I don’t like sleeping on the street, and I am so grateful I don’t have to

Tommy Young
Aug 31, 2018 · 1 min read

Last night I went out with some drinks with friends, only to realize that I did not have my keys on me for my apartment. Thankfully, I was able to just crash with a friend pretty quickly. No big deal, worst thing was not getting to feed my cats until the morning and that I had to go to bed without brushing my teeth and probably the actual worst, sleeping with my daily contacts in.

In the few seconds it took to get someone to let me crash, I had the fleeting thought of “well I guess the worst case is I’ll just sleep sitting outside my door” and quickly thought about how many people a night in NYC, the US, the world sleep outside, and in much worse conditions than next to a door. That is, if they can sleep at all.

Homelessness has always been a particular hard issue for me to process. I have never understand how we as a society got to a point where we simply don’t have a solution to house everyone. I know that some people genuinely choose to live outside, maybe even intentionally in the streets with no real mental illness, but that must be a small percentage.

A bitter reminder that humans really don’t love each other like they think or say they do.

Tommy Young

Written by

Recovering human.