Life’s not fair. One day you can be graduating top ten in your class at Curie High School, the next you can be shaking your change cup right outside the L just trying to make enough for a bite to eat from McDonalds. My life started out a lot like any other black kid growing up on the south side of Chicago in the 1970s. My father left my family before I had a chance to remember him, and my mother raised me, my brother, and all four of my sisters by herself. She worked three jobs every week, just putting food on the table. First, she’d be at Dominick’s in the morning checking out groceries. Then, she’d be at the hospital in the afternoon doing her nursing help, and most nights then she’d be over at my neighbors watching those Wright boys just making ends meet. She did everything she could for us, and soon as I could at the age of sixteen I was working at the Dominick’s too. Just doing my part, making ends meet. I got a job as a bag boy there in 1976, and I worked at that Dominicks for 16 years, right up to 1992. Not once in my life did I not put in an honest days work when called. I showed up on time, every day for 16 years. Does that mean anything to them when they got to start making cutbacks cause of “economy?” No. Me and my best good friend Jim were the first two outta there, and I don’t think I gotta tell you what kinda man Jim was. I was heartbroken. Here I am, a black man at 32 years of age with no job, no college, nothing to my name. It was five months after that my mother passed. They said she hadn’t left a will and because she was still in debt me and my brother and my sisters lost our house. They all had jobs though, but times were rough between them and me. I was drinking, smoking tobacco, taking a lot of weed and doin’ some tougher stuff too. I ended up the one place I told myself I never would, a shelter…down in the Loop. I never felt lower in my life than I did the day my mother passed. Nothing ever gets better for me since then, just worse. I got three friends in the world here in 2008. I got my sister Janeese, I love her with everything in me. I got a fella by the name of Tom I’ve known every day since I walked into that shelter 16 years ago, there ain’t nothing in the world I wouldn’t do for him and I’d like to think he feels the same way. And then I got Mrs. Washington, who’s typing this up for me right now. She works at the library I go into most days just to get away from my life for awhile. She knows just about everything about me, and she also knows all about computers. Most people look at me and they see a dirty man looking for drug money, but she looks at me and sees a broken man whose life didn’t turn out the way he thought it was in spite of everything hes done right. She says the world should know what its really like to be a homeless man living in Chicago, I say if they really wanna know what is like, they should be doing a hell of a lot more than just reading.

Note from Mrs. W: I’ll be finishing all of Mark’s posts with my own little note, just to clarify on anything he might’ve said to me to type that didn’t come out right. He’s a very bright man, and the world has been very cruel to him. The only thing we hope to accomplish with this little site is to show people what life can really be like as a homeless person in Chicago, or anywhere else for that matter. We’ll be keeping the site updated just about daily, as he’s in here all the time. I hope you look forward to learning more about Mark as much as I look forward to telling you all about him. Take care. - Mrs. W