I have trouble staying asleep so of course when I finally begin slipping into a deep sleep there is a bright light shining in my face. Cops. A sarcastic "GRrrrreAAAtt" is my initial thought. I wake up my mom because she never wakes up first. We roll down the window and answer the officers questions. We tell them our names and what we're doing here even though that one is a bit obvious because we were asleep. One officer goes to check if any of us have warrants out and they check out minors names under missing children, just in case.They always ask for a bit of a background story to how we got here because curiosity. One officer stayed to listen and the other went to check for resources she could help us with because she couldn't believe we had tried all of them already. Meanwhile, Celest wakes up and whats the first thing she tell this young male officer?? You're probably thinking something like "hi" or "what time is it??" but nope. Celest wakes up and quickly tells the officer that she steals balls and that she ate nothing but pizza at school which by the way, "tasted like box". Great. Perfect. The officer wasn't concerned, not at all concerned. What Celest meant to say was that she steals the ball when playing basketball at school and that she had a bagel sandwich for dinner but pretty much the same thing at 2 'o clock in the morning. The woman officer returned with information we already knew about but then also calls for her sheriff because "he knows more". This sheriff man arrives and could not be anymore arrogant and judgmental. I'm surprised he didn't make them give us ticket just for the sake of it. He left leaving the woman officer disappointed but she was determined to do something. After about an hour she comes back to tell us she was able to get us a night at a motel in El Cajon. Okay good, hopefully this night will end and I can get enough sleep for work in a couple hours.She asks us to follow her but after flashing my lights at her many times to get her attention I got gas then followed her to the motel, all the way in El Cajon, at three 'o clock in the morning. This room that we would only get a couple hours of sleep in then have to check out early and get stuck in traffic to go 30 minutes back into town to go to work and school. GREAT idea!!! Nope, not really but there we went. We finally got to the motel and she calls for the hotel person and he comes out and tells her that they are sold out. The officer gets frustrated with the people she made this plan with and calls them back up. I sure did not want to be that person on the other side of that phone call. She was pissed. She apologizes to us about the inconvenience then makes other plans for us to sleep at a shelter where they have brought out 3 cots for us to sleep on in their lobby. The second officer arrives and gives us three bags of food he thoughtfully got at a nearby CVS We drive all the way back with now two police cars escorting us back. One in front and one in the back. My mom wouldn't shut up about how cool it felt. I on the other hand was grumpy and very tired. We arrive to this shelter and the officer marches in then comes out about 15 minutes later pretty much stomping back to her patrol car. Close to 4 a.m. now. This wasn't good. She let us know that they had the cots all set up but that they would wake us up at 4 to clean, which was about an hour. She thought it was and I quote "unacceptable" so she said that we could park out front and sleep until day break. She was so sweet and apologized profusely but I couldn't help but wonder how much better it could have been if they had just left us alone after getting the information they needed. They left and we tried to go back to sleep but with it turning 4 everyone inside the shelter came out and talked, very, very loudly. I only got about 4 hours of sleep that night. Wednesday at 7 a.m I got up, got dressed and headed to work. We can do hard things I kept telling myself.
Although I know the officers intentions were good I will not hide the fact that they weren't helpful. Even when we told them that we tried all the things on many different days and in many different ways. Nobody ever believes us when we say its just hard. Theres always the "oh but, there are so many resources out there" or "you're still homeless 'cause you wanna be" or "you just don't know how to save" all that bullshit is said countless times but I can't stress enough how witnessing these two officers postures go from curious disbelief to great respect helped us feel validated. They didn't believe us before but when they left us that morning they finally got it. They finally understood.
Okay. I'll take that universe. I will take that.
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