The Snipers Weren't Looking for Him Tonight

Most people were afraid of him.

The women at the shelter were uncomfortable around him. The men kept their distance. Staff often described him as unpredictable. If you only met him briefly, it was easy to understand why.

He rarely slept. He paced constantly. His clothes were dirty and worn. His conversations could turn suddenly graphic, often centered around sex, violence, or religion. He laughed at inappropriate moments and seemed to be living in a reality that no one else could see.

People assumed he was dangerous.

I thought he was terrified.

He lived with schizophrenia and carried a history of trauma so severe that it had become woven into the way he experienced the world. Sometimes he spoke openly about things that had happened to him as a child. The stories were graphic and disturbing. He would describe abuse in blunt detail, often in front of people who had no idea what they were hearing.

The women at the shelter thought he was making sexual comments toward them. They were frightened and offended. I understood why.

But I also knew something they didn't.

He wasn't talking about them.

He was talking about himself.

The abuse he had endured had never truly left him. His mind replayed it constantly. What sounded shocking to everyone else was, for him, simply another day inside a memory he could never escape.

At one point, an incident at the overflow shelter became the defining story people told about him. It followed him everywhere. One bad moment became the explanation for all of his behavior.

That never felt fair to me.

Because there was another side to him.

When I would arrive at the shelter, I sometimes took him for walks. He liked to walk. The movement seemed to settle something inside him. We would wander through town talking about whatever was on his mind that day.

Many days, it was the snipers.

He was convinced they were watching him.

Waiting for him.

Following him.

Most people would have argued with him. They would have tried to convince him the snipers weren't real.

I learned that wasn't helpful.

Instead, I listened.

Sometimes, during our walks, he would suddenly smile and say, "They're not looking for me tonight."

It wasn't confidence.

It wasn't relief.

It was a frightened young man trying to negotiate a little peace with his own mind.

Those were the moments I saw most clearly who he really was.

Not a threat.

Not a problem.

Not the frightening person everyone imagined.

Just a man exhausted from carrying fear every waking moment of his life.

Eventually, we helped him secure Social Security benefits because of his condition. Later, he was housed. On paper, it looked like a success story.

But outreach work rarely ends as neatly as reports suggest.

Today, I don't know where he is.

He's disappeared.

Every now and then I wonder if someone will call and tell me he's been found somewhere. I hope that call never comes, but I know enough about this work to understand that sometimes it does.

When I think about him now, I don't remember the things that scared everyone else.

I don't remember the complaints.

I don't remember the incident reports.

I remember the walks.

I remember a young man looking over his shoulder at enemies only he could see.

And I remember the nights when he would smile and tell me the snipers weren't looking for him tonight.