What did I just witness?

So, I was walking down Broadway here in lower Manhattan, and saw a lady writing on a piece of cardboard about how she’s homeless and needs help, etc.

Terribly sad, for sure.

But something hit me.

Had she been homeless for a while now, and just updating her sign as a means of requesting donations?

Or…

…what if I witnessed a human being on their first day of being homeless – having just given up her last-ditch attempts at continuing to live in the place she had called home that very morning?

…what if that was the very moment she resigned herself to having to take to the chilly streets of Manhattan, and relying upon the kindness and spare change of strangers?

…what if, she’d spent the day wandering around the city, and had just chosen that spot, on this windy, busy, thoroughfare, as her new perch for the indefinite future?

I find that possibility completely horrifying.