It was really nice
I lost my fingers in a dynamite accident. Things got really bad, I had PTSD, bipolar
disorder and everything. I frequently
and I just found myself homeless a lot.
When I was younger, I was molested by my step brother. And after I graduated high school
I was raped and there was a gun involved. It got to a point where I just left my mom’s. I was 18.
I was working for the State Department for almost 5 years and the new contractor opted
not to pick me up because I was a medical liability.
Shelters weren’t that healthy for me so my pattern was to stay up for about 4 or 5 days and
go to a hospital, get discharged, stay up 4 or 5 days.
When I had my daughter, I was very sick. I lost about 45 pounds. Fast forward to the
4th emergency room visit within 4 weeks. It came back that it was a malignant cancerous tumor
in my pancreas. I think that’s just when
I was assaulted several times while I was homeless. I had several head injuries, my
jaw was broken in two places, my head was split in the front and the back. One of the
times I was discharged, I contracted HIV.
I had to go to a place where I can work with case managers to get help and you know and
I can really work on mental health and I can really work on positive things in life because
a lot of stuff that I’ve been through, you know, was just me going through it and me
not dealing with it right. So I wanted to change that and deal with it the right way.
I was really sick, I got tired of being sick. It was my plan initially the last stay was to kill myself.
Something in me was like you just gotta not give up all the time, you know, keep it moving,
but I felt like Ebony being my daughter, I had
to keep things going and not give up.
I was in a psych ward and that’s when it was told to me that I had no choice but to
take the HIV meds. I see people go through all these body changes taking these meds and
so I had this great idea that maybe if I that if I jog or burn it out of me that it wouldn’t
affect me so much and thats what I did every morning. I jogged around my bed -- I started
feeling better.
My daughter, she was definitely my cheerleader. When she saw the apartment for the first time,
we slept on the floor in her room together, and she was so excited, she didn’t go to
sleep until 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. It was so awesome.
We actually get to move forward. And I actually get to have a place and my daughter gets to have a place.
I ran my 15th marathon this march. And since
I’ve been in housing I haven’t been sick. My relationship with my family has improved.
She says, “This is my son. He run those 26 mile marathons.”
Being homeless and feeling like you have nobody that understands you and no support,
you never know what you can do to somebody’s life just by
A lot of people that are homeless aren't drug addicts, they’re not crazy, and they are
definitely employable. If it's one thing that I could say, it’s
I’ve gone from a sickly HIV positive person to a marathon runner. I still haven’t been
cured, but I'm still doing it. I fight back.