Homelessness is a rough place to be. There’s the lack of sleep, the lack of food, and the constant feeling of being treated as less than human—it all takes a toll. The streets are relentless: the sharp bite of cold wind against your skin, the distant hum of traffic that never stops, the smell of trash and fast food dumpsters blending into the air. And then there are the pitfalls. For me, the biggest pitfall was drugs. It was easy to stay clean when I had a roof over my head. Someone once told me, “Nobody wants to be sober on the sidewalk,” and I certainly didn’t.

For years I had been a heavy cannabis user, but now I found myself reunited with an old “friend” I hadn’t touched since my teenage years: methamphetamine. At first, I thought I could control it. But the darker life got, the less I cared about control.

I spiraled for months. My partner—who I’ll call Celeste—and I went through it together. I saved her life, and she saved mine, but we also dragged each other through hell. There were fleeting moments of connection—a shared laugh over a cracked coffee cup, a quiet conversation beneath the sheltering eaves of a gas station canopy—but they were always short-lived, swallowed by the chaos around us.

The man writing this blog is not the same man who lost his apartment and ended up on the sidewalk. That man died in the freezing wind, huddled beneath the dank stairwell of a shady motel. Something survived, but it took months of crawling through the mud, the rot, the stink, before I saw light again.

When my ex-wife and I split, she called herself a phoenix—someone who would rise again, stronger than before. I’m no phoenix. I’m more like the last cockroach that refused to die. It’s not pretty, but I’m alive, and that means I still have time to fix my mistakes.

Our time with meth was short, but action-packed. We paid for it once. After that, we quickly learned how eager people were to get us high. We never paid again, and we never went without—until the day we finally got clean.

Sometimes people got us high because we were fun to hang out with. Other times, it was because we offered sexual favors. But the drug was never in short supply. The line we heard most often was: “I don’t usually get this high, but fuck it.” People said it to us almost every time. For them, it was just a wild night of letting loose before returning to moderation. For us, that was just Tuesday.

My relationship with meth was complicated. It wasn’t just a drug; it was a cycle, a trap disguised as relief. At first, it felt like a secret escape hatch. I’d smoke a few bowls and feel incredible—alive, awake, like I could take on anything. But within a day or two, the magic was gone. Each bowl hit a little less, dulled a little more. By then my mouth was already full of burns.

I always got the burns. This part is gross, but it’s real, and I want you to understand what it’s like. The burns don’t really come from the meth itself—they’re from whatever it’s cut with. Battery acid, lye, God knows what else. It starts as small swollen yellow spots that sting like hell. A few days later, they collapse. That’s when you really know misery.

By that point, the meth isn’t making me happy anymore. It’s just keeping despair at bay, like bailing water out of a sinking boat. The good feelings are gone, replaced by utter hopelessness. My mouth feels like it’s on fire—raw, blistered, bleeding. Talking hurts. Eating hurts. Everything is dark.

Eventually I’d stop smoking, because I literally couldn’t take the pain anymore. Time would pass. The burns would heal. My head would clear, and I’d start to feel human again. Then I’d forget just how bad it had been. And that’s when the cycle would start all over again. Rinse and repeat.

When Celeste and I finally made it into the shelter, I remember the first night vividly. Just lying on a mattress that didn’t smell like urine or mildew felt like luxury. The sound of silence was almost shocking after months of chaos. I could finally breathe, and for the first time in a long time, I could imagine a life beyond just surviving.

With this blog, I want to take you through my journey from hopelessness to redemption. I won’t shy away from the gritty, inhumane details—because they matter. No matter where I end up in life, the homeless will always be my people. I can never unsee what I’ve seen, and I don’t want to. I want to shine a light on it—for my struggling brothers, sisters, and enbies—so the world can see us as we are: human, hurting, surviving, and still here.