When I tell people I’m from Los Angeles, their immediate responses are usually something along the lines of “Do you see a lot of famous people?” The answer is no and I never understood why anyone would want to live in Los Angeles. It smells, it’s dirty, people are unnecessarily mean, and the traffic’s terrible. If I could live in a cliché version of Los Angeles, I would be walking down Pacific Coast Highway along the beach with an acai bowl in my hand, getting sunburned because I hate the way sunblock feels greasy on my skin. Or, if I wanted to go to the city, I’d be walking through The Grove LA shopping and sipping on an overpriced cup of coffee. But that’s not the Los Angeles I grew up in. I grew up in the gang ruled, graffiti riddled side of Los Angeles.
             If I were on Skid Row, hopefully I wouldn’t be living on dope. Skid Row is diverse. It is home to doctors, families, nomads, and strangers. It’s almost like a small world of melting pots. It fears nothing – people fear it. It has already consumed entire families but it still yearns to grow. 
             It was my senior year of high school and I was set to graduate in June of 2016. Going to a private Christian school, there was a list of requirements that I needed to complete in order to receive my diploma. One of those requirements included a two-day mission trip to Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles that I, of course, waited until the last trip to complete. Skid Row is an area of downtown Los Angeles that is home to one of the largest homeless populations in the nation. It was once confined to just 5th street but is now composed of 50 blocks in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles; 3rd Street on the north, 7th street on the south, Main Street on the west, and Alameda Street on the east. Out of the 55,188 homeless people in Los Angeles county, around 2,000 homeless people find shelter on Skid Row where they would do anything just to survive or, the more likely scenario, scramble just enough cash for a high.                Men and women would do anything to get extra cash to feed their addiction. Parents with children would do anything to keep them safe and fed, but sometimes it isn’t enough and they are forced to rely on local homeless shelters or religious charities. Many people on Skid Row suffer from chronic mental illnesses, mostly likely due to years of drug use. You don’t need a non-profit organization to tell you these facts, you can see it in their eyes when they look at you with a blank stare or when they start talking to an invisible person beside them. So, after running all this through my head, I was wondering why the school thought that sending high schoolers to the most dangerous part of Los Angeles was a good idea.
             Growing up in Los Angeles, I wasn’t afraid of homeless people, as most people are, despite a few unpleasant interactions. My parents were never judgmental towards them and taught me the same, although, they didn’t necessarily want me to go up to them casually. Nonetheless, they always told me that they’re not all bad people, that they’re just people who’ve made a mistake in life and that mistake shouldn’t automatically label them, but they also told me to be cautious of them. Although not all of them are bad people, some will do anything for their high. I remember every day of high school, driving past this intersection and seeing the same woman in a brown shirt all four years. She was clearly unhealthy. Her frail frame hunched over as she limped up and down the line of cars caught at the intersection. I remember occasionally giving her spare change I had, well, up until I saw her go behind the church sign right on that corner to shoot up. She’d always been so nice and grateful every time I gave her money. “God bless you” and “Thank you so much” with a warm smile was her forte. With that being said, I was a little skeptical about approaching the homeless community in Skid Row.
             I walked out of the van after the twenty-minute drive to downtown and was immediately welcomed by the freshly polluted air of Los Angeles. Buildings towered over us as we walked down 7th Street and we were all desperately trying to take cover from the beating California sun under the shade of the skyscrapers. The buildings were covered with graffiti of crude images and language, a possible sign of gang activity. Tattered tents and sleeping bags lined the grimy sidewalks and the streets were littered with garbage and waste. Both animal and human. The gutters were piled with more garbage and drug paraphernalia. The stench of garbage and faeces, heated by the sun singed the hairs in my nose as we started walking towards the outskirts of Skid Row to MacArthur Park where a large homeless community had set their makeshift homes. Our task today was to go out and talk to a random person in the park and just the thought of starting a conversation with a complete stranger in the scariest part of LA was terrifying but I was also excited to learn their history. Our youth group pastor had told us many stories of his many mission trips to Skid Row. He’s told us of doctors he’s met, single mothers, families, and other decent people who’ve ended up on Skid Row with extraordinary stories which made this first task a little more exciting.
