A Colourful Life (Part 2)

At 15, I had my first ‘real’ boyfriend, and I moved in with him. At the time, he was my hero. He was only a year older than me and he was so nice to me... at first. Soon he began beating me and I became pregnant with his child. After he kicked me in the stomach I ran away, back to the streets. I lived the entire pregnancy on the streets. I chose to give my son up for adoption as soon as he was born because I was too young and his father was abusive. I personally picked the adoptive family and gave them my baby – a healthy 8 pound boy – up for adoption with the help of my doctor. A year had passed and I was still so sad that I gave up my son for adoption, even though it was the right thing to do. I went to my friend’s house to smoke a bunch of pot and to just escape my feelings for a little while. I asked my new boyfriend at the time if he would feed my cat at my apartment while I was gone. 2 weeks had gone by and I got a bad feeling in my belly and a gut instinct to go home. In the middle of watching Gargoyles and smoking a fatty, I left. I got home to find my boyfriend and my roommate in bed together. Nice!

I was so sad that I had a one night stand with my son's father, and got pregnant by him... again. Once again I stayed the entire pregnancy on the streets. I was going to give her up for adoption as well, but I just couldn't. I was 18 now and I ran to the lady that my mom gave me to (for that 3 year stretch) for help and I had my daughter there. Within months it was a bad scene and I didn't want my daughter growing up around the same crap that I grew up around so I went back to Toronto and moved in with her father. Big surprise – within months he started beating me. I thought it would be different this time, now that we were older and had a child, but sadly it wasn’t. One day I came home and he attacked me with a baseball bat. I managed to escape and got the police to retrieve my daughter. I went to a shelter for abused women. Even though he was abusive to me, he wasn't abusive to his daughter, so I tried to do the right thing and brought her to his house for weekend visits.

I went back to adult school at 19 and it was there that I met the father of my youngest child. I never brought a man home to meet my daughter because I didn't want her to get attached to random guys. When I finally brought Ted home to meet her I had already put her in a school for children with aggressive behaviours. It was when she met my boyfriend that she innocently asked her teacher why her Dad and Ted treated her differently and then explained what she meant. I was called and notified that her own father was sexually abusing her! I told them to call C.A.S. immediately and I picked her up from school that same day. I took full-custody from her dad with absolutely no visiting rights and Ted adopted her. Soon after, Ted and I had our youngest daughter.

After years of intense therapy, my oldest daughter is doing a thousand times better. There is no statute of limitations for what her father did, so we will not push her into a court just yet. Instead we will wait for her to be strong enough to face him on her own time.

As for me, I went to college and am working on becoming a glass-artist now. I have a union job, and to look at me you would just think I was another pretty girl. I grew out my mohawk and took off the 20-holed boots when I had kids. Since I watched my mother on drugs all her life, I never fell into drugs or alcohol addiction while living on the streets. I have watched many lose themselves to addiction, and many died young. I may not have lived a pretty life, but I'm very smart; I have helped so many, and I'm proud of who I am. I have rescued hookers from pimps; I have gotten good people off of drugs; and I have made street-kids realize they don't have it quite so bad at home after hearing my story.

I out-ran my warrant for my arrest; I stayed out of Durham for 9 years and called them when I was 23 explaining the situation at the time and it was erased from my record, so I have no criminal record. I have lived a complicated life – that of which this article only captures a fraction of. I tell my story through my art and poetry a lot. I hope that telling my story might help someone get through a hard time of their own.

A Colourful Life (Part 1)

I have lived a very unusual life. Some may say it was scary, or sad, but to me it is what made me the strong woman I am today. All my life I was repeatedly abandoned by my heroin addicted mother. Random people that my mother knew or met would adopt me for days, weeks, months or more; for 3 years I lived with a lady my mom had known for only 3 days. When I was 10 years old my mom was caught scamming welfare for me when I didn't live with her. I was given the choice if I wanted to move back in with my mom and being very young, I chose my mom over stability.

So, I moved in with her and a new step-dad that openly hated me, a new step-brother that liked me a little too much, and my god-father who also had a hated for me for no apparent reason except that I was there, and this guy Rob, who didn't even acknowledge my existence. Very shortly after I moved in, my step-brother, who was a year older than me, began raping me. I told no one because I was afraid that my mom would abandon me again. Instead I took to sleeping in odd places at night so he couldn't find me, or I simply stayed out all night, hanging out at the strip mall down the road and then I slept during the day in class. My teacher Ms. Baker was amazing to me. For my grade 5 graduation she bought me a graduation dress – the 1st dress I had ever owned! It was white cotton with white frills around the collar and down the skirt; I felt so pretty.

That summer I left home for the last time. My mom never called the authorities on me because she didn't want to lose the money she got monthly from the government for ‘supporting’ me. I ran away to downtown Toronto to live on the streets and I kept to myself at first. When someone asked me my name I told them a nickname. I panhandled for change in front of Sam The Record Man. Over time I got to know the people in the strange underworld of street kids. Times were different downtown in those days. On Queen Street the punks ran things and on Young Street, it was the skinheads that ran things. I was one of the lucky ones because I got along with everybody, and was very protected by everybody. In the summer time I got to know a biker and he helped me to go to my mom’s place once in a while by giving me a ride. He was a great guy, never hit on me once.

During the entire time I was on the streets I commuted to school daily. I went to school up until I was 14 and that’s when I got called into the principal’s office, only 3 weeks into grade 9. By this time I had a 2 foot alpine green mohawk, gothic make-up, fangs, wore a kilt, 20-hole Ranger boots, and had a kitten living in my backpack. The principle then explained to me that my step-dad told them I do not live at home, and because I was under the age of 16 and I did not have a legal guardian paying taxes for me, I wasn't allowed to go to school anymore. I was shattered; school was the 'only' stability that I had in my life and I looked forward to it every day.

My mother had a mental breakdown after she couldn't collect money for me anymore since it was proven I didn't live at home. She went to her doctor crying, saying that I was a run-away and she put a ‘Form 1’ out for me. That form tells the police to put that person of concern on 72 hour lock down at a psychiatric hospital. The police picked me up on my way to a camping trip with some friends. I was stuck in the hospital for 2 weeks because I refused to talk to anybody and after 2 weeks they had to let me go. To top it off, months later a Truancy Warrant was put out for my arrest to go to juvenile jail! Lucky for me that the warrant was only for Durham region, so I never went home again since my mom now lived in that area. At least my step-brother wasn’t able to rape me anymore now that I was exiled from that area.