Don’t Be a Stranger

Shortly after moving to Atlanta, I joined a running group that met several days a week during pre-dawn hours. We’d gather into a large circle before our run, linking arms like a human friendship chain, as a moment to acknowledge our faith, friendship, and commitment to remembering we were all in it together, that each of us was part of the whole. All walks of life were present in our circle, a group formed to offer support for people transitioning out of homelessness. Half of the circle drove from their own homes those mornings and half walked outside to meet in front of the shelters where we met. It was during one of these mornings when I first met Sam. I’d planned to run three miles that day. Sam wanted to run eight but agreed to start out together. Part of the purpose of the group was engagement with each other beyond just running, to build camaraderie. So we talked and ran, ran and talked, losing track of the distance we’d covered as conversation built to inspiration with Sam leading us both to complete a full eight miles, while I kept asking a million questions about his life the entire run. It’s a bit of a joke among my regular running crew, about how much I keep talking during runs and no one was ever surprised to learn I’d always been in trouble for talking too much in school. But Sam was kind of new and no one had warned this quiet middle aged man who, like many who ran with us, initially joined simply seeking solace from the anything but peaceful environment where he lived at the time. His lengthy running goals stemmed more from a need for mental yoga than from cardio ambition and surely he hadn’t expected a petite white woman to talk his ear off that morning, especially so early in the day.

I learned as much about Sam, and also others, as I did about myself while continuing to run and talk regularly together. Like so many of those men, Sam had come to Atlanta seeking a promised land, hoping to fulfill promises made to his family and to himself. He and the others believed they’d find better jobs, better housing, perhaps better education and always believed they’d find a better life. Sam first found himself in Atlanta after agreeing to drive his cousin from their hometown of Mobile, Alabama in 1985. He agreed to protect and accompany her to the bigger, unfamiliar city that was so full of hope that he even received two of his own job offers during that first short visit. Yet, it was five more years before he followed his cousin permanently, wanting to fulfill his own dreams and leave behind a past that had become shadowed by drug use. 

Shortly after he settled in Atlanta, he also married, became a father and bought a home. He remained drug free for a long seventeen year stretch until a series of unforeseen back-to-back hardships, involving health and trusting wrong people, resulted in lost income and emptied all savings before landing him three years in prison for what would later become petty drug charges without jail time. The monumental shame and guilt he felt morphed into anguish then bitter anger over the series of severe losses that wiped away decades worth of physical labor and mental effort in what seemed like a snap of a finger, but left behind lifelong devastating consequences for him and a family he no longer could support. Being in jail also put him within easy access to the very thing that got him there to begin with, drugs. Those circumstances opened a window that seemed an escape from unrelenting, searing regret and disappointment his mind didn’t know how to cope with and soon he turned to drugs again. 

When his three year prison term finally ended, owning only the clothes he’d arrived with years prior and not much else, he found his way to the shelter where he lived when we met. It was there where he heard about our running group and witnessed other men in the shelter who ran with us feeling better and doing better in their lives. He learned it was a volunteer program that helped find jobs and housing for those struggling to get back on their feet. Sam admitted he didn’t really even like running, although he also had just finished his first half marathon on Thanksgiving day alongside dozens of our morning teammates. Within a few months he’d run almost a cumulative 300 miles and to reach that goal more quickly had added a nine mile run at the end of his shift at his new hotel job back to the shelter. I asked if he wanted to run a full marathon, which got me a sideways grin and a chuckle, along with a definite maybe.

We kept sharing our stories with each other during those months we weaved through the nearly silent hush of early morning city streets, our voices softly echoing in a place equal parts brutal and beautiful. Similar to the two of us, Atlanta has a past piercingly painful to look back at, yet a present uniquely braided with both heartache and hope. Proof of this is represented in the interwoven blend of people choosing to live there. Sam and I embodied this part of that story too: he a middle aged Black man with a challenged past and me a younger white woman who led a more privileged life, neither a result purely of our own volition, running in unison as we talked and laughed together in a southern city long mired in some of our country’s worst racial tension. This is a testimony of the ability to evolve through healing. 

Sam’s situation was only one of many stories I learned from the men who’d navigated nearly identical obstacles since young in life and had overcome sometimes unimaginable hurdles placed repeatedly in their paths. All involved having to find some way just to keep going, some inner resourcefulness and courage that enabled them to keep holding onto a belief that their lives would somehow get better, if not by force surely by faith. The impact of long standing systemic racism was loud and clear in the pipeline system that fed those shelters, with all but a few living in them being BPOC. Hearing these often humble, always courageous men describe the only worlds they’d ever known, ones of frightening childhood nights filled with shouting and gunshots, of food insecurity that left them with aching stomachs, of dodging or embracing gang violence, shined a spotlight on my own assumed comforts in the only world I’d ever known. Mine, however, was a world with a safe and quiet bed, always a full refrigerator, and a school with recruiters for colleges not gangs. 

