Productive Week

[Kengi]

This week has been a very productive one I am very happy to report. I finally feel like I am in touch with some people who not only care about what is going on with me, but have done work to help me fix things that have gone wrong and done work to help me fix things PERIOD. This is an amazing feeling. I never had a case manager do anything for me other then tell me to call them each and every day in order for them to tell me, “there’s no housing and I have no leads on anything else” This week this has all changed.

So it’s Friday and all that I am going to get done for this week has been done and now I will wait and pray that things set in motion by me and people like Carla and Tiana will fall into place. With homelessness and I have now learned even with HIV, there is the wait and see game that you have no choice but to play. I must call or go see someone to fill out paperwork and then they must call someone, who may have to call someone else, who will have to call them back to call the other person back to call me to have me come back in to tell me………… get the point. So I can do all that I am “required” to do, but if anyone along the way doesn’t do what I am depending on them to do, things I cant do myself, things they are paid to do, then I am stuck.

(I took this picture on a night when the Union Rescue Mission refused to honor a bed ticket issued to me. I was forced to spend the night walking.)

I am doing something today that I haven’t done in 16 and half months. I am hanging out with a childhood friend. My friend Jo whom I have known since Jr. High School will be chilling out with me today. She’s meeting me after my meeting with Tiana over at APLA. We’re going to get some grub and take in some coolness at LACMA, before we will join my friend Natalie for JAZZ at LACMA tonight. I am really looking forward to this. I bumped into Jo last year and she shared her pics of her kid with me. it was around this time that things were already starting to change for me, bit I didn’t share this with her, because I didn’t want to be judged and feel like a failure.

Homelessness has a way and many of the people who are in place to support you also have a way of making you feel less than, worthless, like you no longer matter to anyone and if one isn’t careful, you will start to believe it and then you will start to slide even faster down the slope of homelessness you are already on.

(I took this picture along Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. This was another night I was unable to get into the Union Rescue Mission after being issued a bed ticket and being told by Andy Bales that this would never happy again. It's happened 5 times)

For me homelessness has been destructive for my life and more the 95% of the places I have gone, people I have run into and services I have tried to get have all be dead ends. If I were a weak person, I would have started using drugs or drinking myself into oblivion like many homeless people, with homelessness and HIV and the lack of medical care, and lack of having access to services that HELP, not HINDER, if I wasn’t a strong minded, determined person and had it not been for two great parents and all the tools they have given me to survive I would have killed myself within the first few weeks of knowing I was HIV positive and how I have been treated by doctors, staff and social workers at Harbor UCLA, Aids Project Los Angeles, Aids Service Center and the Union Rescue Mission. It has also showed me that I am stronger then I thought I was, more prepared then I ever knew and more in touch with HUMANS then anyone I have met or come into contact with.

Today I am making a vow to myself and I am making it clear to everyone who reads my blog. I will never give up anything else that is important to me. I will never again even consider if I can attend a concert or jazz event or hang out with friends simply because someone who doesn’t know me has made some rule that says since I am homeless I can not have a life. I will no longer allow people to tell me when I can eat, what I can eat, where I can eat and how I am to eat it. I will no longer allow people to tell me where to shit, how to shit and when to shit, when to talk or how to talk. I am homeless because of things going wrong in my life, not from drugs or drinking or criminal activity I refuse to be treated like a person who is in prison and must be managed simply because I am homeless.

Have a great weekend everyone. I don’t know that I will be able to access the internet again after today until Monday. The library is Hollywood is closed and Santa Monica has such strict policies with regards to homeless people being in there city. Like TALKING. The Los Angeles Central Library is way to close Skid Row for me and I don’t think I want to take the chance of going down there anymore. At least not right now.

The pictures with this posting are from my Tuesday night jazz that I took in with Natalie at Hollywood and Highland this week. There are also some pictures from the awesome time I had at the BAYOU FESTIVAL in Long Beach.

[Kengi]

I love you guys too. I am blessed to have you two in my life. Thanks for all you do. I am glad you two are in my camp along with Natalie and others. I am going to really need your love, friendship and support more then ever now.

[Andy & Tina]

Look at that lovely Natalie! Now.......don't know about that Kengi....kinda crazy dontcha think? lol. Love ya Kids!!