I awoke one morning in early September, choked with emotion and angry with compassion…my dream before waking was so much more than a dream, and it wasn’t just for me. It’s for you, too. It’s a story that must be reported, but one nobody is seeing because of the implications.

The banksters don’t want you to know. But people need to know. I needed to know. I needed a personal, visceral knowing.  ~ Blessings,  Libby

People Need to Know 

The image was gorgeous; the sun was rising and rays of light shot out over the white sand beach. Then the light changed, becoming muddled and foreboding. Panorama-fashion, the image zoomed around to a different viewpoint. My dream-state intuition was on high alert.

Right out there in the open, on the dew-covered concrete in front of the big Baptist Church, she laid curled up, cold and dead. She lay on her left side, a pool of congealing blood beneath her emaciated frame. Her eyes were closed and a slight smile remained on her lips. Her smooth skin said she was quite young. The tiny little girl wrapped in a sling made of a threadbare old sheet and held in her arms was also dead.

Her right hand gripped three sheets of yellowed notebook paper, words written in black ink, fading to pencil and back to purple ink near the end. Her final wish: to tell her story, “People Need to Know.” She wanted to awaken awareness and compassion. The chunk of bloodied green glass sharpened to an edge found near her body told the story of suicide, but her hand-written story told a starker truth: murder by “civilized” society.

As I gazed upon the image of God’s holy daughter, so hopeless she would choose to die, I realized I was dreaming. Simultaneously, my consciousness became hers and I watched her story play out as though I was in attendance at her life-review. I could feel emotional states wash through her; her feelings were mine and I felt them intensely; her anger and sorrow and shame, her mercy and forgiveness.

This is her story, conveyed in images and words and feelings.

I’m not using a name because my name doesn’t matter any more. I’m labeled instead. I am “the poor.” I became “the homeless.” I was “whore” and “lazy bum” and “drug addict” and “worthless” cruelly hurled through open car windows more times than I could count. But I always knew I was more: a mother, a daughter, an educated, respectable person. I was raised a Christian. In my hunger I saw Jesus in my inner vision. I relied upon him to be there, and he was. And guess what? Jesus won’t condemn me to hell for wanting to be free of the hell we were in, my baby girl and me. God loves me no matter what. It’s people who don’t.

My stomach muscles are beginning to relax. I didn’t know you could feel tension in your spirit, but I guess since I’ve been holding my breath, afraid of everything and everyone for such a long time, even my consciousness is taut and clutching. I’m beginning to be able to focus on one thing, slowly, luxuriously, instead of darting about furtively every waking moment and even in semi-sleep. You don’t get much real sleep when you’re homeless.

I’m a normal American girl, a regular good kid. I went to a community college and got good grades. That’s where I met my husband, who doesn’t have a name that matters either. When you don’t have money or power you don’t matter, and I learned that by the age of 23, even though my childhood, schooling and community never told me any such thing – they told me I was special and that I could do anything. I’m a white girl. I played in the band and my husband was an honor student: we were white-bread Americans.  I guess I should have gotten a little clue about how people really are when his family thought I was not the right girl for their son – they wanted a girl who was not only a member of their fundamentalist denomination; they wanted one who was a member of their particular church so they could feel assured I was “raised right.” In front of my face they discussed their assumption that I couldn’t possible be a virgin. They thought I was “uppity” and way too “worldly” for their son. Maybe so. (All through this I felt her hot tears and anguish over feeling betrayed by every adult she had ever known, and then all the anguish was extinguished in a soft, comforting pool of mercy emanating from her (my?) consciousness. So beautiful.) 

When you don’t have any money, it’s hard to find people who care. You mostly find people who are worn out and do their best not to care. They’ve got to be able to keep their jobs, so they go through the motions. They fill out the paperwork, pretending something will come of it. They call the next person and do it again. You’ve never seen dead people until you’ve applied for public aid. Dead eyes.

After I got my associate’s degree in pharmacy work, (which my counselor said would guarantee me a job) we got married and moved south for my husband’s career. In no time both of us had good jobs in our booming coastal town. It was 2007. I was 20 and he was 23. We had health insurance and birth control, because we knew we weren’t ready for a family. We were too naïve to know all the other stuff we weren’t ready for! We thought we were so happy, living the material life on our own now, going shopping, seeing movies, hanging around with friends and doing our jobs. My husband had a cool regional cell phone sales job and we had the latest technology. His company was purchased by another company, and suddenly his job was “consolidated.” I never knew consolidated meant over, but that’s what happened on Halloween day, 2009.

