The photo depicts a homeless client.

“… the mental prison is devastingly lonely. It is a sorrowful place because ultimately it is you who locks yourself up within a demented idea or feeling” John O'Donohur -exploring our hunger to belong

Paul Cullen T.H.O.M.A.S. Team.

I see this loneliness in the faces of up to fifty people each and every day. As I open up our drop-in centre here at St Anne’s House each afternoon, the faces of the forgotten file in for a hot meal and a cup of tea. Many of them are young, ravaged by alcohol and Heroin addiction. The desolation and suffering wears heavily on their faces. Yet still they come in with a smile and a joke. We chat about the little things, their day to day routines, and their problems. Some of the people in our drop-in never feel listened to. Some will talk about their housing problems. They need some help with furniture. So we give them a referral form for the local Churches In Action Furniture Store. Others come and talk to me about the addiction problems. They remember me from my using days and ask me how I’ve managed to do so well, and I tell them. “By asking people for help!” If they decide they want to take this further. I refer them to our Drug Support Group we run on Tuesdays, from which they can look further into our rehabilitation program.

Over the last year since leaving the ‘Reconcile Program’. I have had the privilege of working in the drop-in every day, and I see these familiar faces come through our centre and am often hit by the futility and inadequacy that I feel. These beautiful people. Each with a heart, a mind and a soul. Lost in that chaotic fragile prison cell of their own lives. Pretty young people. Prostituting themselves or shoplifting every day to sustain their habits. That compulsion to use becoming ingrained. Repeating a pattern of behaviour, and accepting it as a way of life.

Some of our volunteers often ask me. “Where do they sleep?” “What do they do?” I can remember where I slept, the empty squats, the cold cellars, the squalor and the uncertainty of it all. At this particular time of year there are times when I look upon these sad smiling faces and I remember all too clearly. I remember how lonely I was and how trapped I felt in that small little world that my life had become. Disconnected from all the joys of Christmas and the celebration of life, and I feel lost in bewilderment. Saddened by both my feelings of ineptness and inability to do anything about it all. All we can provide, initially. Is a hot meal, a cup of tea and a friendly ear in a seemingly untrustworthy and unfriendly world.

I am grateful for my life today. For this gift I have given back to myself, and I have to remember that sometimes, we all lose our way in this life. We struggle, we falter and fall; and sometimes it takes a little time to find our way back home again.

“… Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.” --James Buckham.