I hate San Francisco.  I cringe when I sit next to a homeless person on the bus, or when I see someone sleeping on the ground.  I watch at a distance, people's reactions when they pass the person on the bench.  The person with ragged hair and unfit clothes, the person asking for bus money.  Some people don't even respond.  They look right past them, as if they don't even exist.

It's not that I hate homeless people, or that I am scared of them.  It is that I am sad, and that sadness goes so deep it terrifies me.  It is not that I am necessarily sad for them, or sad for me.  I'm not mad at the people who ignore them, or sickened by the drugs.

It's that I see my sister.  And I see a child.  I know that once, they were a child, just like my sister was.  She was born 8 years before me, but I've seen the pictures.  If I spread them all out and look closely, I swear I can tell when it was that her expression changed from pure to pained.
The group of homeless people on the grass at the park.  HOMELESS PEOPLE.  That is what they are, just like black defines those BLACK PEOPLE.  OLD describes that old person.  Labels.  But I see children inside.  Little and pure and now utterly destroyed.  Ravaged.  Destroyed and robbed of what could have been.  And I see that child starring through.  Hurt, and longing for help. 
I know that, while they are responsible in many ways for the choices that have brought them to a life on the street, I know that they would most likely have not made those choices if things had been different.

My sister would not have touched heroin, if she had been left alone in her sleep.

My sister would still have a face I recognized, a face like the ones in the pictures of her at age three on the swing, if my dad had played chase with her around the park, instead of killed her soul one night at a time, over and over again for years.

My sister would not be that person, shaking, unwashed hair, a look of death, evil, and disintegration spread across her face, if she had ever had a chance to heal.

I see behind the people.  There are stories, so sad.  I work with children every day as a nanny, and I know what they need is love, positivity, hugs, and support.  So many children do not get this.  They may not end up on the street, or navigate to drugs, but maybe they will find themselves in abusive relationships, not knowing why they stay.

Maybe they will find themselves so driven for power and achievement because they were never good enough for their parents.

It manifests in so many ways.  And I wonder why so many people have children.  Why so many people can't love their children.  Why pure love is so hard.  Why people can't see their children as individuals, as whole people entirely separate.  Why people are so attached to their children, treat them like trophies, condition them to be like every one else.

And would I be the same?  A few months ago, when my period was weeks late and I didn't know why, and I thought, "oh no...uh oh."

And I thought, would I be able to teach a child differently from what I have been taught?

Would I be able to undo all the things my family brought and filled me with...to show my child something new?

And is it EVER fair to bring another life into this world when you are not prepared to treat it wholly, perfectly, to love it, to support it, to be unbiased, to be unattached?

My mother got pregnant in her last year of college, and she went on to have three more children.

With a man that didn't love her.  With a horrible, terrible man.  Why did she do this? Get pregnant at 21?  Get married at 20?  It was what you did? She wanted a family.


You trace back my mother's family, and see the dysfunction, the sickness created over and over again.

You trace back my father's family, and the abuse, over and over and over again.


When does it stop.


It stops with me, I know this.  But it is so hard to stop.  You have to trace it back, examine it closely, and break yourself down into little pieces to be examined.  What do I want to keep? And what do I need to separate from and discard? And what do I need to keep but shift and change to something that fits ME?


It is an ongoing process that requires commitment and help and ups and downs.

I know it is possible, to heal and to not repeat mistakes,

but when I feel that sinking sensation in my chest, the pressure.

When I see the homeless man and think of my sister,

When I feel desperate and helpless and inexplicably sad,

when I wish I could go back in time, and find that little girl, and hold her and shield her

and when I realize I can't,
that solid, terrifying, deep, aching sadness.
it eventually recedes and I am left with a sort of longing and sullness,

a feeling like sitting alone on a northern california isolated beach,

a gray foggy morning, drizzly and wet,

inside of me,

I wonder if it will always be like this.