The Greyhound bus terminal in Boston is teeming with life; at least life as defined by the comings and goings through numerous queues. What a difference 12 hours makes! When I arrived at 4 in the morning it was Boulevard of Broken Dreams in real life. Are they homeless or just helpless? I’ll figure that out later for now I don’t know which I am or if I’m both.

What a difference 12 days makes! It was a turbulent 12 days of transformation and elucidation. . I was homeless September 10 with only an invitation for shelter from a Facebook Guardian Angel outside Boston; I spent my 12 days, originally planned as 6 weeks then 3 then escape. I am a different person today after spending 10 hours a day writing and 14 hours a day hiding. The clarity change of spaced delivered combined with the necessity of schedule was alarming considering the past 2 years of unemployment and nothing but time. I wrote often during those years but now I write with the focus of urgency.

So as I sit here with four hours to kill I am struck at how much I’ve changed in 12 days. I’m free from the lost 10 months without a clue where they went. I’m free from the sense that I am special and interesting. Some have told me homelessness is a gift, that it will reveal hidden strengths. Now when I sit I can’t feel my feet but I can walk on them so no problem I guess.

I arrived here an interesting person, broke and full of hope. As I begin my journey home to homelessness I am more broke and only full of plans for tomorrow. What an interesting story this will make! I hope my words last and I last to speak them. I fear they will live on these pages and I will pass as a triumph of lost potential. For some reason as I write this I want to cry. I’m lonely and abandoned and I know it is well deserved. It’s like an internal butterfly effect as each memory rushes in, as each failure and intemperate moment wistfully breezes through my airspace and it grows louder as the flutter drowns out the flattery.

I gave it all for my union, I deserve better, I am a good person, blah, blah, blah; too bad so sad for choices have consequences. As I reverse engineer my life I realize that I am the mad scientist who invented the perfect mouse trap of a life. I didn’t have enough self awareness to realize I was the mouse.

The faces walk by and I hope to find a few who like me are returning to a place without people; a place where any good faith, any credit or value in my account is exhausted. Those who care about me are exhausted and exasperated. We are the past the point of I’ll see what I can do to wish I could do more to leave a message I’ll get back to you.

Three more hours to wait and I am disconsolate. In my book Washington Cats is a poem The Weight of the Uncertainty. There’s comfort in the unknown, that possibilities are endless, the potential vast. Now I feel the crushing weight of certainty and tear up again. I can’t feel my feet save a little tingling and chill. Maybe I’ll lose them and be able to live on disability.