I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing a Perfect Melody
The psychological of homelessness is real and something that I cannot escape, yet neither is it a state of mind which I can embraced, and yet to NOT speak of these things is madness. What I want to say, what I want to believe is most true, is that I do NOT think of myself any differently than when I was a housed individual. Yet the weight of this sigma is everywhere. In any given real world scenario my value as a homeless individual is first to be questioned. This alone fashions a well greased slope to further descend with zero effort among the cavalcades of this social disease. In Los Angeles homelessness is a specific designation, and even though no two stories are exactly the same, one finds themselves automatically branded with a set of assumptions. The most debilitating of these assumptions is that one is assumed to be less responsible and less reliable than one’s housed peers. The truth however is that for any individual to engage with the world in the manner in which they once had requires exponentially higher degree of effort. In my case I wish assume a greater role than which I maintained before — and the importance of this disclosure relevant to this submission is that it’s ALL or nothing. And that this may well be my last gamble to NOT simply to prove my value as an individual, but to add value to the world.
Mark Ezra Merrill c/o the Jan Clayton Center
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