Them trusting me with their stories made me acutely aware of how I’d also falsely assumed a sense of my own altruism the previous times I’d offered food, clothing or money to unhoused people living on streets. I say falsely not because I didn’t genuinely feel deep compassion, but because each time I believed I saw the individual as a person just like me, when the reality was, as much as I believed hierarchy has no place in humanity, and still do, reality proves that construct of individual existence is not equal at all. In other words, humanity doesn’t exist on an equal playing field. What I’d failed to acknowledge wasn’t what others lacked, but my own assumptions regarding what I didn’t. I’d never known real hardships of my own lacking because I’d never experienced them, or certainly not anywhere close to the same capacity of those living with homelessness. It was only through deeper conversation and connection with those who had acquired true understanding of absence that I could ever have gained keener awareness that what can separate us often isn’t a result of individual agency. I hadn’t fully digested how much I took for granted the assortment of life’s conveniences so woven throughout my daily routines they go largely unnoticed - deodorant, toothbrush, toilet access, water to bathe or drink, food of my own choosing - yet as a whole greatly dictate my overall physical comfort and mental well being. I hadn’t dissected and observed how removing those interacting particulars of my individual existence could and would change me as a person, not only my appearance but perhaps also my character. How might the intensity of shame and guilt over whatever leads to such circumstance as being without constant food, clothing and shelter monopolize how we see ourselves or how we feel seen by others? How do we not suffocate under the weightiness of not only missing the things we once had, but missing those with whom we shared them? The very parts of life that make life feel like it’s worth living which no donations can possibly replace. Yes, I’d witnessed the hurting before, but I hadn’t honestly allowed myself to more fully envision my own suffering if I were in those same situations. Sympathy is not the same as empathy. One merely suggests a feeling without getting too close, whereas the other actually feels and nothing fosters true empathy faster than loss.

Sam and I lost touch during the Covid pandemic, but I’ll always remember how he landed for a little while in my life when I’d recently lost so much too. For the first time in my life I could do more than empathize. I knew. No sense of agency or effort could ever replace my own losses. In less than a single year I lost more than many lose over an entire lifetime. First, my mom, who was my cornerstone, died abruptly from a ruptured brain aneurysm. My dad died two weeks later, mostly from a broken heart I believe. Then, my twenty-three year marriage burned to ashes, though it had been smoldering for years. Next, I learned I had a brain aneurysm, basically inoperable without creating more risk than presented by the aneurysm itself. Plus, although it was time for my nearly grown children to leave the nest, it was just not good timing. It was all far too much and all at once. Yet, there I was, still standing, giving to and taking away from that big circle of broken but indescribably beautiful humans. It was there, in that divine humanity, where I discovered someone not just willing to stand beside me, but willing to run alongside me, keeping pace, step after step, mile after mile. Someone willing to keep showing up. Someone I’d barely known before, yet was rewarded with the gift of knowing simply because we’d each separately decided to step a bit closer to others we were willing to know more. Every one of us in that circle began as a stranger wanting to be known and with each newly added embrace our circle grew. The most marvelous thing about circles is they’re never ending, they have no end and no beginning. They go on forever and always have room for more. The starting point may form from just a ripple, from one single entry point that pierces the surface and keeps expanding. Whenever someone ventured away from our circle or someone new was welcomed in, I’d think of it as the ripple effect. Any one who’d been part of the group, regardless the length of their stay, took with them those gained connections, of knowing and of being known. They also took with them new ways of seeing and of being seen. We’d all evolved and that in itself also changes all the lives we touch moving forward.

It’s been several years now since I saw Sam. He loved playing chess in a park downtown and had begun doing yoga. He’d said chess helped him stay focused on what’s right in front of him and yoga helped him find a softer way of being in this hard world. He’d also loved watching movies, his favorites were Good Will Hunting and Pretty Woman. This struck me as a little funny, just as he found my interest in Tupac’s poetry pretty humorous also. He asked how did someone like me know anything about Tupac? I told him I didn’t but I was willing to learn. The last time we spoke, his oldest daughter had started college and he was beyond proud. For a while I looked for him whenever I passed through that park where he’d played chess. I never saw Sam again, but I did stop to say hello to the people I found there instead because I didn’t want to just pass through and leave as a stranger.