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Concrete Beds & Finding Gratitude

Amy Marie
4 min readJul 29, 2020

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I have been an absolute miserable wretch of a person for pretty much the past year. Loathing my lot in life and loathing myself for not being able to drag myself out of the pit although I had everything available for me to do so. More times than not, I’ve woken up with zero desire for what the day is going to bring and hating myself for feeling that way. It’s just been pure drudgery loaded with a lot of guilt for said pure drudgery.

Tonight my heart was broken though and I have this mental image that is forever sealed in my brain. I helped serve food to unhoused people in downtown today, something I’ve been a part of in some way numerous times for the past year. But tonight I ended up talking to a man named Gary and stayed into the night, past all of the other volunteers who had gone home.

I’m used to seeing all of our friends up and about, socializing with each other, some solemn, but most with grateful words of cheer as they accept their food. Tonight though, for the first time, I saw them all settle in for the night. All 30 or so of them, lined up against a cold stone wall, with only a thin blanket between them and the concrete floor and nothing to protect them from the water that was seeping up from the Tennessee downpour earlier that night.

When I got home and walked into my cozy bedroom — a room that I’ve been renting and have…

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Amy Marie
Amy Marie

Written by Amy Marie

Creator of http://outofbroken.com/. It’s out of broken that we have many pieces to give.

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