A few days in my life.

| So I’ve decided to write some stories about my life. Most won’t be pretty or what most people experience in their lives, but these are things that I think need to be told and maybe need to be heard by someone. These are going to be raw, sometimes disturbing, sometimes triggering stories, but they happened to me. This was my life, good, bad, raw, and ugly. I make no excuses, I don’t pretty it up, it is, what it is. Don’t judge until you’ve been there.

| These stories take place during the three year+ period of late 13 to 16, and that are kind of hazy because I was doing a fair amount of drugs then. This was also the period when I was spent a fair amount of time bouncing from the streets, to my moms, to group homes, with a very short stint at my dad’s when I was 14. Years of sexual abuse, neglect, and physical abuse by various people had left their mark on me. They impaired my decision making skills and conflict avoidance and set me on a particular path in life.

| I had left the latest group home I was in after being hit by another resident, and my worker telling me that if I left, that was it. No one was going to look for me because I was almost 16 (it was about six months until my birthday) and they weren’t going to bother with me anymore because I wasn’t a ward of the court. My mom had willingly signed me over. I was crashing at a rooming house with a guy (G)and his girl (S)who had also left with me. S was a ward of the court, but her foster home was very abusive and she did not want to return. She was afraid of them. The sexually abused he as well as physically abused her, but she was not believed by her worker or the authorities. She was supposed to go back soon and that is why she left the group home. G’s mother lived at this rooming house and she was five months pregnant, but was a crack addict and was prostituting herself to feed her addiction. Her boyfriend was her dealer. The manager of the rooming house lived in the main room and was in love with G. I stayed there for several days (everything I owned was in a garbage bag), hung out with the manager in his space for a while, and he would often tell me how he was more of a woman than G’s mother and how much he loved G. G was 15 and the manager was well into his 40’s. He liked to talk to me about gossip, and what went on in the house, who was doing what. He liked to hang out with all of us teenagers, and would give us smokes, and weed. One night when we were all hanging out, drinking and smoking weed, we were talking fashion (he and S were, I’m useless with that stuff) and we ended up measuring our waists. When I told him mine was a 29 inch, he yelled at me to “flaunt it girl!” I thought he was teasing me. He would buy us cigarettes when the store next door wouldn’t sell to us. The store next door would sell singles, so we would often go buy those. I met several people there, including a couple of G’s friends. They were brothers, a year or two apart, and would bring weed over for all of us to smoke. They kept trying to touch and sleep with me, and were always on either side of me. Besides that, they were fun to hang out with. They stayed over one night, they slept on either side of me and in the morning I woke up snuggled up between them.

| G’s mom did not like S, or me and was not happy we were there. She thought that we would bring the police down on them and that G did not need S for a girlfriend. She thought S was not good enough for G. One time G and S showered together and she got really angry. G had not lived with her before being in the group home. She had lost custody of him quite a long time before hand. Living there could be quite rough but G’s mom and the manager helped as much as they could. I could only shower every few days there and washing my clothes was a luxury. There was one time when we ran out of toilet paper, and I had to poop very badly. G’s mother found a spare sheet and ripped up a few pieces for me to use.

| I also met a man named B who was a local dealer and who I started sleeping with. I never knew where he lived. He kept supplying me with drugs as long as I kept sleeping with him. I was also introduced to coke and crack during this time, I didn’t know that at first though. One night, I woke up face down where I had passed out, to the owner of the rooming house and the manager standing over me on one of the beds in one of the vacant rooms with a burnt out cigarette in my hand. He told the manager that things like that couldn’t happen anymore. G and B brought me to another place where I met a woman named P. She was in her 40’s with two daughters, one who was 13 and another who five. P was a stripper at a local bar and loved to brag that she could still fit in and wore her teenage daughters clothes. Her brother F was a very well known dealer in the city, and was B’s boss. R often tried to lure me away from B, but was kind to me and was brutally honest when I needed it. I crashed at P’s house sometimes.

| A girl from the group home had given me a leather jacket as collateral for some cigarettes she owed me, and she ran away before paying me back. I still had it when I left. Somehow the group home had gotten a hold of me and said that they wanted to talk to me. I asked B to hold on to it for me while I was at the group home. When I got to the group home, the girls mother was there and they told me that she wanted the jacket back. I told her that she had given it to me for collateral, and that she owed me money. The staff told me that the jacket belonged to the girls mother, and that I would have to give it back. I told them that I didn’t have it anymore. I left the group home and returned to B, and when I asked him about the jacket, he told me he had sold it.

