Dan Daiquiri

The life of petty crime is finished, now for homeless systems. Be warned, sensitive subjects covered here.

Finally I’d decided to deal with my life, rolling about like a gadge wouldn’t solve anything and day by day I was only destroying myself further. Putting another premature nail in my coffin, all for the sake of sympathy. For the sake of seeking and feeling some form of love and inclusion. The forever hunt for validation, being a chameleon but never myself. I pitched two different perspectives for people to see of me, one was feeling sorry for me and the other was to think I was the craziest person in existence. I’d often be out for four days at the same house party, taking and drinking everything in sight. Behind the scenes I was fighting a demon inside me, a dark force which to this day still wants to be at the forefront.

There hit a point during 2010 when I decided enough was enough, and I had to start piecing together parts of my life, from the very foundations. This was a task which at the time was extremely arduous considering the kinds of things I needed at that time were not taught in school, you know like basic survival skills. Instead I was left scratching my head wondering if I managed to figure out the angle of my trajectory using trigonometry somehow I’d be able to piece together my starting point.  It was then I registered as homeless and entered the system. A step which felt huge, more because it was terrifying and for good reason. Once registered I was given news almost instantaneously of where my first place to stay would be. It was at the Salvation Army, a name that I’d always coined with the folk that’d stand about in amidst shopping streets with donation tubs and dressed comically. Now here I am, essentially begging for food and shelter from the very folk I’d mock as a teenager. How the tables had indeed turned, who’s to be mocked now.

A couple of months passed in there, stuck on a schedule and a curfew. It was strict, the irony being if you weren’t in by midnight you were locked out and if you weren’t there for meal times you never ate. That routine in my life helped form structure, and although I was still a bit of a lost soul I never once again turned to shoplifting, I was on the straight and narrow for the most part. The altercations involving the police were enough for me, and put a fear down my spine. My abode for these months was a small box room, with only the bare necessities in it. A bundle of refurbished and upcycled furniture which were all marred with tiny burn marks and questionable stains. A thin veiled curtain covered the window which looked out onto a busy Dundee road. Often I’d lay awake at night unable to sleep due to the waves of drunk folk passing by at 4am, singing and shouting. I could never quite make out the conversations or the songs and for once I didn’t want to be right in the middle of it, front and centre. At one point I was one of those guys, and now simply a sleep deprived eighteen year old trying his best to get some rest.

The homeless system is a strange experience and I never realised that within it existed a self contained society, and within each unit there was a further structure of rules, roles and economics.  The micro society within the unit was structured in a hierarchy with the hardened criminals at the top, the ones who had just been released from prison and the drug pushers. At the bottom were the heavy drug users and the registered alcoholics, in the middle of it all was a plethora of life stories and situations. Although I never fully fell into any of these, they all looked at me differently, I was young and fresh faced, there was scope for potential redemption and deep down even in some of the corrupted minds they didn’t want to drag a civilian into their crazy world. I never made friends there, but definitely didn’t make enemies. This didn’t stop me living in perpetual fear of being robbed, or broken into while I’m still in the room. There were stories of this happening and it truly terrified me. Amongst this fear, they were mostly nice people, with real stories and real tragedies but I still had many sleepless nights in that tiny white box room.

There was a micro economy in which cigarettes or rollups were the currency, trading them like gold for pretty much anything. Within the unit I had a case worker who’d devised an action plan to try get me on the right track, with getting rehoused and receiving Jobseekers Allowance at the very top of that list. I can still remember waiting in anticipation for my first payment from them, like Charlie Bucket hoping for the Golden Ticket. My golden ticket in this instance was the basic funds to survive on, a means to maybe one day escape the system. The application process was gruelling, sixty or so pages of information to enter with a lead time of at least three weeks until it was processed. This was all handwritten, before the days of online portals and express application processes something that’s often now taken for granted. One day my time had came, my Golden Ticket had arrived: a whopping total of £440 as it had been backdated to when I entered the Salvation Army around two months prior, existing merely as a nothing beforehand.

