From the beginning of my journey of homelessness in Southern California (SoCal), I witnessed and experienced some weird and dangerous events. Within my first week of homelessness, I witnessed a group of guys stealing a large screen tv and a cart of other stuff from the nearby Walmart. I lived on the first street, located off the side of the Walmart that was just off University Parkway, in San Bernardino, California. There were no homes in the area (outside of beaten up, old RVs and personally-owned vehicles – like mine -). There were maybe between three to five men walking the huge flat screen tv and cart of stuff down the road that night. And they didn’t have a vehicle to put the stuff in. So, I have no idea where they took the stuff, once they went to the dead end and crossed the field.
A few days to a week later, I believe it was, I was in the McDonald’s drive thru, right down the road, on University Parkway. A vehicle tried to cut in front of me in the line and I blocked it. The driver got angry and started hurling profanity, insults and threats out of his window, as his female passenger laughed aloud. “You black, ugly bitch!” “Wait ‘til we got out the drive thru.” “Bitch, you bet not run either”, he threatened. As he cursed at me and threatened me, I pretended to be unfazed and just ignored him. On the inside though, I was terrified and wondered if I should dial 911. I prayed about the situation, as I calmly paid for my food and got it at the next window. I drove calmly out of the drive thru and down the road, praying that I would not be found by him. Unfortunately, he caught up with me and a very slow car chase ensued. I tried to stay calm and, admittedly, my pride wouldn’t allow me to flat out panic and speed down the roads like a mad person. Instead, I kept with the speed limit for the most part and eventually dialed 911. I gave the operator the license plate number of the vehicle he was driving. As we drove down the street, we came up to a red light. I decided to stay calm and, again, not drive like a mad person. I didn’t want the bully to be fully satisfied with scaring me into acting irrationally. As I sat at the light giving the 911 operator the information, he decided to go around me. As he passed me, I kind of made peace with the fact that either he was going to shoot at me or not. He simply passed by me and made a right turn. I was angry and briefly changed lanes to make the same right turn to follow him. But the operator told me to stop and so, I did. That incident made me really angry. I felt victimized. Although I could’ve deescalated the situation in the beginning by simply allowing him to cut in front of me, I didn’t think of that, in that moment. My reaction was to not let him cut in front of me because I had made my order first. Realistically, standing up for myself in that moment could’ve easily cost me great bodily harm or worse, my life! I was angry that I got bullied and I was angry that I didn’t have the means to truly defend myself, had I needed to do so! When I got off the phone with the 911 operator, I immediately started researching California self-defense laws, convictions and prison sentences, gun laws and gun stores. I also researched ammunition and protection gear such as Kevlar vests and ballistic helmets. Interestingly enough, during my research, I learned about a bulletproof hoodie that had a larger protective area than the Kevlar vest and helmet combined! I was determined to not be a victim on the streets on Cali and I was completely fueled by anger and rage! The last research I did was on the ammunition. I learned a lot about different types of bullets and the amount of damage each type could cause to a human body. This is where my heart was softened and I abandoned my mission to invest a lot of money on weapons and protective gear. As a visionary, I can actually see imaginary events as though they’re real movies and scenes. As I learned about the potential damage these bullets could cause, I could see the wounds on people and funerals and mothers weeping. It was all real to me and I didn’t want to be the cause of such physical and emotional pain! I didn’t want to be the one to blow someone’s face off or shoot a bullet into someone and the round explode in them, releasing metal shards throughout their body, causing them to die a very painful death. I didn’t want to hurt anyone like that! I didn’t want blood on my hands. So, I humbled myself and decided to fully depend on Almighty God, Yahweh, to protect and keep me. I also decided that I would walk in humility when dealing with people and choose my battles more wisely. If someone wanted to cut in front of me, make fun of me, bump into me without apologizing or anything else (besides outright physically attacking me), I would just take the abuse without defending myself and leave it in the hands of God. I believe that humility is a better choice than buying battle equipment to take the lives of people, all in the name of “self-defense”.