I didn’t know anything about leveraged buy-outs or financial markets or mortgage-backed securities. I had just turned 21. Really, does anyone know anything about how life really works when they’re 21? But from out of nowhere, these things changed my life. They started a dark domino effect that toppled too many to count…all nameless.

Two-thirds of our income was gone. We were completely embarrassed (my cheeks grew hot with embarrassment!) I never learned anything about budgeting money either. Growing up, my family never had to – we had plenty – no worries. We gave to the church and lived positively, so we were prosperous. They told me that was how it worked, and I believed them. My husband had been utterly coddled. I don’t know who his parents thought would take care of him…their church maybe? We figured out how to apply for unemployment, but that wouldn’t pay our mortgage, because yes, we qualified for a huge mortgage. Inexperienced idiots in a complex world, we faced the fact that we’d have to sell the house and move to an apartment.

A leveraged buy-out was what caused my husband’s job to be consolidated. The financial markets made their appearance in our lives when my husband’s 401K statement came in the mail. We thought it was worth about $10,000. We cashed a check for $797 and splurged on a chocolate bar after paying overdue bills. Even dead, I’m probably still on the hook for my college loans, and probably my husband’s too.

Next, our realtor’s news was not good. As in totally bad. That’s the mortgaged-backed securities part. (I had a nanosecond vision of her sitting in the library, reading issues of Rolling Stone to find out about the financial mess. A homeless guy told her that’s where she could find the truth.)

We stayed until the bank sent cops to evict us. Another family in our neighborhood was evicted the same day. By then I was pregnant but I didn’t know it. The day I found out I was pregnant with a test from my pharmacy was the day our store got the news that we were closing. I was pregnant because I could no longer use my husband’s better insurance, and my co-pay for birth control was $50. I was two days late getting my prescription filled.

Everything around us, our whole neighborhood, the wonderful new planned community where we had so proudly lived and shopped and worked, was collapsing.

My husband’s unemployment was over. There were no real jobs, and we were down to one old car. He worked some temps and odd jobs but he was really unable to take it. He started muttering, thinking his parents were right; that he had married the wrong person against God’s Will, like they said. I just don’t get how that attitude comes from Jesus. How is one person’s Christianity better than another’s? They were all invented by people. To me, loving your neighbor as yourself means we’re equals. Anyway, it was so hard to get through to him. I had unemployment and we applied for food stamps. We sold almost everything that we hadn’t already left in the house and moved to a tiny studio apartment that was month-to-month. We had to verify income to keep the place.

It was inevitable: one month we couldn’t verify any income.

We were now jobless and homeless. My baby girl born on the state’s welfare was four months old. All we had was what would fit in the car. My baby’s crib was a battered car seat from Goodwill. Now we didn’t have an address, but I could not have known what being without an address was going to mean.

Having an address is one of the keys to being considered a person.

Things have to be documented. Stuff has to be signed and returned on actual paper when you don’t have internet access. It was a rare luxury to get to the internet at the library. Usually the guard was standing there shooing the horrid homeless away.

It got really, really bad, and I had to be the one in charge. My husband was incapable, but at least his parents would accept him back. Not me. I was not welcome; I was the one to blame. He didn’t bother to tell them about our little girl. He begged for money from them and left us one day. He just didn’t come back. (This brought an emotional roller-coaster from despair to betrayal to abandonment…to softness and merciful forgiveness in a flash.)

I couldn’t call my family. All I had left was my Dad, and he’s been in and out of rehab since my Mom died. My brother, who only watches FOX and listens to Rush every day on the radio, could easily have been one of the ones who called me “whore” and “lazy bum” from his car window. There was no way I would call him.

I found what I thought would be a good place to park our home. It was between two vacant buildings, back behind a fence that was covered in vines. I looked for work, for food, for anything worthwhile, carrying my baby around in a sling I made from ripping up some old sheets. We didn’t have diapers so the sheets got pretty wet some days, but it was a really hot summer anyway. I didn’t have breast milk anymore but she didn’t fuss much. We were hungry, but we managed to stay clean because the beach was close. We used the bathrooms on the beach. Usually twilight was the best time. I wasn’t having periods any more, luckily.

