Burnt bridges

They're gone. Before an opportunity came to see or talk with the girls, they have left-- Frieda told me today that Elizabeth got offended about her saying not to do piercings in front of a young girl they've been keeping and not to tell that same young girl to bring her a butcher knife from the kitchen or to cuss in front of the kids, so Elizabeth and Jessie up and left. Their history tells me that they will be back- but it's scary what all will happen in the gone times.

Really Jessie is 20 years old, but she's emotionally and intellectually stunted. Elizabeth is younger, but has been on her own for some time now (on her own as in not at her parents. She lives with boyfriends or friends and spends her days not doing much). So it's not really the age factor that is scary. The scary part is that they have no direction. They just kind of drift into whatever people they run in to are doing.

We've brought them home from a questionable hotel when they decided they had finally had enough and from the hospital after Jessie had an early pregnancy miscarriage (early as in she found out she had been pregnant when she had the miscarriage).

We usually think of the homeless as being those with a backpack camping out in alleys, but there are a lot of people homeless who ping pong like these girls from a boyfriend's place, to a family member's place, to various friends' houses and strangers, to hotels and back again.

Having met and befriended "hard core" homeless, it makes me wonder if something out there will cause either of these girls to end up like so many others we have seen. Becoming homeless is not something that just happens one day. It is a process much like the one Jessie and Elizabeth are on. For their sakes, I hope and pray they will have an encounter with the Lover before they are pulled through the dredges of their drifting lifestyle. All the bridges burnt- the jobs abandoned, family fights and mooching off friends add up and at some point, there may not be much of a way back.