AT HOME WITH THE HOMELESS: Your past does not have to define you

By Andrew Williams on December 14, 2023

For this installment, in the spirit of the season, I am going to indulge myself and make this one all about me. I’m going to tell you the way it is, and I won’t spare the horses. After all, I got me where I am today, intentionally and accidentally.

For starters, I recently turned 60 years old. No cards, please! (Unless they’re donations of gift cards–– c/o the Observer). I was born at practically the same time that John F. Kennedy, C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley died. That same month, an American DJ on WWDC-AM in Washington, DC, played The Beatles’ “I Want To Hold Your Hand” – the very first time the Fab Four had their music featured on a US radio station. Meanwhile, across the pond, the BBC transmitted the very first episode of Doctor Who. As you can see, it was a propitious–or star-crossed–time to arrive on Spaceship Earth.

I had as close to an ideal childhood as one could have had half a century ago in America living in a middle-class suburb in one of the richest per capita counties in the US (then and now), where our neighbors were CIA analysts, heads of the State Department and the EPA, and local news broadcasters. The flaw in the ointment was that I had a learning disorder–one now known as ADHD– which made it difficult to concentrate and learn. I did all right until I got to junior high school, when my native talents and workarounds became increasingly useless. From then on, I was in and out of therapy, and school became a year-round affair as I struggled to make up for classes I’d failed during the regular school year. Yes, we had access to the best schools and therapists, but this was 50 years ago.

Somehow I made it to community college, where I obtained an Associate Arts degree after a mere ten years. Then it was into the workforce. Here I lucked out: temp work was designed with people with short attention spans in mind. Before you could get bored with an assignment, it was over and on to the next one. My skills with typing and computers were also useful. So I got by for a decade on that.

Around this time, my parents died: Mom when I was 30, Dad five years later. My older brother and I were officially and legally orphans. That’s when things got really interesting, in the Chinese sense.

Every mistake you could make, I made. I burned through a sizable inheritance, just like the Prodigal Son. Unlike him, I had no earthly father to go back to. Subsequently, I became an alcoholic. My relationship with my partner teetered precariously on the cliff’s edge. I was a classic drunk: all I could think of was surviving until my next drink. I was unemployable, untrustworthy, unreliable.

Then came jail. See, I wasn’t just a drunk–I was a mean drunk, and mean drunks tend to get mouthy with cops, and cops don’t like that, which is when the silver bracelets come out. Would I have done better with treatment than jail? Probably. But this is America, where we’re still getting used to the idea of treatment for drug addiction as opposed to punishment. And I’m a slow learn- er, so it took three separate times in the slam before I got wise and went to A.A.

Now look: I don’t want sympathy, and I certainly don’t deserve any. I had beaucoup chances, and I blew a lot of them. I’m incredibly grateful that I’m still alive and was able to stop drinking before doing irreparable damage to my mind and body. And I am thankful for this opportunity to use my writing talent to hopefully educate people that anyone can end up here, help is available, and that there are always options.

Bottom line: Human beings can survive almost anything. But it takes mutual cooperation and goodwill.