My late teens were spent on the streets of Toronto, in and out of drop in centers, crisis shelters, and occasionally crashing with -- not even friends, really, I had no "friends" in the way you'd think of them; I had people I saw every day for a week or three, before they wandered off or died or left town or went on a bender & forgot who they were. I slept on a lot of floors, under a lot of tents and lean-tos, and while I could feel myself going feral, and it scared the shit out of me, I also knew I didn't have the means to change what was happening. I was a teenager with no guidance, I was on a track, and I didn't know how to get off it.

This isn't the last time I will say this, but -- I swear upon my life I'm not looking for pity here. I'm not fishing for empathy, I'm not painting my life as some eternal hardship. I'm not special. If there's one lesson I learned from that part of my life, it's that there is nothing special about me. I'm some schmuck who accidentally didn't die. That's all.

I did odd jobs where I could get them: construction, handing out leaflets, cleaning warehouses, counting socks, clearing ice from storefronts, delivering packages, day laborer level stuff. It was all I knew how to get; I didn't have a resume, or anyone who would help me assemble one; I had the clothes I was wearing, access to a three-minute shower once a day when I stayed at Covenant House (they ran a timer), and two fresh disposable razors a month. I was not getting an office job from here.

Oh, and I knew something was wrong with my head, but I wouldn't find out what it was for literally another thirty years, so that was just a constant in my life over which I had no control. Besides, my entire life at that point involved being around people who had it way worse than me. I had no right to complain. But god, was I ever alone in that world.