             I never really thought about the significant number of the homeless population in Los Angeles since I live in a city on the outskirts of Los Angeles county called Norwalk with a high homeless population that is hooked on drugs, but this park, in particular, was its own homeless community inside of Skid Row. I have driven past this park hundreds of times before but I never noticed how many people were homeless and living there. The parts of the park where the tents and makeshift homes were set up were always out of sight from the window of a car. What changed my perspective and opened my eyes to this community was actually going into the park and exploring it on foot. I was already familiar with the large homeless population, having grown up in Los Angeles but I never put it into perspective because I was always warned to steer clear of homeless people unless I had to interact with them. Tents and tarps were set up all around a small pond in the middle of the park and, surely, people were shooting up under the little bridge that led to the pond from the basketball courts. I haven’t seen this, but we can all assume that a dark corner is where people would most likely do illegal things.
             As we walked under that bridge, we were immediately overwhelmed by the stench of urine and weed. Going under this bridge was probably the most nerve wracking part. Not only because it was dark under there, but because I didn’t know what people were doing under there. For all I knew, they could be dealing drugs or using them and I was very sheltered growing up so even something like marijuana was taboo to me. Even though I was with three other classmates and a chaperone, I was still nervous to walking into it.  Since both ends of this small tunnel were heavily shrouded by trees and bushes, the lighting was poor and we weren’t able to clearly see the dark corners of the tunnel very well, which made me walk a little faster and a little closer to center of our little group. The grass on the other side of the tunnel was littered with empty alcohol bottles and other scraps of tarps, tents, and other items left over from making makeshift homes left by those living at the park. A woman to the right of me seemed to be yelling at a person who wasn’t there and just behind her was man passed out on a bench covered in, what I assumed to be, his own vomit. The further we ventured into the park, the more I became overwhelmed by everything going on around me and the more I began to question if going on this mission trip was worth it or if I should just do the alternative of going to some boring ass sermon and writing an essay about “what I found enlightening about it” or some shit like that. Well, it was too late for that option and I really didn’t want to listen to the same shit that’s been shoved down my throat for the past 17 years and have to write a paper about it.
             With that thought out of my mind. we started splitting off into pairs in our groups of four to go to different parts of the park. It was during this time that a young woman caught my eye. She was sitting on a bench next to a large tree several yards to my right. The thing that made her stand out to me was probably the fact that she couldn’t have been much older than me. It didn’t come as that big of a surprise to me that she was young but what did catch my eye was the fact that she was alone. I felt a twinge of sadness when I saw her. She was so young and she seemed to be alone on Skid Row. It made me wonder how she got there. Did she just end up with the wrong crowd when she was younger? Was she okay? But the most nagging question I had was: why the fuck is this beautiful, young girl alone on Skid Row? My mind was reeling with questions and curiosity burned; I just knew I wanted to talk to her. Maybe I’d end up meeting someone interesting, like the kinds of stories I heard from my pastor.
             When our groups started to head out, my group ended up going in the direction of the girl. Mainly because I was the first one to shoot up and start walking towards her. I walked ahead of my group to go talk to this woman and, as I walked up to her, noticed that her arms were covered with track marks underneath her folded up flannel. I didn’t know how to feel about this. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea or the safest idea to go up to this woman. The people who were in charge of this trip warned us to use our own digression when talking to people but, for some reason, I didn’t feel unsafe when I walked up to this girl. Maybe I should have, I don’t know. But something about her appearance made me feel safe enough to walk up to her alone without my partner with me. So, of course, I threw my pastor and chaperones’ cautionary warnings out the window and decided to go up to this woman and talk to her.
