Virginia’s Story

Author’s note:

After a year or so of personal adjustments, growth, and discovery, Naming the Homeless is back with a post from our archives. Regular installments are expected to resume this Summer. Thank you for your continued support in this community project to raise awareness about homelessness and give a voice to the voiceless. Virginia’s story is a testament of how important platforms like this are, because you truly never know unless you ask. So, if you only take one thing away from this post, we hope that it’s to simply ask people what makes them human. It just might remind you of yourself.

When you have a drink in your hand and not a care in the world, the Philadelphia Convention Center becomes a place to escape all of your troubles and let go. It’s a place to enjoy friends and family and make lifelong memories that you’ll look back on for years to come.

The homeless woman making herself at home did have a drink in her hand that night, posted up against a pillar in front of the venue. Yet, her reasons for visiting the Convention Center were far different than that of the average tourist. It was merely a place that provided temporary shelter before she’s told that she has over stayed her welcome, again.

If the body were a journal, then this woman’s weathered skin and scattered tattoos told her story, poking out of the edges of her clothing like clues. She introduced her self as “Virginia,” and I’m pretty sure her namesake was tattooed on her somewhere.

“Hey, I’m Irish,” I said, pointing to the Irish flag stamped on the inside of the wrinkled wrist that she was using to hold her vice.

“Hey, Irish, how ya’ doin’, Irish,” Virginia barely got out the words before peals of laughter fell out of her gummy smile that stretched from ear to ear. It felt like catching up with an old friend, her laughter was contagious.

We soon learned that Virginia had spent more than half of her life on the streets. Out of her 63 years (at the time of her interview), she’s been homeless for 38 of them, losing everything when she was just 25 years old.

“F***ed up,” is how she described her life before becoming homeless. Her bright smile had been wiped clean off her face, as if someone had stolen it from her. Her expression was darkened still by the black eye that she was sporting from a recent scrap.

In the early years of her struggle, Virginia maintained her family unit with her husband and son and they braced the challenges of homelessness together. They lived in the woods and provided for each other as best they could, but her son and husband suffered from severe mental illness. Not even her love was enough to save them from themselves.

“Because my son f***ing killed himself… I don’t want to go there right now,” you could see the aching in her heart as she spit out each word, before she broke into a sob. “And my husband killed himself.”

She said that this is a grief that will never get better with time.

Virginia is no longer in contact with any of her remaining family members. Despite her hardships, she credits herself for always showing up for others and doing what she can with the resources she’s able to carry on her back. When it felt like her world was crashing down around her with the deaths of her son and husband, she was disappointed when no one showed their face to return the favor.

This hasn’t stopped her from forming other meaningful relationships with people with similar hardships.

“Well, they’re all crazy, just like me,” and just like that, the smile returned to her face. “I want to go back to Jacksonville, (West Virginia),” she said, “I have to get out of here, I roll with good people that feel like family there.”

Nonetheless, she found herself in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. Though the length of her stay her was prolonged by having spent some time in prison. After serving her time and returning to the streets, she wasn’t expecting to run into any of her friends from the city.

“But guess who I ran into the other night–my old homeless friends!” she exclaimed. “They’re still here, after all these years.”

Although she has a place in her heart for the friends that she’s made here, she says that she just wants to go back to the South, where she belongs.

“When you’re out here for so long, you just don’t care anymore. The worst part is dealing with all the (bad) people out here,” she said. “If you haven’t been where I am, you just couldn’t know. Sleeping in the ally ways, can’t really sleep, because you don’t know who’s going to creep up on you.”

Virginia has had a predator try to prey on her while she was sleeping before, but, being as tough as she looks, she said she scared him off before things got ugly. Having been jumped before, she can’t sleep through the night because she never feels safe enough on the streets. But even then, she says shes’s not scared of anybody.

“If you haven’t been there, then you don’t know,” Virgina said of experiencing homelessness. She says the only thing that she’s known since being on the streets is chaos. “A lot of f**king chaos.”

Having to constantly be on the defense brings out the worst in her, she says, someone always wants to “hustle” you. Virginia “hustles” too, by panhandling, but only as a way to make enough income to provide for herself.

“That’s why I’m still thick,” Virginia grabbed the sides of her stomach that shake when she laughs. She makes enough to keep herself well fed by panhandling, but says that most of these encounters feel empty, and the moments that she feels she’s able to grab onto a glimpse of compassion are few and far between. “Thick as a brick,” she chuckled smugly, though the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes.

The next expression to shift the landscape of her face was defeat. Lately, Virginia has been keeping to herself because she “doesn’t want to hurt anybody.” She’s been feeling frustrated by the way that she’s been treated on the streets of the city, which is on heightened by the pent up emotions she harbors from years of homelessness.

“You don’t know where to sleep,” her arms expanded to survey the nooks and crannies of the Convention Center entrance. Around her, others had tucked themselves in for the night, trying to disappear. “And (these people) are going, “Get the f*** up!”

Virginia feels like she can never let her guard down. With no where to really go, she feels like she has no where to belong to. Home becomes wherever she lays her head down at night. Being homeless makes her feel less than human. Most places won’t even allow her to come inside to use the bathroom.

To cope with her suffering, she took up drinking.

“And, I don’t even do drugs,” she proclaimed and held her beer up with a cheers. After some pondering she said, “Well, not since back in the day!”

Her expression darkened again as she told us that she had a friend pass away a couple of weeks ago. She overdosed after “shooting up” heroin laced with fentanyl. With drinking, Virginia says that she at least knows what she’s doing and, if she “can catch a break”, one day she’d like to be sober.

“I’m all by myself,” she said, some of her southern charm was creeping back up into her raspy voice. “I’m a strong woman, to be out here all by myself.”

Just like that, the lights went out again.

“My husband killed himself at 29. My son was still a child when he died,” tears welled up behind her eyes as she said this. “But I’ll be okay, because the dear Lord’s got me.”

Now, she lives every day just to get through it, she says. Her mantra is: “Make money. Get beer.”

The “Vacancy” sign flickered in her eyes as Virgina shared that she has connected with someone else since losing her husband so young–but he’s in jail. “I can’t f**cking win,” she said with a sinister laugh. She said that she misses his crazy and his calm, her Vinny.

It wasn’t love at first sight. When Vinny stumbled upon Virgina sleeping in an ally way, he caught her off guard and she hit him.

“I only hit him once,” she said this like she’s said it a million times before and knew that she would never live it down. “But we became like this,” she said and crossed two of her fingers so that they were intertwined.

He’s been in jail for the better part of two years, but she still reminisces on the crazy times that they’ve had together. “You would love him,” she told me. “Those are the only people that I can handle!”

Without Vinny by her side, Virginia fills her days with drinking. When asked, she said that she drinks to cope with years of suffering from depression.

We looked like up at the stormy clouds above our heads as heat lightening shot across the sky.

“Good,” she said, letting go another peal of contagious laughter. “I have soap and I’ll take a shower.”