From nothing to something (1): Suddenly you know, you're going to be homeless

There are two ways I can look back on my life right now. I could start with "Homeless ex-con with no completed education seeks employment" or "Innovative award-winning entrepreneur begins new chapter. A world of difference, but both apt as can be.

It's cold outside

I think I've had a cold since the day I landed. My mother always jokingly says: you were born with a cold. I believe it so. I don't think I was born for these temperatures in Holland either, I said that 10 years ago and I keep repeating it. Still, it remains cold as I walk toward social services. Even though I have left many things behind, the large backpack I am carrying remains heavy. Actually I should say I am lucky I almost think out loud, at least it is not raining.

Walk-in hour

It happens to be walk-in clinic time when I walk in to the social services work center. You're in luck, says the gentle-looking lady at the welcome desk. I'll walk with you right away, I don't think there's anyone else there so you can be helped right away. I think this is the second time in my life that I have needed help from social services, the first time was in 2006 just after my prison sentence, then contact with social services was short-lived.

I am here because the lady at the municipality counter referred me; at the municipality I was because the lady at the social shelter referred me there; at the social shelter I was because the lady at the homeless shelter counter in Amsterdam rejected me, and there I was because I became homeless and was looking for a place to sleep. Life can be strange sometimes.

I actually wouldn't stay

I was now at social services for a mailing address, without a mailing address my citizen service number could not be reactivated, without a citizen service number I could not apply for health insurance, sign an employment contract and so on. Actually, it was not my plan to be in the Netherlands at all. The plan was actually to stay in the Netherlands for only two weeks. My grandparents had been married for 65 years, I had become an uncle and I had not seen my mother for almost three years. After two weeks of vacation here, I was supposed to fly back to South America. Yet things turned out differently.

Who would have expected that

I have that sometimes more, that things turn out differently than I first thought, and many things that happened in my past seem surreal even to me. Looking at me as a boy in a boys' choir, no one could have predicted that I would later be stuck in a Texas prison. And once I was stuck there, no one could have predicted that years later I would be a business owner and on the ballot in a municipal election.

By the gentle-looking lady at the job center desk, I was ushered into the room of a free employee. Another lady, I estimate her mid-20s, sat on the other side of the desk. In the space of 45 minutes, we go over my life. I notice that we dwell on the negative things a little longer than the positive things. For example, my 2004 prison sentence had more value than anything I had done after that. Here, with this lady, the positive things made no difference. She knew that I had arrived in the community that morning, so some of the questions I didn't quite understand: what all did you do to get work, isn't there another place that can serve as a mailing address?

Maybe she sincerely expected an answer like: of course ma'am, I have a hundred alternative mailing addresses. I just like the coffee at social services so much so that's why I come here. Or to the first question of what I had done to find work before joining social services I could also have answered: Well during the 400 meters from the town hall to here, you know, the town that referred me to you, I drafted 8 cover letters, had 4 telephone applications and 2 rejection letters. I only answered the questions to the best of my knowledge. At the end of the interview she informed me that my intake would be 2 weeks later, in the morning at 11:00. As I walked away I wondered what the intake would be like, considering this was not it.

I'll do that myself

As of tonight I could go to the emergency shelter, at least for the next four days. At least from 9 p.m. until 8 a.m. in the morning, I would have a roof over my head. Where should I start? The stupid thing was that I had actually been working for two months, but everything wasn't working. To date I had only rejections and my lodging where I was staying until yesterday was really only meant for a few days, something had to be done.

Actually, I'm not really good at anything. I mean, actually I'm not really really good at anything. I've never concentrated on becoming the best at anything. Many things I can just do reasonably well. I think it's combining those things that I'm good at. I would like to be really good at something, as in the best at it. But what?

This was not the second time since I was Holland that I had been to social services. almost two months earlier I had tried.

A few months earlier at the homeless counter in Amsterdam

After a few hours of waiting, the verdict came. Sorry sir, said the spontaneous icy-looking lady at counter of the homeless shelter in Amsterdam. 'You have no connection with the city, you have not lived here for the past two years.' It did not matter that considering I had not lived outside the Netherlands for more than two years in any municipality for two years, so had no connection anywhere. She let it be known by her cold, otherwise emotionless facial expression that with this my problem was no longer her problem. I wondered if she attended drama school for this position, or if she was naturally so cold. Would she take her work home with her, would she ever stop to think about the lives of the people on the other side of the counter? If I didn't already feel worthless I did then.

One thing was for sure, it was discouraging. As I turned to walk away she called out, I think deliberately with some extra volume, "even IF I could do something for you" the waiting list for assisted living is currently a year, so you would have had to be patient anyway. I thanked her - sort of - for her effort and walked past the emphatic security guards out the doors of the homeless shelter. Somehow I found reassurance in the image of the dozens of people in front of me who had also been shown the door. 'You guys are jerks,' 'the Nazis weren't as bad' were previous compliments the icy-looking lady had received as feedback. I wasn't alone either, in 2013 the Netherlands had an estimated 25,000 homeless people, over half of them in my age group.

The following months I tried it on myself, applying for jobs, looking for housing, you name it. Until today, Until this point.

The emergency shelter

It was just after nine o'clock that I rang the bell at the night shelter which from the outside looked like a normal detached house. A girl in her mid-twenties opened the door that let into a living room with where about 10 other peers were sitting....

To be continued.