What Kills Me…

…is having to see beggars on the streets early in the morning when I’m on my way to work.

It’s not that they’re ruining my day – God, I would never be that horrible – but the fact that they are always there is shooting my nerves to ribbons, and every morning, without failing, there they will be; this old man with his small flask and some container for people to put money in huddling in the corner of the crossing bridge, and few meters down, a woman wearing a headscarf with her baby and her little daughter.

Every morning as I pass by, she seems to be just preparing to settle in that same spot. Sometimes she’d be feeding her baby – With what? How did she get milk? Is it milk? I sometimes wonder – and the little girl would wander around aimlessly, already set to be a pro beggar as I observe her day by day, progressing more courage to ask money from absolutely everyone who walked past.

Just this evening – as I passed by that same bridge on my way home – I saw her squatting and looking down on the floor, as trickles of water came out of her. She was urinating – and all I was thinking was the absence of clean water to wash herself with.

Sometimes when I have the chance I’d peer into their little plastic containers that are reserved for the passers-by to throw their money in, and most often I find that there is not even enough coins to buy … anything, really. At all. Just a couple of nickels that would mean as much as nothing.

I know it’s weird how I’m deeply affected by these things while others aren’t, as much as we are all exposed to it and witness it almost every day, from morning till evening.

Sometimes I despise myself for being so blindly soft-hearted to things that others are already over with.

But as long as these people still exist, my heart will still bleed.