             She didn’t have that stereotypical homeless vibe. She wasn’t talking to herself, she didn’t look dirty, and she certainly didn’t have that crazy look in her eyes that most crack addicts have. When I first saw her, she was staring at her knees or something on the ground, I wasn’t sure, but she looked up and her eyes told a story. Even from where I was standing, I knew she had been through a lot. She had that look in her eyes that told me something tragic might have happened to her. Something that had nothing to do with drugs but maybe she felt that drugs were her only way of coping with whatever happened to her.
             She was pretty in a suburban girl-next-door kind of way. She had her long, blond hair up in a messy ponytail and was wearing blue jeans and a white crop top under her flannel. Black eyeliner was thick around her dull, green eyes and her veins poked through her pale skin. I didn’t know how to start the conversation when I sat down next to her.
“Hi,” I said.
             It seemed to take her a little bit to realize that I was speaking to her because we sat there awkwardly with me staring at her for a good ten seconds. My mind was racing with anticipation and I was thinking of all the worst case scenarios of how she would react to my introduction. When she finally turned her head to look at me, she looked me up and down. I could feel her eyes burning me from head to toe. Holding my breath, I nervously picked at my nails waiting for her to say something.
“Hey.” I was surprised she even answered me.
“Courtney. Nice to meet you.”
“Larissa.”
As we exchanged awkward small talk, I noticed that we had many things in common like our taste in music.
“I noticed you’re wearing a 1975 t-shirt.” She nodded over at me with a small smile.
“Yeah! They’re, by far, my favourite band.”
“You like alternative/indie?”
“Yeah, actually. Those are my two favourite genres. It the kind of music I listen to when I do homework when I’m just driving.”
“That’s what I liked to do too!” She laughed.
             She was just a regular girl from what I got from our conversation. It was awkward in the sense that we were strangers and I was a high schooler who had randomly come up to her and started talking to her. I could tell she was just as uncomfortable as I was and I noticed she and I had similar personalities when talking to strangers. Shy, quiet, and not knowing what to say or how to keep the conversation going. She said that she had been living in Los Angeles for about two years now but eventually you run out of things to make small talk about and start asking more personal questions. This is how our small talk turned into deep talk and this was how I learned the life of Larissa.
             Larissa came from a religious family of four; her, her parents, and a younger sister. She was originally from northern Tuscan, Arizona where her and her family were very involved in the Lutheran church they attended. She described her father as a very strict but loving man who was a very good father to Larissa and her sister. He was active in the church and often volunteered at church picnics and other church events. Her mother worked from home as an editor for magazines and was also very active in church events. Growing up, Larissa said she had a happy childhood being involved with sports and having a small group of close friends she grew up with.
             At this point, I noticed that we had eerily similar backgrounds and at this point I had a thought that whatever happened to her could end up happening to me. We both came from religious households, our parents were both loving and were heavily involved in church, and she seemed to have been raised with the same set of expectations as I was and I began to wonder how she got to where she was. We both seemed to have the same backgrounds but my life seemed to branched off on a path different from hers.
             The drugs started at the end of her senior year of high school after a sports accident. While playing lacrosse, she tore her ACL and underwent major surgery to repair the tendon in her knee. It was the painkiller, hydrocodone, that got her hooked. “At first I didn’t want to take them ‘cause I didn’t want to be a little bitch about my knee ‘hurting too bad,’ she quoted, “but it started to really hurt so I had to take it.” Eventually, she grew addicted to her prescription painkillers over the span of her recovery, which took about a year to a year and a half with physical therapy, and it resulted in her continuing to collect refills long after her knee was completely healed. How she got these refills without her parents is a question I forgot to ask but, eventually, the drugs consumed her life when she met a “junkie boy” at the start of her first year at college. By then, she was unable to obtain anymore refills on her hydrocodone and was clean for about six months when she decided started doing cocaine with her boyfriend and any other hard drug he or she could get their hands on. She eventually dropped out shortly into her second year at the University of Arizona.
