Jesse

“The police need to stop harassing us, just for standing on the sidewalk,” Jesse said, rolling a cigarette for a friend while leaning against a planter wall outside the Civic Center Concourse. Eventually people will feel pushed to the breaking point and lash out. “It’s like putting a cat in a corner.”

He gets tired of people judging him an other homeless individuals. Jesse said he can practically see the stereotypes swirling around in their eyes when they pass by. But he tries not to let it get to him. “They threw rocks at Jesus,” he points out. And in the end, those people who are judging him, “they’re gonna have to answer to St. Peter in the end, just like we are.”

Jesse, 45, has PTSD after leading a life of struggles, challenges and having to constantly fight for some form of stability. Born in Boston, raised in Vermont, the New England accent is still heavy in his speech. He remembers building forts in the trees, hanging rope swings in a forest and spending long days with friends at the side of a lake.

Eventually he got tired of his foster parents constantly proselytizing and taking him to church. They were a little heavy handed with the chores at home as well, and he began to feel like he was their house servant. “My parents were ‘Do this, do that’. And they were real Bible thumpers,” he said. “If you force people to do something that they don’t want to do, eventually people will rebel!”

Jesse’s rebellion meant leaving home. The first winter on the streets where it’s 20 degrees below, convinced him to make his way west. Over 15 years of being homeless, he’s lived in seven states. His favorite city was Boulder, Colorado, where no one harassed the homeless, “people left you alone and were even kind.”

As for San Diego, “this is the worst state I’ve been in. This place is a shit hole.” Jesse recently lost his girlfriend of two years, after she essentially drank herself to death on the street. He said he was the first guy in her last five relationships to actually treat her right. Other guys would be aggressively controlling and physically abusive. He was proud to have rescued her from that type of relationship, but sorry he couldn’t stop the downhill slide she was on. Now he’s trying to find a way out of San Diego. He collects $1,000 from SSI, he said, and is saving up to head somewhere else, as soon as he figures out where to go next.