The Shelter That Didn't Care

He came to the Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter absolutely desperate. He is an alcoholic and had been self-anaesthetizing since a family tragedy near Sheridan five years ago. The alcohol doesn’t help. He knows it. He still hurts.
He told me he was afraid that if the pain goes away, he will forget his teenage daughter, whom he lost when she was a passenger in a car accident.
He fights every moment to stay away from alcohol. When he came to the Sheridan shelter, he had been on a three-day drinking binge. He was shaking so bad it was hard to understand his part of a conversation. He needed to go to detox.
Anyone who knows anything about Detox 101 knows that the body’s attempt to filter and purge can, itself, be a fatal exertion.
He was advised to accept an ambulance ride to the hospital.
He resisted, saying he had no money, no insurance, and believed “they don’t like me over there.”
After persistence, he agreed to go. I walked him to the ambulance and promised to be with him at the hospital. The Memorial Hospital of Sheridan County graciously accepted him at their ER, and admitted him that same day. He was assigned a very caring doctor, and the staff treated him cheerily and efficiently.
This all happened on the day before Thanksgiving. I sat with him in the ER, and I visited him in his hospital room. He was very freaked during the first two days. I never saw someone so uncomfortable in their own skin.
A few days later he was finally discharged and came to the shelter. I consulted with him, and found that he had no other viable option for a living situation. It takes four to six months to find a place to rent here and two-bedroom lean-to’s are starting at $600 per month.
He immediately asked about AA meetings, and was set up with someone to pick him up (the shelter skirts the extreme north edge of town, so it is a two-mile walk to the nearest pack of cigarettes, and much farther to meetings and services offered by the Sheridan community).
One night he and another resident stayed out past shelter curfew. The other guy told him they had permission. They did not. He decided to stay somewhere else that night.
After an absence of some days, he returned to the shelter. The director was confrontational with him (as she is with all), but he came back in with us.
You might wonder where he stayed those nights away. He has friends, “but they all use,” he said. He stayed with them, with drugs and alcohol all around him. He knew no good could come of this for him. These places, these people, were not viable options.
After his return, he had an opportunity to perhaps kindle a relationship with his real father, whom he had never met. He went out that night to seek this man, and ended up out past curfew.
As you can see, he was erratic.
The director said he was no longer welcome back to the shelter. Rules are rules. He was seen by the shelter dictator (edit) director as an abuser of the shelter. He was never drinking, never posed a threat, got along with everyone. He was just difficult enough that he got the boot.
The Sheridan Community Shelter has a pages-thick list in tiny print of individuals who are no longer welcome back at the shelter.
He called a day later and said he needed to come back to the shelter. I had to tell him that the shelter was no longer an option. I felt my soul twist nearly in half. We had six male beds available.
“Please, Tim, please! Can I come up, please?”
Not an option. Sorry.
I alerted staff that he was not to allowed in the building, as I was afraid he could get into trouble and the director would somehow get him sent to Siberia or something.
“I don’t understand how they call this a homeless shelter when I am homeless and I need to be there.”
I was silent, but miserable. I didn’t understand it, either.

Next thing I knew, he had been arrested. DWUI (Wyoming has driving while under the influence, and adds the extra letter).
Last night I visited him in jail. He had no one on his visitor’s list. I wrote him first, and asked him to put me on his list, if he wanted to. I couldn’t see him unless on the list.
Last night we talked by phone through a thick wall of glass separating us.
He was concerned about me getting fired from the shelter.
He’s the one in jail, I thought. Yet, his first concern was me.
We had 15 minutes to talk. He told me he had of few drinks, got in his car and turned himself in at the Sheriff’s Office. This he did in desperation because he had no place to live, and had not eaten, he said, in five days.
He is going to get treatment for his alcoholism. I was very pleased about that. He awaits $40 for a physician’s physical and then he has bed space waiting.
I asked him what he was going to do when he got out of treatment. He doesn’t know. I told him I would help him.
“I won’t go to the shelter, though,” he said.
The Sheridan Community Shelter is no longer welcome in his life.
I don’t blame him. Not one little bit.