I guess I was lucky in life in that I am alive to talk about it.  My parents did the best they could but left us alone quite frequently.  When my father died, things got worse.  He died a week before my fifteenth birthday.  Anyway, my mother did pay her bills but managed just that.  We had hardly anything to eat.  There were five of us kids and eight cats living in a three bedroom home.  My mother seemed not to want us to be better than her.  I escaped my home life by going to school and doing well and hanging out with friends.  I was always responsible for the younger kids but I didn’t want to be.  

     When I went to middle school, I went to a school where the black principal didn’t like whites.  I had a hard time for my eighth grade year and did not learn anything.  I barely made it into high school.  I was jumped all of the time, I was constantly picked on and just simply hated.  I just wanted to live.  In this school, I was in the bathroom and someone climbed the wall of the next stall and dropped a flaming piece of paper down at me but I moved!   I hated that school and was angry with my moom for not trying harder to get lme out of that one and into a better one.

     Imagine growing up in sheer poverty.  You don’t have hot water, you don’t have a mother who cared about cleaning, the house smells like cat piss, and things are just over all ruined.  That was my life.  I think when I took off with my now ex-husband, I was escaping.  I wanted out! 

     Turned out running away with my ex was a bad decisiion on my part.  He had bouts with cocaine addiction, was verbally and physically abusive,etc.  We had three kids together.  They were in the next room when my ex beat the tar out of me and tried to kill  me.  Anyway, he is incarcerated now for another offencse which I wont disclose at this time.   But needless to say,  I am happy and in a loving relationship.   I love my boyfriend very much.

     I now try to help people get out of situations like mine if I can.