             I guessed she was around 22 years old and it led me to wonder how she ended up in Los Angeles on Skid Row at such a young age and how prescription painkillers turned into heroin. I was bewildered at the story she was telling me. This was the type of story people watched on TV or in a film. This didn’t happen in real life and the fact that her story matched mine almost perfectly made me feel very lucky to be where I was. I had also torn my ACL around the same age she did, fifteen/sixteen years old, and was prescribed hydrocodone as well. The only difference between our stories was that I didn’t like the medication and she got hooked on it. Once I put two and two together, I realized how close I was to the same fate as her.
“You know; I tore my ACL too. Just a couple years ago.”
“Really? How?”
“Training for a big martial arts tournament coming up. We were running on the beach and the loose sand just got to my knee I guess.”
“Wow, yeah, that’ll get you.”
“After my surgery, I tried to take the pain killers they gave me, but it just made me sick so I stopped taking them.”
             And, in lieu of dropping out of college, Larissa moved in with her boyfriend at the time and moved down to Los Angeles. Larissa worked as a waitress at a small restaurant and her boyfriend worked odd jobs trying to make ends meet and to afford the studio apartment they shared. It was difficult for them to maintain a steady income which forced them to start going to the homeless shelters on Skid Row for food. Despite barely having enough money to afford their apartment, the couple would always pay anything for drugs, even if it meant not being able to afford food. “’He would always say, ’that’s what the shelters are for,’” she said looking over at me. “He would always come up with some bullshit excuse saying that we were gonna be okay, that we had enough money and I don’t know why I believed him ‘cause I knew it wasn’t true.”
“Where is he now?”
“Oh, he’s gone now.”
“May I ask what happened?”
“Got pregnant,” she shrugged, “He left five months ago. If he would’ve waited a couple weeks, he would’ve found out I had a miscarriage.”
            My mouth hung open. I couldn’t fathom how a man could leave a pregnant woman behind in the middle of Los Angeles, alone. Not only in Los Angeles, but in Skid Row, the worst part of Los Angeles. Skid Row is not a place for anyone to be alone in, let alone a pregnant woman. It was hard for me to understand how someone could do this to another person because it just seems so unbelievable. Yes, her boyfriend was a junkie but I never understood the power of addiction until Larissa told me this story. And even so, how could a father-to-be leave his unborn child?  
            My mind was still racing with questions as Larissa continued to tell me about these past six months since her boyfriend left. I was still trying to wrap my head around what she had just told me. She said she wasn’t surprised by his reaction and told me that had been becoming more hostile towards her in the months leading up to her pregnancy. Everything was about having enough money to buy drugs and a baby would cut deeply into those expenses.
“We would fight all the time. Not even for important things. I could tell he was falling out of our relationship but I ignored it and tried to make him happy.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound like a great time.”
She chuckled. “Huh, tell me about it.” She looked over at me and we laughed together.
“Yeah, but, it’s not like I’m doing any better now that he’s gone.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just look at me. I’m still here, still trying to keep my head above the water with rent and food.”
            After the disappearance of her boyfriend, the father of her child, Larissa’s life was consumed by the drugs introduced to her as other coping methods. Her bender left her with no money and an eviction notice from her landlord. She was barely able to support herself at the time I met her and was doing just about anything to pay rent and support her drug habit at the same time. I didn’t want to come off as judgmental and say the obvious response to that, which would be, “Why don’t you stop the drugs and use that money for things you actually need?” Of course, that’s the asshole response and I had no idea what it’s like to deal with addiction; especially, when she was using it as a coping mechanism.
             I couldn’t help but just look at her for a moment. This young woman had been through so much at such a young age. She’d been through so much that I couldn’t possibly understand and I didn’t know what to say to her.
“So, what’s your plan now? Now that he’s out of your life and you can do what you want to do.”
“I’m gonna get clean. That’s my one goal for right now.”
“I think that’s a great place to start! One small step at a time.”
