She ate the muffin greedily, hardly pausing between bites. Traffic flew by next to her, no one noticed her. Climbing back into the dumpster, she had stopped feeling self-conscious about it a long time ago. In fact, she had stopped feeling much of anything since being out on the streets... one can only be depressed for so long before they eventually go numb. Life is only about survival right now, which makes emotions totally unimportant. She didn't want to be alive anymore, but for some reason she couldn't kill herself. There was something inside of her that forced her to go on, day after arduous day, night after cold night.
Taking some bread out of the dumpster, she was suddenly startled by one of the bakers as he flew open the back door. "Hey!!" he shouted, but she had already hightailed it down the alley way. She has gotten good at getting away from trouble before it got started. She has been hackled at, spit on, and chased after more times than she can remember. Anybody would get good at getting away in the nick of time if they were treated that way, too.
In fact, there may be a lot of similarities between you and this woman. Most people don't want to look at the homeless as being real people, though. No, that would be way too scary. No one wants to come to terms with the fact that this could easily be them. Sarah (that's her name; not that anyone ever asked) discovered that when she first started standing on street corners, asking for handouts. Most folks who went by wouldn't even look at her. Those who did would quickly look away as if looking in her eyes could somehow cause them to have the same fate. Then there were the folks who would look her right in the eye, smile warmly and then hand her change or food. There was something about those people that intrigued her, but she couldn't figure out what it was. Whatever it was, a part of her always felt thankful for their generosity.
Sarah lived out the rest of her years, surviving on dumpster food, curling up under bridges for sleep and receiving whatever she could from kind souls. No one ever asked her about herself; it was as if she never had a family once, a home to call her own. Everyone comes from somewhere, though and Sarah was definitely no exception. When a shop owner found her remains behind his store, he discovered a note in the ripped pocket of her only pair of pants. It said, "My name is Sarah and I was a person, too."
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