How is it...

How is it that I can feel such overwhelming sadness for a life that I may have never known? Today the manager of our state run homeless shelter was shot 9 times by a homeless man. Reports say that the homeless man was angry about being kicked out of the shelter, so he shot someone dead.

~My heart feels cracked over the senselessness of this act.
~My brain feels frightened for Thursday night when I will, once again, enter this shelter looking for homeless youth.
~My hands feel tired of wiping tears.

I suppose this sadness stems not just from the loss of life, but the realization of what I have always known to be true: these shelters are often a haven for the hopeless. Sometimes it seems I can taste the hopelessness in the air. I can certainly see it in the etched and worn faces of the men and women who have (sometimes) spent a lifetime with a cot for a bed, their entire room 'decor' consisting of a state fair stuffed animal propped next to a dirty wall.

These are the people that society has forgotten, or want to forget. But they are there...and sometimes they kill the messenger.