Around the time my Jobseekers Allowance was processed and in my account, I was moved to another homeless unit. With a new unit came new rules and new citizens, one of which I would only be a part of for a short while until six months later I was kicked out for having parties, a pattern which would continue throughout this part of my life. I craved the feeling of being a part of something, a group of people with a shared goal. More often than not, this was getting as screwed up as possible, with people who never cared about the real me but then either did I. A warped perception of my sense of self, always feeling like the outcast sitting on the sideline. An extra in my own life, never quite sure how to act or what to do and always followed by a shadow self hellbent on bringing any glimmer of positivity crashing down.

To get an eviction whilst living in the homeless system was a big red flag, and from this I found myself blacklisted from even the roughest of homeless units in Dundee. There was one however, who took me in. This shelter was often referred to as the end of the line, the last resort. It was tucked away just out of the city centre out of sight in an industrial area which had been disused for many years. The building itself was nice enough and had an annex which only the best behaved and “most” rehabilitated could get a room in, this was to be the first step towards getting a flat as they were essentially supported living flats. I frequently heard stories of people losing those flats and moving back to the main building. Back to square one, in Gen Pop. The main building where I was situated had single rooms, which resembled my salvation army room albeit slightly degraded. A single bed, chest of drawers and a shared bathroom on the same floor I was on, the bathroom included a large needle bin right next to the shower. I remembered the blow to my self image every time I went to the bathroom, the inner chitter chatter: on one side positive affirmations to assure myself this is only temporary, on the other was the shadow calling me all sorts of derogatory terms and shattering any tiny bit of self esteem I may have got during the day. The residents here were really nice, and although they were at their lowest point they still tried to look after me as much as they could. Protecting me, like a little brother and making sure nobody hurt me or ripped me off.

I wasn’t boozing nearly as much while living in this homeless unit as there was a strict “no tolerance” policy on alcohol and drugs, unless it was preapproved by medical professionals. However I doubt the needle bins were full of prescription drug filled needles, not that I was wanting to check. One night, I decided to break this miniscule period of abstinence and decided I would go all out, after all I’d earned it right? I’d been out all day drinking and truly went on a destructive streak. Back then before I could regulate emotions my mood swings were frequent and often I’d be riding that wave through every emotion in the space of an hour. This is terrifying to think back to, only because it contrasts so much to what I know now. The night had gotten pretty loose, and I’d flown of the handle as would usually happen usually for some minor inconvenience or internal frustration. I’d argued with most of my friends and stormed away, in a drunken rampage punching every wall on the way back to the unit. I’d also made some pretty worrying comments as I’d left, the kind that communicates that I was intending on harming myself. Who knows what, but by this point here I was sitting in my box room with what felt like no friends, no support anywhere and a set of bloody knuckles. I text one of my friends with a big long soppy message and signed it off with a sorry, my wave of emotion and deep helplessness was riding high. At the mercy of myself I sat and tried to figure out what was happening, or whether I was perhaps in the wrong.

About twenty minutes had passed, I felt worse. My inner dialogues were at war and I was caught in the middle feeling the worst I’d ever felt. I went to the bathroom, glanced at the needle bin and felt the negative side ride through to victory. The wave of emotion and self loathing was real, like raw at the very core. I hated myself and felt I didn’t deserve love. There was a part of me that didn’t see any sort of future, any future which had me in it. Because what kind of life am I living, where will it end? Eighteen years and absolutely nothing to show for it, no dreams, no goals or ambition. What was the point? I broke down and through teared eyes I found my way back to my room, stumbling on the walls as I staggered back.

I sat for a while and figured out what to do, was it now? I didn’t want to be here anymore, this wasn’t for me. I’d always envisaged a different life, one where almost as if by magic it’d all be figured out and I’d have a life of luxury, despite not having put in the work required. I was never lazy, I just didn’t understand how the game of life worked. The intricacies of which now I know, is never possible to have figured out and most of life is going from point A to B without knowing how you’ll get there.

I’d crafted myself a makeshift collar, I can still remember the fibres from the multiple laces rub on my hands and the deep reflection and intent that flowed through me at that moment. I glanced up at the light fixture once more as I tied the bundle round my neck, in reflection I know now that there is no way it would hold my weight and it would come crashing down under the laws of physics, but most importantly I never once thought of the implications this would have on those I love. Pulling it tighter, I took one more breath.

