My name is Jonathan Perales, and I've been struggling with on/off homelessness for the past 5 years, ever since I was involved in a 9 car pileup near Dallas TX that took away my ability to work entry level manual labor jobs, and being unable to secure employment that's able to accommodate my pain management and massive depressive disorder that comes with living in the streets with chronic pain. The person who caused the accident was uninsured and legally there was never any follow up or compensation. I lost my car, which was my temporary home, and lost absolutely everything.

Despite these challenges, I have always made the effort to apply for any and all work from construction, maintenance, and landscaping with low barriers for entry to try to improve my situation, but I'm never able to perform for long before the pain sets in and becomes debilitating. Those sporadic moments of employment have been essential to my survival, which is why I make the effort, knowing I'll eventually find myself crying in the break room every hour because the pain is too much, and eventually being let go due to performance.

I do have experience working at a desk. Two years doing remote IT help desk before I was let go due to the grief of losing my girlfriend. It took 4 months for me to lose my motor home and the life I had built for myself. I desperately want to re-enter this field, but I keep hitting roadblocks due to my lack of education and work gap. I never finished my first year of college due to my family stealing my FAFSA money to fund their vices, which led to me leaving home after being asked to relinquish any and all money I make from financial aid and from my part time job at FedEx.

I need to make a change in my life, desperately. I've managed to live the way that I do completely sober and free from a criminal record, but I find myself at the end of my rope. I have to make a conscious choice every morning to get up and keep going when I absolutely do not want to. I have been resourceful and used my ingenuity to survive but now I'm daring to ask for something more for myself, my two dogs, and my daughter whom I haven't been able to see in some time due to my living conditions.

I know we live in a time of massive wealth inequality and genocide, and I've never truly felt comfortable asking for the tools to escape poverty when so many people around me are suffering, but I promise to use the opportunities this will give me to pay forward whatever I can, and I will continue my same passion for activism and volunteer work towards a liberated world.