| One night, B and R introduced me to one of R’s friends, M. M was R’s age, in his 40’s , and we all went out in M’s car for a drive. I was in the front passenger seat with and B and R were in the back. We ended up somewhere overlooking the city and M pulled out a small tinfoil packet. There was a small white ball in the tinfoil, and he asked me if I wanted to smoke some. I asked what it was, and he said crack. I told him I had never done it before. He told me that B had been lacing my joints with it for a bit. I looked back at B and he nodded. R said nothing. We all ended up smoking it and M turned on the radio. M shared some strange looks with R and B. Some AC/DC came on and I ended up singing word for word the whole song. M asked me why I knew that music when it was too old for me. I told him about my step father, who listened to it and how I loved all that type of music. I ended up telling them all about my family in between singing songs. How my dad, mom and a couple of uncles rode motorcycles, about their names, who they were, about going with mom to motorcycle rallies when I was a kid, etc. (I don’t know what saved me that night. If it was because someone’s name was recognized, if it was because I had a family who might look for me, if it was because they liked me, or if it was just blind luck, but I don’t remember much of that night or what happened and I sometimes wonder what their plans had been for me.) I do remember asking if M was sure he was ok to drive, because we had smoked a lot of drugs. I never saw M again.

| One night, I was walking to P’s place when I noticed this car slowing down beside me. An older man was driving and he lowered the passenger side window. It was in the evening, so the street was fairly deserted. He asked me if I was ok and did I need a drive. I said I was fine and no I did not need a drive anywhere. He asked was I sure, he was not a creepy man, he didn’t want to have sex with me, he just wanted to help. So, when someone tells you they aren’t creepy, they really are. He drove beside me for several minuted trying to convince me to come in the car with him and kept insisting that he didn’t want sex. Eventually I did get in the car, accepting his offer to drive m to P’s house. He was asking if I had a boyfriend, and I said no. B wasn’t my boyfriend. He asked if I lived around there. I said no, I was staying with someone for a few days. He started asking me personal questions. He then asked if we could go somewhere to talk. He said he would pay me. I said ok. I was hungry, I hadn’t really eaten for a couple of days other than granola bars and chips. We drove up the street, to a parking lot under the bridge that was pretty secluded. He said he knew this place and that we wouldn’t be disturbed there. Thinking back now, I should have been disturbed by that statement, but then I didn’t really think much of it. Besides, years of sexual abuse had diminished my sense of what was normal, when I should be afraid and what was ok. He started asking me about my life, if I had ever had sex before, if I liked men, etc. I lied and said that I hadn’t had sex, but had fooled around and liked men. He asked if he could touch me, just touch me, no sex and said he would pay me. He again insisted no sex. Eventually I agreed. I was hungry and really wanted to eat. He started to touch my breasts, and then put his hands under my shirt. He asked me to lift my shirt up and pull my bra down so he could see. Then he wanted to put his hands down my pants. He undid my jeans, but because they were skinny jeans, he had a hard time getting his hand down. He asked me to pull them down. When I did pull then down a little, he then put his hand on me and put his fingers in me. He said this wasn’t enough, could I take my jeans off. I really wasn’t sure about that, but eventually agreed. He was really excited about this and really enjoyed when I did remove them, asking me to spread my legs to he could get a really good look at me. After really, almost roughly, touching me for a bit, he asked if he could fuck me. I didn’t really want to. He said he wouldn’t pay me unless I did. I told him I hadn’t done that before, meaning I hand’t had sex for money. He said it would be ok. It would be our little secret, no one would know. It would be like it had never happened. That it didn’t count. The whole time he kept touching me, priming me. Eventually I agreed, but insisted he wear a condom. He pulled one out and asked me to put it on him. I climbed over him in the drivers seat but as I started to lower down on him, he pulled the condom off. I asked that he was doing, and he said nothing and pulled me down on him. He then asked if I was sure that I had never done this before. He meant sex, I didn’t correct him. When he was done, I asked where the condom was. He said it must have fallen off. I got dressed, and he payed me. I left his car, and started walking back to P’s. I felt really dirty and just wanted to get rid of the money in my pocket. I saw G walking up the street and told him I was going to get a donair. I asked if he wanted one. He had been really kind to me and I wanted to pay him back. He asked where I got the money and I told him not to worry about it. We went into the pizza shop ad I bought us each a large donair and pop. I also bought cigarettes. I had been dying for a smoke. That spent a lot of the money. G kept asking where I had gotten the money. I again said not to worry about it.

When I got back to P’s house, P and B were going through my things and reading my diary out loud. They had found out what I had done. They were reading things I had written about B, about how I enjoyed sleeping with him, but said it was “obviously not true because I had whored myself out.” I was in tears, and very heartbroken. I was in the bathroom crying when R came in and started telling me that I didn’t want this kind of life, that I should go home, that I didn’t belong on the streets. He told me he could get me my jacket back right away if I just blew him. I told him no. He then said, “See, you don’t belong on the streets. You don’t want to be a whore.” P came into the bathroom then and heard what he sad. She agreed with him. She told me that I didn’t want to end up with her kind of life. She said that home couldn’t be worse than this. I didn’t tell them about my home life. While it wasn’t like that, there are different kinds of torment. I was about to return to one that was a constant in my life. I was going home. Those stories are for another day.