She’s alone now in her bedroom for the night, deep in a church basement. It feels like a sanctuary after the way she’s been living lately. The place is still filled with the fog of cigarette smoke from the others who have all gone home now. Someone gave her a key to lock up the place in case she needed to go out for coffee or cigarettes, and she feels honored that she was trusted enough to hold onto it. It’s been a long time since anyone has trusted her with anything, without being asked for something in return.

She lays on a bench in the back of the room. It looks like it was a church pew in a former life that is now consigned to a retirement home. Maybe it has been, hanging out in a basement with drunks and junkies like her playing their own version of church. She plumps up the jacket that is to be her pillow under her head, and gathers around herself the coat someone gave her as her blanket. It’s well past midnight, and it’s nice to lie in a place that doesn’t blind her with street lights. The bench is cozy compared with the streets she has slept on for the last few weeks. Same thing about the room that poses as her bedroom tonight. Anything indoors is warmer than what the November night would bring her outside.

It’s good to lay here without having to worry about strangers accosting her. She keeps thinking that it is too dangerous to sleep, because she is so used to the high alert that she has maintained just to get through the night. Until tonight, that is. Somehow, the malice of men has turned into the kindness of strangers, and she is safe for now, behind a locked door that any attacker would have to break down to get to her, rather than just walk by with a casual stroll to kick her. Tonight, she is tucked away from the plain view of danger in the privacy of a bedroom.

She never thought she would feel so grateful for a closed door. She never thought she would ever want a room to herself so badly. Growing up, a room was a room. It’s the way she believes most other people see it. You go in this room, you leave it to go outside or go to another room. So what? Thinking that was some thrill back then would probably mean you were a loser with no life. Back then, it would be, give me a break, it’s just a room.

Well, you know what? She has not only been that loser with no life, but with even less of any life at all. And now, climbing back up from that place, a room with a door to close was a damn good thing. She now saw past the ego that was too cocky to know what was good for her when she did have it. Good thing she was still alive to learn what was really important now, and not stay where she was in such a tiny place of smugness thinking she was smart. Because look where that had gotten her. A junkie on the streets.

It’s good to be clean and aware. She learned that as a tactic on the street when her fogged state turned her into the very victim she always thought she was back in her snooty days. Here, lying on a bench in a church basement, she was learning a different clarity, that even if it was just for a moment, she could know a real peace. Right now, she was not a mark, a victim, or a loser. She was a human being who had a warm place to lie her head down, in a place with a room to herself. Someone had said to her tonight, you know, you need to start somewhere and anywhere is good. If this place of quiet slumber was her “anywhere” to start, then maybe life wasn’t so bad after all. For a moment, she had peace. She closed her eyes, smiling for the first time in months as she drifted off to sleep.