“Yeah, you don’t know how hard I’m hooked.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re young and, I’m assuming, pretty sheltered since you go to a Christian school. Addiction is hard. I’ve tried to quit before, a year into my addiction.”
She looked so disappointed in herself. It was almost as if she was so embarrassed to admit this to me, even though I was a complete stranger. I wondered what was going through her mind as she sat there staring at her hands resting on her lap. I could tell that this was a hard subject to talk about and I didn’t want to pry. After all, I had just met Larissa about forty-five minutes ago.
“Believe me, I know how hard addiction can be. I, personally, don’t have any experience with addiction but I have a long history of alcoholics in my family and I’ve seen them try to quit, like, a thousand times. But, based on my conversation with you so far, I feel like you’re gonna be okay. You seem determined to get your old life back,” I smile at her.
She looks at me with a grateful smile. “Thanks.”
            I looked off to someone waving at me behind Larissa and took that as my cue to go and re-group with my class. Larissa seemed to catch on too.
“Well, it looks like you have to get back with your school.”
“Yeah, I do, but it was really nice meeting you. Take care,” I say and I go in for a hug.
“Bye.”
            And with that, we parted ways. Me to my school group and her to who knows where. I couldn’t stop thinking about the conversation we had, even as we left that park and back to the vans to take us back home. There was still so much I wanted to ask her. I never would’ve thought that I would enjoy talking to a complete stranger but she was a super down-to-earth kind of person, despite living on Skid Row. She wasn’t crazy and she didn’t give me any weird vibes. The kind of vibe that makes you uncomfortable for no visible reason.
She was different from any other person I’ve talked to on Skid Row, and, believe me, I’ve had several unplanned and unpleasant “conversations” with the people on Skid Row. One time, when I was younger, probably around 14 years old, a man with crazy eyes came up to me asking for spare change and, when I told him I didn’t have any cash on me, he flipped his shit and started screaming and crying. Of course, this was a long time ago and I’ve had other not-so-traumatizing interactions with people on Skid Row, but none of them were as down-to-earth as Larissa, which made our conversation so interesting.
            After our trip to the MacArthur Park, we piled back into our vans and headed to a restaurant to eat and debrief our day. It was a dimly lit Mexican restaurant, a restaurant I wish I remembered the name of because the food was amazing, and I was strangely exhausted despite having only one task that day. As soon as we sat down, I was feeling tired so I rested my head on my arms folded on the table in front of me. My classmates arounds me were buzzing with who they talked to and crazy things they saw on during our time at the park. My mind was still running through my conversation with Larissa at the park but I was just too exhausted to be sharing like everybody else. As the waiter brought out glasses of water, our pastor stood up to give us a few words.
“Thank you for spending your Saturday with us on Skid Row.” The sound of his voice startled me out of my little daze. “I know most, if not all, of you had no choice to be here,” he chuckled, “but, nonetheless, you guys did an awesome job out there. I really think that God…” And that’s where I stopped paying attention to that sermon.
            After my conversation with Larissa, the idea of God seemed a little vague to me. Larissa and I both seemed to have similar childhoods and backgrounds. Both from religious families who were involved with church growing up. Both had an injury where a prescription pain killer was given for after surgery pain. The difference is she became addicted to her pain killers and I didn’t. I don’t know if I believe in this God that both our families believe in because Larissa seemed to be a good person and this happened life changing thing happened to her. But, on the other hand, I was in the same situation, I was a good person, or I hope so, and that didn’t happen to me. Maybe my meeting her was a sign or a “message” from God, I don’t know, but this was an experience I’d never forget.
            If I were to sum up my emotions and experiences of that day, I would say that it was pretty harrowing. Something so small can lead to a domino effect of catastrophic decisions that can lead to something like Skid Row. So, right there, with my head resting on my arms, in that randomly amazing Mexican food restaurant when I decided to open my mind up to new ideas and possibilities that were automatically labelled for me growing up. This is when I decided to be open-minded for the first time in my life.