Everything turned black in an instant and before I knew it I was lay on my bed surrounded by paramedics and police. I can remember the police radio being the first thing I heard, there’s something about these kinds of moments where the auditory stimuli is always the first thing that your body responds to. The beep of the radio reminded me of my many run ins with the police and being locked up in the cells, but also to when I woke up in hospital at fourteen years old after I blacked out with alcohol poisoning. I can still hear my mum’s voice while I was unconscious. A culmination of these transient noises and memories flashing back were overwhelming to say the least but nowhere near as much as the realisation that I was still alive. I was disorientated and confused, yet also blessed. The bright light shone in my eye as the tested my responsiveness, still in a dazed state I answered as best I could while still coming to grips with what I had tried to do. I looked to my right to where the mound of laces had been cut, in this exact moment I felt a wave of relief. It felt like a chance to start again, it clearly wasn’t meant to have happened. Maybe the fear of uncertainty was too much in that moment, I’d often thought deeply about an afterlife and I guess in that situation, I figured I really could have been in a worse place.

The following hour was a blur, but I remember being loaded into an ambulance and it was then my consciousness left my body again. When I properly came to, I was sat in a waiting room in Dundee’s only and severely underfunded mental hospital. I didn’t know how long I’d been there but I was awakened by a police officer nudging me, I was then lead into a side room off of the main waiting area, escorted by two police officers. The psychiatrist started asking me questions regarding what had happened that night, I answered as best I could but the answers were vague. Deep down I couldn’t help but have strong feelings of shame and humiliation. Shame from what I’d  tried to do, humiliation from being caught in the act.  The focus soon turned to my previous mental health history, the kind of questions you would expect in any sort of situation like this. The bright lights surrounded me and it felt like they honed in on me. I was in the hot seat in a plain white clinical looking room, was this to be the moment? The moment where I finally snapped and told somebody how I felt? After all, I really could just tell her and I’d get help. As far as I was concerned I had two paths I could have went down. On one hand, be vulnerable and express years of unresolved issues or brush it all off, bury it, swallow it and save it all up until one day it’d all crash down. I choose the latter and played this off as being silly in the moment, a lack of critical thinking due to intoxication. I shifted the psychiatrist’s attention every time we talked about any sort of feelings, a skill that I took from here and used for the next ten years. The ability to evade talking about my feelings by turning the spotlight, although I don’t quite know how well it worked in this moment. I was still exhausted and remember the deep urge within wishing I’d break down and spill it, but the restraint kicked in. I shrugged it all off and lied through my teeth to protect my poor fragile ego. I walked back into the waiting room, the lights kept me awake and burrowed deep into my subconscious.

I was released that morning, just before sunrise and the streets were still lightly frosty however there were signs of life within the trees. The rustles and waves within the leaves, I heard it all in what felt like high definition. This discharge from the hospital is something I’ve questioned and pondered many times since, feeling that in some way I was wronged. The shame I had at the time was creating a smokescreen and a barrier. I’d created a wall long before this incident but this strengthened it. It was heavily fortified and blocked any instance of emotion, as tall as it was deep and often blocked out any sort of light within my life. Originally constructed for protection from intruders, it now kept me locked within myself with nowhere else to turn. I was trying to figure out how to topple the wall but until then, I’d have to live in it and befriend the shadow who’d tormented me for all this time. It was all his fault, or was it actually mine? Was it my constant striving for validation that made me feel worthless, the constant need for affection or recognition, which often left me feeling unseen? Maybe this is an antihero storyline, I guess one day I’ll find out.

Despite this being a whirlwind of a morning, as I walked along the waterfront the sun rose from above the river. Reflections dancing on the surface of the water and into the clouds, a moment so picturesque and frozen in time. Seagulls above me hovered in place scanning the water for food, their calls echoing in my eardrums. I couldn’t help but feel a bit more connected to the world at this moment, awareness of my surroundings and with a breath of fresh air I continued on my hour-long walk along the waterfront.