Spotlight On
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| 2/12/2007 |
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Why I’m here
by James Grissom
On January 28, 2002, a sheriff’s deputy drove me from John Umstead Hospital in Butner, NC, to the bus station. I had a bus ticket to Winston-Salem and the address of a recovery program there. I was wearing all the clothes I owned. Layers of old tape held my glasses together, and I could barely see through them. My worldly possessions fit in one shoebox, which I held in my lap. Seven kinds of HIV medicine also rattled around inside it.
For the first time in three decades, I wanted to stay clean and sober. To do this, I needed to leave Durham, my home for 28 years, and the partner who infected me with HIV. We both wound up in the hospital on the same day – December 21st, 2001. He had a seizure, and I called the rescue squad. When the EMTs arrived, I went into DTs.
At the hospital, I was told I was sicker than I knew. In addition to HIV, drug addiction and alcoholism, I had four more deadly illnesses—cirrhosis of the liver, liver cancer, and hepatitis B and C.
When I was admitted, I weighed 119 pounds. The doctors told me I had six months to live.
Six months? I thought. I’m going to use the time to get my life together. This was a new thought for me. For years, I’d thought only of the next drug or drink.
I lay immobile in the hospital bed, nourished by food through a tube. I asked God for one more chance. Day after day, I asked him for this chance.
One day, a nurse asked me, “Where do you want to spend your last days?”
“With my partner,” I said automatically.
“Oh no,” she said. “He doesn’t want recovery like you do. You’ll never make it with him.”
So the staff checked into recovery programs for homeless men in North Carolina’s cities.
“Your best choice is Winston-Salem,” the nurse told me.
During the bus ride to my new home, my mind wandered back through my life. I was born in Oxford, NC, to a single mother who put me up for adoption. Some relatives adopted me. I was the first of my mother’s 15 children, and she kept all the ones who followed. I always felt alone. My father ran off when my mother was pregnant with me, but I got to know him later.
I was confused about my sexual identity. I know today that I have always been gay. I never felt a part of things. I always felt different. My parents hoped I would go to college. By the end of high school, I was already into drugs. A month after graduation in 1973, I went to prison for writing bad checks.
I got a job at a carwash in Durham when I got out. I was at the car wash for 28 years. It was an ideal job for someone like me. I was paid every day in cash. My employer let me live rent-free in a shack behind the building. I could buy alcohol at a store around the corner. The drug dealer made house calls. And when I was broke, a church down the block served hot meals.
I went back to prison four more times during my drinking. It was always for nonviolent crimes, like trying to pawn something that wasn’t mine. I went to AA meetings in prison as a way to get out of my cell, nothing more.
In 1997, my partner and I met. We lived together, drank together, and used drugs together. Soon the health department notified me that he had been HIV positive for five years. They tested me. I was positive too. They offered medicine to slow the progression of the virus. I’d have to stop drinking and using for the medicine to work. My mind told me, “Well, it looks like you’re on your last legs. You might as well have fun now. You’re not going to be around next year.”
But the next year, I was still around, and really sick. I started to use the medicine, but I didn’t quit drinking and using illegal drugs. My health continued to slide downhill.
The bus pulled into downtown Winston-Salem and I climbed off. I had the address of Project Cornerstone at Samaritan Ministries. It was a 10-block walk -- the longest, most frightening one of my life. I’ve been to prison five times—all for nonviolent offenses—but that wasn’t as scary to me as making my way in a new city.
I finally found Samaritan and rang the doorbell.
“Good Lord!” said the man who opened the door. He called some staff members to come and see me. That’s how bad a shape I was in—shaking and trembling.
“Why are you here?” the man asked.
“I want to get in Project Cornerstone,” I said.
“Come on in,” said the man who opened the door.
Project Cornerstone was full and I had to wait 30 days for a spot. If I had known I was coming to stay in a homeless shelter in Winston-Salem, I would never have gotten on that bus. I think the fact I didn’t know was God’s way of getting me here.
Each day, I left the shelter and walked around the city. I applied for help at substance abuse and mental health programs. I stayed away from the men who gathered near the shelter every day to drink wine and smoke crack. Many nights, the shelter staff called the Rescue Squad to take me to the hospital. I was sicker and sicker. But somehow, God allowed me to make it.
The AIDS Care Service assigned a counselor for me and I started spending my days at the service’s Grace House. My counselor helped me organize my HIV pills in a box with daily doses. Little things like that went a long way.
Finally, 30 days passed, and I started Project Cornerstone. I was very sick, but hanging on. After seven months in the program, the AIDS Care Service offered me a job—residence manager of their short-term housing for HIV and AIDS patients.
That was over four years ago. I’ve had the job ever since and live in one of the service’s apartments.
Not only that, I sponsor other people in recovery. I tell my story at churches, schools, and universities. After I spoke at Wait Chapel at Wake Forest University last fall, I asked my counselor how I did. She said, “James, I’d tell you, but the standing ovation is too loud.” In 2005, Gov. Easley gave me an award for helping homeless people in North Carolina.
I believe God has kept me alive so that I can tell my story. I want to reach people who have suffered the way I did. At my lowest, weakest point, God helped me make a change. Six months have stretched into five years, and I’m still here.
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