A Fish Has No Word For Water: A punk homeless San Francisco memoir

by Violet Blue

“Try me,” I said. “I want to know.” Spider didn’t miss a beat. “Suit yourself. There didn’t used to be this many on the streets. When Reagan was elected president, he basically let all the mental patients loose.” She saw the look of disbelief on my face. “No, he really did. He repealed a law that would’ve kept money going to federal community mental health centers. That wiped out all the services that kept them off the streets, made it so they’re either in jail, in a temporary emergency mental ward at SF General, or on the streets.”

Thanks to growing up on guard against a highly intelligent drug addict, I had evolved a cautious allergy to people who refused to be accountable for their own actions.

When people die, they really take a piece of you with them. It would be several years and many more deaths until I’d come to understand that this missing piece is okay; it’s theirs to keep wherever they are. That they live forever because I remember them, and I bring them with me everywhere I go. But it would take a very long time for me to not feel frustrated by grief, so mercurial, which only stops when you suddenly notice it just doesn’t hurt anymore.