Not always an outcast: RAYS STORY

I sink in the green-cushioned chair. I scan the room. Surrounding me along the walls are children's toys: dolls, toddler gadgets as well as a stuffed Tigger from Winnie the Pooh smiling back at me. Solomon screeches, "Ray!"I patiently wait for a few more moments. 

He enters with a smile. I stand to greet him, holding out my hand to shake his. ""Wow, you're hands are soft," he says. I'm flattered. He sits; he is relaxed but unaware of what to expect, his body language says it all. He places his hands on the table and they remain there.

"Tell me about your life," I say.

"It is rough being homeless. And you know, when you're homeless you can't get too much. You want things and you can't get them. It's hard to get a job because you can't get no help."

Ray wasn't always homeless. He wasn't even always jobless. He quit his 17-year career at KFC a couple of years ago, and that's where his troubles began."I got really stressed out. Started  doing bad drugs. Lost it and never went back."

Nonetheless, his family is not supportive of his drug habit nor his attempt to fight it. "They're funny acting people," he says. Ray has been clean for a month and has found shelter at a location for addicts who are trying to change their lives.

"There's help. But not enough help for me."

Ray spends his days alone: job searching, taking advice from various shelters and trying to maintain his composure. "I have two kids in college, I don't want them doing the same thing I'm doing. So I'm working hard. I have to do the work. There's no help. [I'm] not letting my "friends" influence me. I stay out of their way and keep to myself." His plight is proof that being homeless is one thing, but getting out of it is another.

People look inward: what's wrong with the person? In this situation, Ray is battling a drug addiction. But he wasn't always like that. What causes a family man, a hard worker to become homeless and turn to drugs. It's something. Because if it was just Ray, he would have never had a career, a family or the drive to fight his addiction and get his life back to good. "Everybody makes mistakes. Nobody is perfect. I'm not going to relapse, I'm going to do better for me."

His 40 year-old hands are rough in comparison to mine. And it's not because of age but because a lifetime of hard work followed by a couple of years on the streets; in the cold. Although I have worked hard throughout my life, my hands are smooth, my opportunity smoother. I do not know what it's like to be Ray but he knows what it is like to be me. He is an outcast to society and to his family but not to himself. Ray is the stereotype of a homeless individual but his identity is far from it. He is hard work, love, determination and hope.

"I believe in God. He's good to everyone if they give him a chance."