brenda

i'm hoping.
i'm hoping to make a change somehow. it's so easy to forget what you're fighting for..what you're headed towards. i want to love. live laugh love. bring peace to the world. fend for the needy. love the unloved. haha! give me hope!

i've seen brenda a couple times this week.
she's this homeless lady that walks around. let me tell you about her.

the first time i met her i was at third street stuff and she was wearing a red shirt and an old ball cap (one i haven't seen her without). she looked a little dirty. i actually wasn't sure if she was a she or not. and i wasn't sure if she was crazy or not either....i was just hanging out outside. maybe reading a book or something, can't remember that. she said she was hungry and wanted money. i told her to wait and i'd bring her something out. i went for a sandwich and when i returned she was gone. i tried to give it to someone else but they didn't want it, so i ended up eating it myself. i was a little annoyed. but then i thought maybe people might had done that sort of thing before to her so... oh well. i tried.

the next time i saw her she was looking for money for a bus. sure! i tried to offer her food again but she didn't want it. she just wanted money. for a "bus." right... i don't know if i gave her anything or not...

the next time i saw her i was with a friend and also speaking with this girl from highschool i ran into randomly. brenda started saying hey and asking for money i think.it's been a while. i don't think she recognized me.. i remember the awkwardness. the look on the girl's face...she was with some dude too so...it's interesting what goes through your mind when you have to decide how you'll respond in situations like this. with people watching. i was slightly embarrassed honestly, but i pushed my insanity away and took up some humanity. i spoke with brenda for a bit. she had a swollen lip. said she got hit by a car and had an infection in her mouth. she couldn't eat anything solid so i went in to try and get her some soup. i kept peeping out the window to see if she'd left me yet. surprisingly she was talking a bit to my friend from highschool. i was pretty excited about that. really pleased. anyways....she didn't leave me and i brought her a smoothie because the place didn't have any soup. luckily i chose a flavor she liked and a friend of mine and i spoke with her for a while. i learned that she had been addicted to cocaine and had lost her job and lost her home and all this stuff. she put in applications in lots of places as a dishwasher or whatever else they'd offer her, but couldn't get any responses.... i wish i remembered more of it. i just know she'd been through alot. but she was trying to get better and had been clean for quite a while. it was cool talkin to her that time.

i can't remember if i'd seen her between then and the other night. not sure. but i was out with a friend hoppin some bars sort of. i recognized her as she was asking someone for money. obviously people weren't in to her. sort of ignoring her. i called her over excitedly and asked her what was up. told her people carry cards on nights like that so if you lose them you can cancel them. luckily i had five bucks so we went to the hot dog stand and got us some snacks. chatted a bit. my friend was totally cool with it. people stared at us long after they had walked past us. how weird did we look? three people talking. don't they see that everywhere?

i wonder how you can help people like brenda? i have no home to invite her into. i cannot change the culture we have of shunning people like her. people we judge to be addicts and theives and ugly. people that can't find jobs because of our perspectives of them. people that perhaps have difficulties functioning like that anyways. i really don't know what long term good i could do in her life without sacrificing some of my own freedom. without giving her my time and more of my resources. who's willing to do that anyways? ....i'd like to think i would.
someday i hope i have a home i can invite her back into...to share dinner with me. maybe to watch a movie once in a while. to sleep if she needs it. why do we keep 'them' so separate? we treat them like animals or tigers that might swallow us whole or bacteria that could give us some sort of deadly infection...

brenda is not an infection or a tiger. brenda is a woman... born to oppresion and poverty....trying to survive. and God loves brenda. probably more than me most days...