“My house burned down in 2006 and I’ve been homeless ever since. I used to be a smoker- crack and all that shit. So I let the wrong type of people in my house, went to the store, and came back to everything I had in flames.
I have had different jobs since then. I worked for NAU, Outback, all over the place. In the last few years, injuries have kept me out of work. I have injuries to my back and legs. I can only pick up about 25 pounds. I had a heart attack last year and was told I shouldn’t be doing any heavy lifting. They separate my wife and I if we go to a shelter.”
“My siblings have homes and they know I’m homeless. They help out. I have four brother and two sisters. There were 13 of us. Six died in a house fire before I was born. My dad had come into the house with a gas can, stuck it next to the stove and it caught on fire and killed five. This one was before I was even born. After that fire, we moved from Louisiana over to Flagstaff which was where I was born.
When my dad moved to Flagstaff there were 8 kids. Then a second fire happened . My older sister died after she went back into the house to save the Bible. I rolled underneath the stove. That’s how I survived the second fire. They didn’t know I was in there.My mom was with my dad for basically all my life but died of pneumonia in 1997. My dad just died earlier this year from cancer.
My parents raised me well. My dad gave me a house and I burned it down with some fucking crack smokers. I watched it burn down. That was a horrible feeling. My father gave me that house and I let it burn to the ground. I’ve seen far too many house fires in my time. I’m sober now and that’s a great feeling to be able to say that, I just wish I did sooner.”
“My wife is probably my biggest struggle in being homeless. I had a good job, I was going to school, but she just couldn’t handle it. She always thought I was with other women when I would be in class or at work
When you say ‘I do’ to a woman, you go through with it. The way I was raised, you don’t cheat on a woman. I’m a one woman man. She would still stay with me if I went back, but I don’t want to listen to all the crap. She gets physical when she wants to, but I was taught to stick with your woman so that’s what I do.
In the near future, I want to see myself back in school. If I can convince my wife. She thinks I’m always with other women if I’m at school, she is incredibly jealous. I’m a friendly person and she always thinks the worse of me. But if I can convince her, I want to do computer programming- that’s what I was going for before. I was going to community college and working at Outback, but she thought I was cheating on her cause I would be out working late. Don’t ever marry a jealous woman.”
