HOPE COS

Part 1 of 3: THE PRAYER…

When I was a little girl, I didn’t say, “When I grow up, I want to be a homeless addict.”

But that’s what ended up happening anyway.

Nobody really grows up dreaming about addiction, jail, homelessness, broken relationships, or sleeping in on the streets wondering how life went so wrong. At least, I don’t think most of us do.

Like a lot of people, I had plans. Dreams. Things I imagined my life might become. Somewhere along the way, though, addiction slowly started making decisions for me, and before I really understood what was happening, my life had become something I barely recognized.

By late 2016, I had been homeless for a couple of years. Again.

By that point, homelessness was not unfamiliar territory to me. Collectively, I had spent well over ten years of my adult life unhoused. Sometimes I had a car to sleep in, and sometimes I did not. I knew the camps. I knew the hidden places people slept, gathered, laughed, lived and unfortunately…died. I knew the trails, the small areas of secluded woodland, the unincorporated areas that were basically safe from police involvement, the abandoned corners of town, and the unspoken rules that come with surviving outside. I knew which gas stations might tolerate someone lingering too long, which would allow someone to get water, use their bathroom and which ones would run you off immediately. I knew where to find dumpsters that threw away perfectly good food, where to stay visible enough to be safe but hidden enough not to attract too much attention, and how to make it through the day carrying everything you owned.

Tent cities were not something I had simply heard about. I had lived in them.

I knew what it felt like to sleep lightly because you never fully trusted that your things would still be there in the morning. I also knew what it was like to be able to sleep dead to the world, simply from pure exhaustion. I knew what it was like to constantly think about where you were going to charge a phone, wash your clothes, stay warm, or find food. I knew how quickly a bad stretch could turn into months, and how months had a way of quietly turning into years before you even realized what had happened.

That familiarity almost made it worse.

Because by late 2016, as I sat in a tent hidden in a cluster of trees off a bike trail behind ComCor in Colorado Springs, I knew exactly what I was looking at.

I knew how hard it was to claw your way back from this type of existence.

And I knew how easy it was to never make it out at all.

The tent I was staying in was not much protection anymore. Every time it snowed, water found its way inside. By November, enough snow had already fallen that nothing I owned ever fully dried out. My blankets smelled like mildew and wet earth because they stayed damp almost constantly, and after a while the smell settled into everything. My clothes smelled like it. My hair smelled like it. My skin smelled like it. Even now, certain smells can take me right back to that season of my life before I even realize what is happening.

People who have never lived outside often imagine homelessness as temporary discomfort. They picture being cold for a while before eventually warming up. They imagine hunger as something sharp and immediate, not something that quietly settles into the background of your life. What they do not understand is how quickly survival starts shrinking your world.

Eventually, life becomes very small.

You stop thinking much about the future because the present takes all your energy. Your focus narrows to immediate problems. Where are you sleeping tonight? Will your things still be there in the morning? Can you stay warm enough to sleep? Will you eat today? Is there somewhere safe to charge your phone? Can you make it through the next twenty-four hours without things getting worse?

That was my world.

Since it was winter, I was cold all the time. Not the kind of cold you escape from at the end of the day, but the kind that settles into your body and never fully leaves. My shoes were wet more often than they were dry, and every morning started with pulling damp clothes back onto a cold body because there were no better options. Hunger became familiar enough that I mostly stopped noticing it until it got sharp. Some days my stomach hurt badly enough that I felt sick, but after a while you stop reacting to things that once would have felt unbearable because survival has a way of teaching you where to spend your energy. I remember once being so hungry I stole someone’s ramen packet. Yes. A ramen packet. Those things were like ten cents each, but starvation was desperation, and I felt guilty while I ate someone else’s food.

The loneliness was harder.

For years, I had been the person people called when they needed help. I had loaned money I could not afford to loan, given rides on an empty tank, listened to problems in the middle of the night, opened my home, fed people, and shown up when things fell apart. I had spent years believing that loyalty mattered and that if life ever completely collapsed around me, the people I loved would show up for me too.

Instead, most of them disappeared.

The part that still hurts to think about was not even the big things. I was not asking people to let me move in. I was not asking for money. I was not asking to sleep on anyone’s couch.

I just wanted to charge my phone.

