Haiku Ewe

I live in downtown Los Angeles and have to watch helplessly as people descend into the depths of drug addiction. When a person is newly addicted to Meth, it’s like looking at someone right after they tip the final degree and can no longer change their mind about jumping from the building. You can still see a whisper of the person they were meant to be.

Ask anyone down here about The Cat Girl. We’ll all sigh and shake our heads remembering her rapid transformation from a fashion school student to an addict with a face covered in pick marks to a prostitute to a phantom of a human being haunting exit ramps in search of spare change.

There was a young man with blond hair and piercing blue eyes who started walking around downtown silently in a black robe with a backpack. He terrified me because I thought he was severely mentally ill (in a violent way). In less than a year, Meth transformed him into an old, filthy, hollow shell. I thought he had disappeared until, after a few weeks, it dawned on me that this shell I kept seeing was the same person.

In two years, I’ve seen only one success story. But what a success story it was! A man would stand absolutely rigidly still on the corner of Wilshire and Grand all day every day. His intense stare was fixed on some unknown horizon. At night, he would curl up in a small nook between two stores. Sometimes he would be asleep when we passed. At other times, we would walk by well past midnight and he would be sitting stiff and straight with the same fixed stare into nothing.

Sometimes he would disappear for weeks leaving us to worry about what had become of him. As suddenly as he left, he would return to his catatonic stance. One evening, I saw a professional woman look into the nook and say “There you are! I couldn’t find you.”

After that he disappeared for well over a month. We thought for sure we’d never see him again. And then, one day, we bought some coffee in the shop he stood and slept next to. Inside we found him not only coherent but clean, dressed in new clothes, and smiling. He turned out to be one of the kindest warmest people I have ever met. He didn’t explain what had happened though he acknowledged that our concern was valid.

A few weeks after we had the honor of meeting him, we again found him standing stiff and catatonic on his corner. After a week or so, he disappeared but returned weeks later smiling and well. I think he was pleased to see how many of the people who had fearfully scurried past him actually worried and cared about his situation. He returned so much and so gregariously that we assumed he would remain a joyful part of downtown life.

We started to see him less and less, and the last time we saw him, he was having a drink (though probably drinking water while his friends drank beer) at a local pub. We happily called his name and waved and he smiled and waved calling our names in return.

Although I selfishly miss him, his story gives me hope in humanity and in life. It stinks big time that there a hundred Cat Girl stories to every one recovery story. However, it’s important to remain uplifted and heartened and motivated by that one recovery story.

P.S. In my old corporate job, I met three people (successful and high ranking) who confided to me that they had pulled themselves up from homelessness. I also am friends with a woman who is a rapidly rising star business woman and she confided to me that she used to be homeless and drug addicted. It’s okay for me to post this on a public blog because if anyone looks closely at my friends trying to figure out who these four are, you’ll never guess in a million years.