As I continued on my journey of being homeless in SoCal, I was still living over on that street by the Walmart. After a while, I felt Holy Spirit urging me to move but I didn’t know where to go. So I didn’t move. Well, things got weirder and I eventually got frightened away from that spot! One night, leading up to my departure from that street, I was feeling a bit more relaxed with living there and so I decided to stretch out in the back of my SUV and just chill for a little bit. As I laid there, I started to feel very uneasy! The feeling wouldn’t go away so I sat up. As I sat up, facing the windshield, I saw a man standing in front of my vehicle just staring at me! I was so scared. I immediately rushed to the driver’s seat, hopped in it and looked at him with terror on my face, braced to start up my vehicle and get out of there by any means necessary! He stood there and stared at me for a few more seconds and I realized that he was extremely high on some unknown drug. After the few seconds passed, he simply walked away and disappeared.
Over the course of some days, Holy Spirit was still urging me to move from that street. I had noticed over many days that it seemed like some guys were kind of trying to ‘case me’ and figure me out. Still, I didn’t know where else to go so I stayed on the street and just allowed them to kind of see me watching them watch me. Maybe they were trying to see if I was a cop first. And trying to see what I was up to because I had Virginia plates and I just showed up out of nowhere. I’m sure they were also trying to figure out how many people were in the vehicle, whether or not I was a man or woman and if I had any weapons. But, some nights after the scary incident with the high guy who stood in front of my SUV and stared at me, I decided to go stretch out in the back of the vehicle again. About two or three o’clock in the morning, I heard a loud bang against my vehicle! It scared me out of my sleep! I lost my glasses in the process of jumping up and trying to rush to the driver’s seat. So I was just a fumbling, panicking, terrified mess in that SUV! As I was fumbling around, I heard a woman yelling, “that’s why I fucked up your car, bitch!” She slammed her hand against my vehicle again, as she proceeded to rant off some other (unintelligible) stuff. By this time, I had found my glasses and was headed to the driver’s seat. As I made it to the seat, she had moved down to an RV that was parked behind me. She started hitting on the man’s RV and saying stuff that I can’t even remember. He responded by yelling at her to “GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!!!!!” Well, that was enough; she left. Somehow I managed to fall back to sleep (in the driver’s seat this time) about an hour or two later, I think. When the sun fully came up, I decided that, that last incident would be the last incident and I got my behind from over there!
I road around for a large part of the day, trying to locate a good place to park for the night. I eventually found what seemed like a great spot in what appeared to be a really good neighborhood. After dark, around maybe ten or eleven that night, I parked in the neighborhood, across from a park. Shortly after I parked, blew up my air mattress, laid down and got comfortable, I heard a vehicle pull up almost right next to my vehicle. A door opened and then closed. Upon hearing this, I started to panic on the inside! I didn’t want to just jump up and rush to the driver’s seat because I didn’t know what was going on. So, as usual, in scary situations, I began to pray. I laid there and listened for any movement outside, as I waited to see what would happen next. Most of the windows on my vehicle are pretty decently tinted. The only ones that aren’t tinted are the front driver and passenger windows and, of course, the windshield. So, laying in the back, I tried to sneak peaks from the back, driver’s side window. I couldn’t see much so I laid down and decided that, if anyone came and bothered my vehicle, I would set off the alarm, in hopes that it would scare them away. After what felt like an eternity, but was maybe only about five to ten (LONG) minutes, the car finally left. I rushed to my driver’s seat and laid the seat back quite a bit. I didn’t know where the car went so I wanted to wait for a while to make sure they were far away before I started my vehicle. I’m so glad I waited! Because, just moments later, right after the car drove away, a guy appeared out of the dark, at the park that was right across from where I was parked, and he went to the trash can and retrieved something out of it. I can only assume that he wasn’t getting an abandoned kitten out of it at that time of night! I wanted to start my vehicle and speed away but I knew that the best thing to do was to just stay put! The guy walked away and disappeared back into the dark. I have no clue where he went and I didn’t know if he stayed somewhere close by! So I laid in the driver’s seat and, by the grace of God was able to get some kind of sleep. I woke up in the early morning hours, just after daybreak and left, before people started coming out of their homes to start their day. Needless to say, I decided that I wouldn’t be making that area my new found, temporary home area.
As I thought, I’ll have to make Homeless In SoCal a mini sequel. There’s just way too much to share and, even if I compact my experiences of being homeless in SoCal, it’s still going to be quite lengthy. There are so many scary, funny and, overall, interesting things that happened. I don’t want to leave out details. So, I’ll just create a mini sequel about it. Follow and subscribe to my blog so that you can be notified when I post. Also, share my blogs so that others can be entertained and inspired too. Thanks.
The Life God Gave Me 