A phone matters when you are homeless. It is how you try to stay connected to opportunities, resources, people, and whatever fragile sense of stability you still have left. Before I figured out where the outdoor outlets were around town, I tried asking friends if I could sit outside long enough to use theirs.

Friends.
People I had supported for years.
People I loved. I thought they loved me too…

They said no.

Eventually, I learned where the outlets were near buildings and gas stations, places where nobody cared if you were quietly charging a phone. But I never forgot what it felt like realizing that the same people I had spent years showing up for could not even offer something as small as electricity.

By then, I had also picked up my first serious drug charges. After over twenty years of somehow avoiding getting caught, my luck had finally run out. Since I had violated probation again, prison was no longer some distant possibility people warned me about. It was real. I was looking at 4-6 years.

The strange part is that prison wasn't even what scared me most.

At least prison meant I would not wake up freezing in a tent wondering how I was supposed to survive another day.

By that point, I had stopped praying for things to get better. After enough years of trying to fix my life only to somehow end up right back where I started, hope had started feeling dangerous. Every time I convinced myself things might finally change, something happened that seemed to prove me wrong.

So every night before I went to sleep, I prayed that I would not wake up the next morning. And I was furious every single morning when I’d wake up, that I was still alive.

This is difficult to admit, even now.

I wasn't making plans to hurt myself. I just felt exhausted in a way I didn't know how to explain. Every morning felt like another day I had to survive, and there were nights when I genuinely did not know how much more of that life I had left in me.

Then came the night in late November when something inside me finally gave out.

It had been snowing most of the day, which meant I already knew what I was walking back to. Snow meant water, and water meant that by morning everything inside the tent would somehow be wetter, colder, and harder to tolerate than it had been the day before. The tent had never been particularly good at keeping the weather out, and by that point there was not much I could do about it anyway.

I crawled inside, wrapped myself in blankets that reeked, and tried to settle in for the night. The smell bothered me less than it probably should have by then. What was most miserable of all was the chill, the cold and the damp.

I don't remember falling asleep, but I do remember waking up.

It was sometime in the middle of the night, and the first thing I noticed was that something felt really wrong. At first, I couldn't figure out what had pulled me awake, but after a few seconds I realized I was so cold that I could barely move. My body felt stiff and heavy, and when I tried to take a deep breath, I could not quite catch it. Everything hurt. The ache was bone deep and I sat there trying to move my fingers and toes, so that I was able to work the zipper on the tent and go to the bathroom.

I remember reaching for my phone for the flashlight.

Of course it was dead.

I sat there for a while trying to think clearly, but everything felt foggy and muddled. The blankets were damp. My clothes were freezing and wet. The cold had settled into everything so completely that it no longer felt like something outside of me. It felt like it had moved into my body.

When I finally unzipped the tent, I saw how much more snow had fallen. It was beautiful and awful at the same time.

I still remember standing there staring at it.

The world was desolate in that strange way snow makes things feel empty, and I remember feeling something in me finally shatter.

I was freezing, exhausted, and so completely worn down that I could not imagine doing any of it again.

I had spent years trying to claw my way back from addiction, homelessness, bad decisions, and the kind of instability that slowly takes over your life. I had promised myself so many times that things would get better, only to find myself back in another camp, another crisis, another version of starting over.

Standing there in the snow, I remember realizing that I genuinely did not know if I had another comeback left in me.

That was my breaking point.

I cried harder than I had cried in years.

Not because something new had happened, but because I suddenly understood what my future probably looked like if nothing changed. Another winter. Another camp. Another year of surviving instead of living.

And standing there in the freezing dark, crying so hard I could barely breathe, I made myself and God a promise.

If I somehow managed to pull myself out of this one more time, I would never come back the same way.

Never ever again.

I prayed for help. I prayed for change. I prayed for a different way of life.

Three days later, my prayers were answered.

I was sentenced to ComCor.

***************************************
…to be continued next week.

📣 DMV2GO Schedule Change

DMV2GO will be at Hope COS on June 15th instead of its usual 4th Thursday of the month visit.

If you're planning to utilize DMV2GO services this month, please note the change in schedule and mark your calendars accordingly.

📅 June 15, 2026
⏰ 9:00 AM – 2:00 PM
📍 Hope COS

Please see the flyer for available services, fees, and required documentation.