Jesse
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Jesse
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"Don't judge me." Jessie is 19 and has been on the streets for a year and a half. She is 7 months pregnant with a baby girl. If she doesn't have a place to stay by the time she gives birth, the state will take her daughter from her. She's a very chatty young lady, happily filling me in on the details of her life. She's Canadian French and English. She has a stigmatism and is legally blind in one eye. She had an apartment and let some "friends" stay there. She lost the apartment because of them. She gets some money from the state but it's not enough to get her a place to live, an address to give to the hospital to enable her to take her baby girl home. She doesn't know what she's going to do but she knows she doesn't want to lose her baby. She told me that she would have had a room ready for her daughter, painted, a crib set up, cuddly toys filling the room. She has none of this. She has, instead, bags of possessions surrounding her as she sits, half-lotus style, on the concrete of the park, eating the food we took. She asks not to be judged, explaining that if you walked in her shoes, she wouldn't judge you, she would, instead, ask you what she could do to help you. She told me, "It doesn't take any time at all to be homeless. You could have a nice house, a car, a job, and just like that (she clicked her fingers) you could lose it all and be homeless and on the streets. It can happen to any one, at any time. People think it won't happen to them but it does all the time." |
