a story.

He was disheveled and anxious when he came up to me on Friday, asking for money.

I was sitting in the London VIA Rail station when he came around the corner, asking other sitting people if they had any change to spare. He asked several people but they shook their heads and they disappeared behind their newspapers and their cellphones.

He had on a baseball cap with medium-brown hair trailing out from underneath it, grazing his shoulders. His eyes looked small behind his thick glasses. He carried a small duffel bag and his jeans were loose-fitting. He wrung his hands when he talked.

I saw him coming and I knew I was going to give him money. He stood before me and I listened to him. He asked me if I had any spare change to help him get a ticket to Stratford. I looked right at him asked him why, then realized it was none of my business, but he proceeded to say that he needed to see his girlfriend that night and had to catch the train at 6 o'clock. I asked him how much the ticket cost and he said "twenty-one fifty." I asked him his name and Chris watched me pull out my wallet and give him twenty dollars. My housemate had just paid me for her portion of the phone and internet bill that day.

I couldn't tell, I didn't know if he was lying or if he was telling the truth. He was filling the air with his words, telling me about a job he just lost and that he needed to find a new one once he went back to Stratford. I handed him the bill and said to him, "I hope you spend it well."

He left very quickly after I gave him the money, saying thank you as he walked away. I told Jesse about it when he picked me up and I had a feeling that he didn't end up using the money for a train ticket. That was on Friday the 19th.


I got into London tonight around 8pm and as I walked out of the station, to my surprise, I saw Chris again. I was walking out as he was walking in and he had with him the same duffel bag. The wordless thoughts that formed in my head knew that he had never gone to Stratford. I greeted him and he seemed equally surprised to see me. I asked him if he was able to make it to Stratford at all and he said no, but that he had gotten a job that would start April 6th. For a split second I considered asking him, "are you lying to me?" but I didn't. He remembered my name and said that he hardly ever remembered names and as I walked away I said, "I'm so happy for you, Chris." I heard him mention surprise that I had remembered his name and we parted ways.


He chased me and he found me and he talked to me. I was barely a block from the train station when he stopped me, huffing and puffing, saying in between gasps that he's been trying to stop lying and that he knew he saw me again for a reason and that I would know in a second why all of it made sense.

He talked a mile a minute, he told me that when I gave him twenty dollars on Friday that he did use it to buy opiates and he apologized for lying, that there was something about the way I talked to him that made him feel 'careable.' He told me that he was surprised by the the guilt he felt even after he hit up after talking to me because the opiates normally numb all of his negative feelings. He told me that opiates aren't like any other drugs - he said he's been addicted to morphine, to crystal meth (a cheap hit that lasts a long time, he says) LSD, PSP, but he could never get addicted to crack-cocaine. It's an expensive habit.

Chris said that he asked me for money because he refuses to steal for his addiction and that he cops have been coming down hard on panhandling. He apologized over and over for lying. I listened, earnestly. He told me that opiates are different than all other drugs because they are physically addicting and that there is only one place in all of Ontario that has a treatment centre capable of handling it, because there is only a 1% rate of people successfully coming clean to opiates without the help of medication. You need medication to come off of opiates.

He talked a mile a minute, telling me that withdrawal from opiates is unlike any other drug, similar to what you see in the movie Trainspotting, minus the hallucinations of babies crawling on ceilings. He described things I don't even know how to type in here. He told me that he had to lie so that I would give him money but that it's something that his body literally needs now to survive. His body on opiates is now normal. He didn't want me to feel that my twenty dollars went to nothing. He said so much, about how rampant crystal meth is in the city of Stratford and how he's going back there after finally getting into this 10-day treatment centre in Toronto, because there he has support and he emphasized that he will be able to find a job there.


Chris said that he is 31. He is intelligent. In him I see a human with loads of potential, a human who has been a character in a story, doing the best with what he has, living the best story possible that he knows for himself. I asked him if he knows God and he used many words to respond, talking about metaphysics and physics, a God that isn't 'he', a form of religion that he has come up with himself. I told him I would keep him in my prayers.

He is going to Toronto's CAMH 10-day medical withdrawal program on April 6th. He hopes to go to Stratford after that and find a job. He says he fears being surrounded by the crystal meth but also doesn't crave it, either. Early in the conversation I offered for us to sit down and talk but he said he was already late for the nightly curfew at the shelter.


I don't know why we saw each other again tonight but I am really glad that he chased me and that he found me and that he talked to me. I am glad that he confessed what he felt like he needed to confess; our words have much meaning. As were saying goodbye to each other he told me there was something about the fact that I said, "I hope you spend it well." I can't ever know what will become of him, but I pray that he is pulled into a better story. A story that allows him to fully live, because he said himself that his addictions and the drugs depress him. A story that realizes this one human being to their potential, because this one human life is so worth it.