We sat in the kitchen of Immanuel Methodist Church (a frequent host to the INNS Program), a place where Terry Serguson had spent many hours trying to get a step further in life, but this time he was there to lend a helping hand. As we sat across from each other, Terry told his story of how he went from a drug addict to a man with a home.
In late 2002, he had found himself with very little money in his pocket and no place to call “home”. After 18 years of chronic drug use, Terry’s family had finally grown tired of hearing the same old excuses and pushed him to the streets. For the next several years he lived in various shelters and treatment centers throughout Illinois, with a little determination to straighten his life out, but there was no one there to give him that slight shove in the right direction. So, he continued to spend every dollar of his pay check on drugs and alcohol. There was a certain tone to his voice that made me feel the pain he had, “I got tired, and I needed help, but that help didn’t stop me. It was like falling through trap door after trap door.”
“It hurt knowing that my children didn’t want to talk to me only because they didn’t know me. I always told myself I would never be like my father who left when I was 12. He had said he was going to the store to buy milk and never came home. It hurt me to realize that I was no different than the man I envied so much. So, I decided to change who I was.”
