Anna

I call her Anna because she doesn’t have any teeth. Well, she might have a few molars in the back of her mouth, but I couldn’t see them from where I stood. I call her Anna because you can say that name without your teeth touching.

You just tried, didn’t you?
I thought so.

I also call her Anna because it’s extremely hard to love someone if they don’t have a name.

I see her just about every week during my routine lunch break walk. Starring at two plus rectangle illuminated screens for hours on end makes my restless life syndrome even more pronounced so at least once a week I go on a walk. More often than not, I see or run into Anna.

Anna’s homeless. Not a homeless person who drives a cherry red Ferrari and carries a Coach purse over their shoulder as they stand in line at the Share and Care building, chewing heavily on spearmint gum to hide the flavor of nicotine and life on their breath.

From the very look of her, she’s looking everywhere she can to find what her name means, favor.

Anna has this huge voice and body structure that commands attention from just about everyone she passes. You see, Anna is hungry and wants food, and by looks of things will do just about anything she can to get it.

I’m not sure if she recognizes me. To her, I’m just another person walking along with the air of success and perfume of well off dripping off me. Not because I myself have a Coach purse, but because if I truly wanted one, I could have one.

Anna, as though on cue, asks me for money right when she sees me. And not once have I given her any. I have, however, offered time and time again that she join me on my walk and when we pass Subway, I’ll buy her lunch. She, also on cue as though we were in a cancelled TV show stuck in reruns, turns me down.

And it breaks my heart. Not because I want to feed her, but because I want to know her. Food is only filling the temporary pain she’s experiencing. It silences the stomach roars for maybe five hours before they start back up again. I want to hear her out and see what else I can do to truly help her besides buying her the $6 sub combo, her choice.

Just like every one of her tattoos has a story, every wrinkle and scratch on her body has a voice that is screaming in the silence beckoning for just anyone to hear. She tries to keep her face straight and commanding, her eyes hold a fierceness that provokes my heart to wonder the last time she let herself cry. Crying sometimes can be the only thing that reminds us we are human.

This isn’t an entry that has a happy ending. In the next few sentences I’m not going to tell you she said yes to my free sub offer today, because she didn’t. Part of me honestly feels like she never will take the offer. However, I am challenged with the fact that she needs something way more than a BLT six inch on rye and strawberry cheesecake cookie, perfectly circular. Anna’s lonely and a Subway napkin with the calorie counts of their products isn’t going to cure that for her.

Food, people, drugs, power, sex… none of these are going to cure the loneliness that is in everyone of our hearts. We all have it. So stop drowning in the entitled, I’m-too-busy or I’m-not-good-at-this-type-of-thing, glued to your phone, pool that has captured so many victims. We aren’t able to cure the loneliness in each other heart’s. But we can start the healing by looking up and saying… “Hey, me too..” and then getting on our knees.