This winter, pay compassion forward to others

Writer gains empathy for others’ plight amid her own rough patch.

I tucked myself under a Mexican blanket, adjusted the pillow under my head, turned off the car and locked the doors. I pulled my feet up and curled into the driver’s seat of my little Honda Civic on a cold night in December shortly after 1 a.m.

With nowhere to go, the bar where I worked closed for the night. In between contract jobs in Atlanta, I was homeless.

Struggling to pay off my car and keep my cellphone on, waiting tables and bartending just didn’t cut it for me to keep an apartment. Some nights I went home with colleagues after drinking away our troubles. But nights like this were far more common. I parked near the Georgia Tech university apartments on a hill where I could just make out the neon CNN sign a few blocks away.

Fourteen months earlier, I left an abusive marriage, had a job in the city stripped from me before I ever started, jumped in working at bars and restaurants and took an overnight contract job at CNN, babysitting satellite feed, a job I was barely qualified for. That year was a rush of new beginnings; then it all seemed to stop, or, rather, it took me three steps backward.

I didn’t have enough friends in the city yet to make my case. I needed to work it out on my own, and I was certainly not going back to Colorado, where I escaped a controlling family unit I no longer trusted. I had to do this on my own. I had to know what I was capable of, so I worked out a system to get by.

At dawn I promptly woke up and drove down to the YMCA. I put on my gym clothes, used the weight room and played one-on-one basketball with one of the young employees. The early rising was a struggle, but it gave me the energy I needed.

After a few hours, I took a hot shower in the locker room, brushed my teeth and buried my toiletries into a gym bag. Dressed in black jeans, a T-shirt and apron,

I dried my wet hair so I wouldn’t catch a cold and bounded out to my car, ready to take on the day. I went to a Starbucks and parked in the back near the dumpster. Then I reached into my apron for a few dollars to buy a simple coffee. I justified my secret all-day parking with a dark roast and milk. They never figured me out, and I walked down to the bar where I worked two shifts a day, six days a week. The boys in the kitchen made me grilled cheese and salad for breakfast, and the day was set.

Lunch rush, afternoon break, dinner rush, shots with customers, helping behind the bar when it got busy, football games, tables turning faster than I could count and late-night dances during cleanup. Another day, set on repeat, and still no word from CNN about the staff jobs for which I applied.

With one day off each week, I used my time to hunt for other journalistic opportunities in the city. I took my rugged laptop to a cafe or a diner, ordered the cheapest thing on the menu and sat for hours filing applications, pressuring employers and restructuring my resume to tailor to the job. If I landed an interview, I tried to schedule it around my work schedule at the restaurant and always had a collared shirt handy just in case.

My cold nights in a Honda Civic only lasted seven or eight weeks before I was able to move into an apartment with a boyfriend and a roommate. Within a month, I finally got a callback on a job at CNN I pursued after my previous contract ended. The supervisor took a risk on me. I am forever grateful.

Looking back, somehow, even the most hopeless nights, I often think I was manifesting the job I needed to keep going. But I also realize I was privileged. I had a car and a laptop, and I found a way to afford cigarettes and coffee. I drank alcohol and ate, mostly for free, working in a bar.

But most people do not have those things.

Not everyone knows the resources available to them.

I will never forget the nights I spent wondering how long I would be sleeping in my car or if I might lose that too, knowing how hard it was to make payments. That neon sign, oddly, kept my head up when there were so many moments I felt down.

I’m grateful it didn’t last long. But I know I wouldn’t be who I am had I not experienced the struggle, and I know I wouldn’t be where I am if a few people hadn’t taken a risk to give me work and slip me a meal once in a while.

And my hope this winter is you might find it in your heart to pay your kindness and compassion forward to the ones you see on the street and the ones you don’t know.

You never know whose life you might change by just acknowledging their very existence, giving them a chance to tell their story, offering them a job or simply taking part in a conversation.

‘I will never forget the nights I spent wondering how long I would be sleeping in my car or if I might lose that too, knowing how hard it was to make payments.’ Ash Gallagher

CONTRIBUTED Ash Gallagher, an AJC community contributor, once spent weeks sleeping in her car. She’s grateful to those who helped her then — and hopes others will be as generous to the needy this winter.