The Lucky One

Interesting story, The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks. No homeless mentions in the novel, but Logan Thibault did walk from Colorado to North Carolina. The story is not about the walk, it is about locating a woman in a photo Logan found while on tour of duty in Iraq. A quote:

"Thibault slept the rest of the night without waking, just as he had since arriving in North Carolina. A military thing ~ or more accurately, a combat thing, something he'd learned out of necessity. Tired soldiers make mistakes."

"He'd learned to to sleep when it was time to sleep, no matter how chaotic things were, trusting he'd be better for it the following day."

That made me think: tired homeless people make mistakes. I made quite a few of them myself. It also made me think of pre-homeless days. That lack of sleep may be what caused me to make the mistakes that lead up to becoming homeless. Prior to my uninvited housepest arrived, I had few if any insomnia nights. After he found out where I lived, his antics brought me many sleepless nights. Some nights I panicked as I watched the clock click closer and closer to 5AM. "If I fall to sleep now, will I wake up in time for work?" I did fall to sleep at 5AM, groggy when the alarm went off an hour later.

If I remembered I would re-set it for 7AM. Did not need to get up at 5:55 in the morning. I slept for six hours each night and always woke before the alarm went off anyway. On the streets my watch alarm was set at 5:55, even though I was usually up way before that, as early as 3AM, unable to fall back to sleep, up and walking to 7/11 for coffee. When I found out that WB kept his alarm clock set to 5:55AM, I quickly changed mine.

Where was I? Oh, sleep disturbances are a form of abuse. Does that mean all babies are born abusive, was my joke. No joke when adults intentionally disrupt ones sleep, as the arse, Jet did to me throughout 2002. Tired anyone make mistakes.

What I did quickly learn, sleeping at shelters, was to fall to sleep "no matter how chaotic things were" going on around me. "Out of necessity." Never ceased to amaze me, on the streets, how I could fall to sleep instantly when head hit backpack pillow. Staying asleep for six hours straight was my problem.