.
I never really celebrated my birthday. It always seemed silly to me, since I felt celebrations should mark meaningful occasions, not just the passage of time. I have certain significant dates in my life where important things happened that I kept as private holidays, but I generally never did anything for my birthday. I don’t even recall ever having a cake or candles. Maybe I did once or twice when I was very young.
I wanted a party when I accomplished something. Someone should have thrown a party for me when I was elected Junior Class President, but no one did. Someone should have thrown a party for me when I became a National Merit Scholar but no one did. Someone should have thrown a party for me when I got accepted to Stanford but no one did. Someone should have thrown a party for me when my movie All-Nighter had its one day of filming, but no one did. Someone should have thrown a party for me when I announced to all my supposed friends that I had finished my first novel, but no one did. I’ve participated in celebrations for others, but I’ve never really had a celebration of my own.
Most of my birthdays I let pass with minimal notice. Most of them I spent alone, by choice. I actually tried to avoid people knowing when my birthday was because I don’t like that kind of attention. It was unavoidable at work, so I had to suffer through it.
But this birthday cannot pass without notice because of where the day finds me. I became comscious of the world around me when I was about four years old. I made a decision then to dedicate myself to making a positive impact on the world. In the forty years since, I have been relentlessly working toward that goal. Perhaps at times, it may not have been obvious to a casual outside observer that this was what I was doing, but had I been asked, I could have explained how my seemingly unrelated activities fit into this goal.
But after all these years of effort and dedication to doing the right thing, I am homeless in the streets, having lost everything I own to a crooked landlord and the injustices of the broken American system of law, estranged from relatives and former friends who I finally realized never had my best interests at heart. For all my hard work, what do I have to show for it? Zero. Absolute zero. My life’s work lies in ashes.
After seven years of hoping every day that things will turn around, a strange thing happens. On a level of practical analysis, the hope for change starts to fade. If nothing changed in the last 2,500 days, how small are the odds on it changing today? But the emotional need and longing for change just grows greater and greater. So it is in a sense a kind of madness that takes over you. It is truly analogous to people in church waiting for Jesus to come back. My rational mind says, “This is what my life has come down to, no matter how little sense it seems to make. It is what it is.” But then the part of me that wants to believe in something more than a brutal, unjust world cries out, “No, this can’t be the way things really are. It has to be a joke, a game, an illusion. I’m on Candid Camera. I’m in The Truman Show. Or someone just made an administrative error somewhere and put my file in the wrong pile and they’ll catch it any day now. Any day now...”
I used to have such great expectations for my life, and I still do have grand dreams if opportunities to make them reality should emerge. But I’ve lowered my hopes to a very low threshold—a girl who really loves me, the financial means to never have to worry about basic needs, and a chance to do work that I find rewarding. It is a damning indictment of the world we live in that for so many people, just this is out of reach. But I still know how to dream the biggest dreams, as just a cursory reading of this blog will reveal.
I suppose I still have a kind of faith—faith strong enough to keep doing what my conscience tells me is right, even as one disaster after another strikes. I try to keep the flame lit and go on hoping for the basic things that now seem like miracles. I hope my miracle comes soon. I hope things change for the better. I hope I find a real ally, a real partner, someone I know I can really trust. Maybe more than one. I hope...
If all goes well, tomorrow I should be able to get myself off the street and out of the rain for at least several days, but unless I find a permanent solution to this problem (see my proposal in the upcoming post “Moms Need Help...”), these next few days or weeks will be little more than a vacation from hell. I already lost years 37-44. A man who isn’t a pro athlete can’t lose more prime years than those. I can’t afford to waste any more time. I need to get to work. But I’ve accepted that there is no way I can do it without help.
Unless a miracle of some kind should transpire in the next few hours, I will spend this birthday night outside in the park on a cold rainy night. I’ll survive it. I always do. One day, I’ll have something to celebrate again.
Follow me on Instagram: @michaeldavidmodern
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