When you suddenly see someone from the past and makes you realise no one wants to turn back...

[Donte]

I used to have a close friend with whom we lost touch a few years back...life got on the way and we both went our separate ways.

Today I happen to bumped into him down the street. It was so bizarre and out of context.
We took a look at each other and once we realised who each other is, time seemed to stand still for a while.
What to say after all these years?

He had just come out of a psychiatric unit of a hospital. He had been in prison too, he told me! I am coming out of a deep grief after losing my partner five years ago. Last time he had seen me I was still married...and in the closet...Last time I had seen him he was just getting a divorce...battling for access to be able to see his three children...

We decided to go for a drink and lifting my glass I said 'cheers'...

He looked for a job in a thousand places apparently. And everywhere they've been asking for references, experience...
But upon taking a look at his medical history, they'd reject him without giving him a chance to explain.

And at first he had said, 'fine', and looked for job somewhere else. And elsewhere just the same again, and again. But he'd been way unlucky, cause the times are hard. And now people are living on less and less and he had an exit paper from prison and mental asylum.
And you know most people cannot handle that...

And each night when it would go dark, the fever would set in. Torturing him through summer and winter. And it's a huge torture this dirty habit he'd been taught in prison.

He long for the white powder, you know it's not his fault...fires burning his body.

And he'd been patient because he'd been afraid of returning to the cell. Welcoming loneliness and the chipped paint that kept falling like snowflakes, from the ceiling.

I know he'd been suffering for long now, it's evident he's missed the white powder, and he told me he won't go back there anymore.
He's sick and tired of the white nights, he said. He wants to live, like a human being again...

 

[Donte]

So often, one can be ostracized within their own community. Their own group can push them away. Not only they are viewed differently within the general community but also within their own. Suspicion, fear, moral judgement, marginalization and discrimination pushes them further away towards the edges of our society’s constructed boundaries and borders.

I had written about combination stigma in a past thread. This is a good example.

This person is battling drug addiction, homelessness, unemployment, mental illness, physical health issues and stigma that comes with being in prison and locked up in a mental asylum. He is also still suffering immense pain from the loss of his family and being unable to see his children post his divorce years ago. The fact that he hardly speaks any English and hasn’t got any qualifications is an additional barrier to accessing support and services.