Is Recovery Possible?

One of the questions that I’ve had ever since I became homeless that nobody has ever answered has been: will I ever be able to return to the life I once knew? I was living a comfortable life in the suburbs in an apartment complex. I drove my own car. I worked as a contractor for a government agency and held an interim secret level security clearance. I was fully involved in the lives of my children. All of those things are now ancient history for me. Nobody has even begun to address any of those issues in the years that have passed. Is a recovery even possible? I cannot say that I find the silence at the other end encouraging. Then again, the silence seems to be because there is no system working at the other end. There really is no system working out there to assist in recovery; it’s precisely that sink-or-swim mentality that has made the United States the industrialized country with the highest percentage of poverty.

It would seem to me that my question is not an unreasonable one to ask and merits an answer. I have asked it repeatedly and before any number of organizations who claim to be available for the purpose of helping homeless consumers. I’m doing well to get back a blank stare; that is a lot less demeaning than to be given answers that say a lot of nothing and are meant to tell me not to bother the organizations with my problems when that is why the organizations exist. The existence of so many organizations for the homeless that serve no apparent purpose other than to claim that they help the homeless is certainly a cause for concern, if for no other reason than to spare the homeless the indignity of wasting time with them. Organizations that render assistance in the form of handouts do only a partial service to the homeless, because a better strategy would be to work toward empowering the homeless to be able to fend for themselves; this strategy seems to be pursued only partially when it is pursued at all.

Does the word empowerment confuse people so much that they pretend that it does not exist? Or is the problem the classic “Let the government take care of them” attitude? The government is not taking care of the homeless; let’s get that straight right now. If the government were taking care of the homeless, then there would be an address to which to turn to ask why the numbers of the homeless are not going down. There would then be someone to ask questions that currently go unanswered. There is no government system that cares for the homeless; whatever help that the homeless get they get through various organizations that work to try to obtain for the homeless what entitlements the homeless may be able to acquire and to direct the homeless toward resources that may be able to help them get on the road to recovery, if recovery is indeed possible. The question still remains: is recovery possible?

Often the term case management is tossed around as if it were the panacea to all problems. Case management can make a difference if it is implemented within a supportive framework with ample resources available. Otherwise, case management is as useless as a pork chop in a synagogue; it’s just one more blind alley that the homeless pursue when the case manager has nothing more to offer a homeless consumer than words. Sadly, sometimes that is precisely the case when the resources are not available to render assistance. A case manager is not a magician who can make resources materialize out of thin air.

The question still has no answer for me, and I know that I am not alone in asking it. Can I expect to recover the life I once had, or is that never to return? To me, that is the sign of a successful recovery. Is it possible? The answer I’m not hearing is not very encouraging.