To live on the streets, there is no quick-fix education. There is no information guru who waits to greet those who have fallen from the lands of four walls by offering them a street guide, a blanket, and a kiss on the cheek, welcoming them to lay their head on the concrete and all will be well in the morning. A street education can�t be taught, can�t be understood, and can�t be explained unless you have lived through it. It is a rollercoaster ride of survival where every decision, every choice, and every mistake can decide whether you eat, sleep, live, or die.
For some, the fall to the streets is gradual.
Some, it is instantaneous, some it takes like a tidal wave unaware, while some prepare for the inevitability. For me, the streets came like a revelation, an epiphany, that my life had no meaning, had no worth, and I felt the streets were the only place to be to escape from everyone, including myself. I was unique among those around me, for I chose to live on the streets, rather than live among people I could no longer understand. I had no idea what I was doing. I have to make that clear, because before my fall, I had no prior knowledge of being homeless, no plan, no expectations, no hope or ambition. I had just given up on my life.
New York City decided my fate. I had never been there before. My friends and I had hiked on the Appalachian Trail and had decided to visit Manhattan. We spent a day walking around, seeing the city, and eventually ended up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. There, we spent the night sleeping outside the fences of Tompkins Square Park. In the morning, my friends returned to the trail, but I chose to stay behind. I had no idea what I was to do, what was to come, or how I would survive. I only knew that I wanted to stay in New York and be alone.
Where was I to go? Where was I to sleep? How was I to eat?
I had no answers to these questions. I had only a couple of dollars on me and I knew that wouldn�t last long. I knew nothing of New York. That first day, I spent it sitting in Tomkpins Square Park, watching people come and go. I judged some as homeless, some as drunks, others junkies, hookers, illegals, while others as the punks, the yuppies, and the gangs who made the Lower East Side home. I was looking for my place to belong.
At ten, the park closed and I found myself walking along St. Mark�s Place wondering what I was going to do. Two blocks up, on a red, white, and blue sidewalk, I discovered a building that held all night AA meetings. I wasn�t an alcoholic, but inside was warmth and coffee, and I felt if I just sat in the back, quiet, nobody would know that I was a fake, that all I wanted was sleep. I faded in and out of sleep all night listening to the tales of sad lives and the danger of abuse. When the morning came, I went back to the park and slept the day away.
For days, this was my routine. Sleep in the park, sit on the bench, and spend the night listening to people in recovery. During the day, I learned that there was a library on the edge of the park where I could steal books. I learned about Food not Bombs, Hare Krishnas, Hot Dogs from Heaven, and other people and groups who would come and feed people in the park. I became part of a group, gutter punks, drunks, and dope fiends who would conjugate on my set of benches that I chose as a comfort zone. Soon, I learned the only way to sleep on hard concrete is to get drunk or high. The first time I asked for change, my stomach knotted and my soul felt vacant. The looks in people�s eyes that I was beneath them could only be tolerated drunk. So now, I had to make enough to get drunk at night and have money to get drunk in the morning, so I could do it again.
I no longer went to the AA meetings. I would see the people from the meetings from time to time, wanting to help me, but eventually they would just pass me by. I no longer went to the library. My day was consumed with making seven to ten dollars; the price paid for a daily drunk. I now had drinking buddies and dope fiend friends. I learned where the best heroin was, where to buy good sacks of weed, and what trash cans had the best scraps. I no longer ate from the Krishnas. I no longer went to Hot Dogs from Heaven. I no longer walked among my fellow man. I didn�t bathe, didn�t change clothes, didn�t care how bad I smelled, and neither did those around me. Memories of that time came in blurs.

I remember waking up on a cardboard box with a strange woman passed out near me with a needle stuck in her arm. She wasn�t dead then, but she died two weeks later. I remember robbing the Madonna, hidden behind a chain link fence where passer bys tossed money to her and wished for blessings from God. With a broom and patience, I stole these blessings for beer.

I remember the constant rain and the biting flies, runaway girls who I gave blankets and stranded dogs forgotten by their owners. But most of all, I remember the rats, the way they would run over you in your sleep, searching for food and warmth. Most of all, I remember not caring about how far I fell away from the society I once embraced.

I�d like to say there was a profound reason why I came back from that life, like there was a great lesson I had learned. But it was nothing more then the elements, the freezing winds and the numbing cold of winter that forced me out of New York and back Worcester, Massachusetts.

I knew nothing of shelters and government programs to assist me back then. All I knew was that I wanted to live and that was no longer a choice on the streets of New York. Since then, I have returned to the streets several more times, each time, learning a little more about how to survive, how to keep clean, and how to keep from collapsing back to not caring. However, it is hard, because I know that New York is still inside me and I would still be there today, or dead, if it had not gotten cold. My education will never be complete.