Three days ago I found a cash job – two days working at a festival on the beach. I would be able to eat and buy more formula for my baby. Just this tiniest bit of good news was enough to fill me with hope. The first morning I left my daughter with another homeless mom who promised to look after her for me.

The work was disgusting and demeaning because of the drunks, but during one short break I got to eat some greasy food. I drank a coke for the first time in months. When I retrieved my daughter it was well after dark, so I gave my friend half my tips. She cried.

The next day started out and went the same as the day before. The festival’s greasy food wouldn’t stay down though, so by the end of the day my stomach was clutching. I was really hungry. Walking toward the place where I left my baby, I felt the most awful dread. I ran.

Did you know there are wild people living in the cities? Feral boys and girls, never raised. Did you know?

I didn’t.

Two wild boys raped my daughter that day. They tore her up. My friend was in shock, shaking, horrified, her eyes black saucers in her gaunt face. The wild boys got her son. He was dead.

My baby girl was alive, but I knew she was slipping away. She looked deep into my eyes, seeking some understanding, I guess. The soul does shine through your eyes, because her soul was smooth and calm, but questioning. I had nothing. Nothing. I didn’t know the why of anything. Nothing about my life was the way they told me. Nothing at all.

I gave my friend all the money, every cent, and took my daughter down to the water. We washed away the day in the cool night water and she even smiled a little. I pray she was numb, God. I pray her little body and mind were numb. She was very weak and wouldn’t suck. I wrapped her in a clean sling from my backpack. The baby slept and I sat under the light of the moon and wrote, sitting at a picnic table at the beach. My hunger-dulled brain thought writing about everything would be therapeutic for me; would fill me up somehow. It’s funny how the mind works. I had a black pen and used it until it ran out of ink, then a pencil stub until it was too dull. I found a purple pen near a trash can and finished my story the best I could. It did fill me up, in a way.

People need to know what is happening. People need to know.

When I finished, we headed home. I don’t know why I wasn’t afraid any more. I just walked as if I owned the road, like nothing could hurt me now.

Our car had been towed.

I stood there looking, and a plan blossomed complete in my mind. I had sharpened up a pretty piece of green beach glass and had been using it as my knife and scissors. It was in a battered plastic box of stuff that wouldn’t fit inside our home. The box was there; the glass was where I left it. I opened the sling to see my girl. Her tiny face was so relaxed. She was barely breathing.

Resolutely – and believe me, I never knew resolute like this before – I walked to the Baptist Church on the street by the water. Hundreds, maybe a thousand people drive by there every day. The cadence of my footsteps kept saying “people need to know.” People need to know the effects of the immoral crimes committed by big business. Humans are not ready to be self-regulating. We need guidelines, rules and regulations until power and greed are no longer seductive.

Somehow, I felt free already, but maybe when I prayed for my baby to be numb my prayer was for me, too.

I sat down on the concrete steps, still warm from the day’s sunshine. There was no point in checking the door: churches aren’t open any more. You can’t call them shelters. I turned the sling around and looked at the angelic face of my flesh and blood. She was gone. I nuzzled her still-warm skin, smelling her, touching her, and whispered my love.

With the sling holding her close, at first I just pushed hard against the skin of my left wrist with the rounded side of the green glass, then turning it quickly I sliced through the veins. It was much easier than I thought it would be. Dropping the glass, I picked up my story and held on tight. I sighed, closed my eyes and whispered like a mantra “people need to know.”

My consciousness was once again looking at the physical scene of the crime, and I saw her spirit rise up from the crumpled heap of body. Her eyes looked directly into mine. She bowed slightly, smiling, and said “I thank you for hearing me.”

I sat straight up in bed. My dream-consciousness stayed and remained mingled with hers. I saw her newly-radiant face. Her glowing, angelic baby daughter sat laughing with delight on her lap. She placed her hands together over her heart and conveyed honor and blessing with her eyes. “Now people will know,” she smiled.

I am her reporter, first on the “scene” of something people need to know.