Hello my name is Nicholas, I just found this forum today. I hope that someone here can help guide me through this. I have found myself increasingly dissatisfied with the world we live in and things are starting to get desperate. I live in Calgary and even though I am on welfare I can barely pay rent and I know I'm going to be back on the streets soon. Right now I'm just trying to outlast the winter. I never learned any skills of value growing up, I work as a line cook now because I have no skills for other work. I have chronic pain and a bad back so I can't get hired to work labour work but I am willing to work hard and long I'm just a bit slower than everyone else. I use a cane to help me walk without a limp but I can walk for very long periods of time, again slower. I work hard in my life but it's always for someone else, I want to be able to work hard but still be able to live a good life instead of drowning in bills and debt and crushing stress. I don't have a lot of hope for the future my mother is 16 years older than me and in the same situation. I'm so afraid to leave everything I ever knew but I am also afraid to stay and waste the rest of my life the way I've wasted the first 21. I don't know what to do,I need some insight from those more experienced than I. Maybe I just need a friend I don't know. I feel like I'm drowning.
Damn Nicholas, sorry to hear about your situation. Wish I had an easy answer but I don't. Do you qualify for any educational assistance? My thinking is that maybe you could learn a skill where you could stay off of your feet, part of the time at least. Grants and scholarships are great options also. I live in the States so I don't know how things work in the Canadian educational system. Search for any type of housing assistance also, any little bit will help. Maybe that will keep you off the streets. Sorry I don't have better advice. Best of luck to you. -Dice
I don't qualify for any assistance at all. I want to go and live without money on a farm or commune. I am thinking about leaving this summer but there are many things I have to do before I leave. I will just pack up and walk away. Living with no money here can't be too much different than living without money anywhere else. I will probably travel west on foot to Vancouver, I have never seen the ocean before. I will have to walk and hitchhike and camp. I can't see anything being worse than the way I feel now and I think it's going to take me physically removing myself from these superficial comforts like soft beds and junk food to make myself the kind of man I can live with, even if my choices take me down a path where I don't live as long as I would have otherwise.
