About the Process

I knew I had to focus on getting myself out of Skid Row.

I soon learned how tough that can be when the challenge is so steep.

Take the court-ordered anger-management classes I had to complete before there was even a chance to make it out. There was no point to planning too far in advance when I started the 52-week schedule. It wasn't until I hit the halfway mark of 26 classes that I began to reach out to old friends in e-mails

I had been alone on Skid Row for more than 18 months by then. I had used that time to get in touch with — and learn about — myself. I was slowly developing confidence, gradually going through a transition to where I could make more and more decisions for myself.

That became a key to my process, because I observed that most people on Skid Row develop lifestyles in which decisions are made for them. They undergo a process of institutionalization and develop what I call a "Skid Row mentality" Many of them go along with the process after failing to surmount that challenges that greet any new arrival on Skid Row. They give up on self-determination.

I was determined to maintain my self-determination and shed the chains that come with someone else telling me what to do. I sought to cut the chain link by link, and the court-ordered classes became symbolic of the effort. Each week, upon completing one more class, I was able to plan more and more for the inevitable transition. I began to plan a new life.

I started to plant many seeds with old friends. I wasn't able to reconnect with as many as I would have liked — at least not at first. That worked on me, and presented a challenge to my efforts to remain focus. I decided to be grateful for each person who came back into my life, and that helped.

A new world was opening up to me. I took some initial steps toward reconnecting with my family. Soon I had a car. I still had some things to work out, still had classes to complete, still had steps to take in my long process. But I was in the game, doing my best to avoid a Skid Row mentality.

The work I had begun doing for LA Beez helped because it forced me to make decisions for myself. LA Beez Group Editor Jerry Sullivan gave me general directions, but he allowed me a lot of latitude in figuring out how to approach assignments. For a while I kept calling Jerry, asking him to tell me what to do. I preferred to do nothing until I talked to him. I did not want to use my mind. I was scared of doing something wrong.

Jerry assumed that I was an intelligent person, regardless of the fact that I lived in Skid Row — and regardless of the factors in the past that put me there. He began to give me less room to rely on him to make decisions for me. I began to realize that I usually did know what to do.

One day I sat with Jerry and told him that I didn't know what to do in regard to some assignment. I knew by the way he looked at me that I was falling into a trap. It was a new version of old fears — the same fear that hit me when I first arrived on Skid Row and lived for months in a shelter. The same fear that struck me when I finally left the Transition House. This was a new step in the process.

It was scary, just like all the other.

I realized that I had let a bit of institutionalized thinking sink into me. I wanted someone to ease my burden by giving me instructions for basic tasks. After all of my work to avoid that institutionalized mindset — all my dedication to avoid a trap of having someone else make basic decisions on my behalf — I had a last hurdle to clear.

Freedom is a funny thing — and I began to realize that Jerry was giving me the freedom to do many things. I realized that I had earned it.

Still, I was afraid of the new level of freedom in so many ways. It was overwhelming.

Then I realized what was happening to me — and I went back to basics. Don't look at the mountain. Just look at each step — one foot in front of the other. It was then that I started to chip away at this latest mountain, a peak so scary and exciting all at once.

I started to climb — one step at a time.

I started just in time, too, because a phone call that I'd dreamed about for months and years was about to come.

More about that next week.

Walter Melton is a writer for the L.A. Garment & Citizen.

Visit Walter Melton's blog at www.scribeskidrow.blogspot.com.

Photo by LA Beez