My Teen Years

Home life got very difficult after my sister left.  I was the only child left to catch all the "flack" that my father was so willing to dispense.  "Flack" consisted of regular beatings.  I ran away from home the first time when I was 14 years old.  I hitchhiked from my parents home near Los Angeles to San Fransisco, where my sister was living with her boyfriend.  I made the mistake of bringing a friend with me.  She got homesick after two days and called her parents and told them where we were.  I went back home, but not for long.  In my 14th year, I ran away 3 times.  The last time, I ended up turning myself into the police after being gang raped at a party in the hills.  I ended up in juvinille hall with no place to go, because I refused to go back to my parents and my father refused to sign me over to be a ward of the court so they could place me in a foster home.

Denial (pen and ink)

My sister came to my rescue in the spring of my 15th year.  She had been living in Seattle and came down to ask my parents if they would let me come live with her.  They agreed and the courts agreed, so I was shipped up to Seattle with her.  She was just 18 at the time and living in poverty while going to school at a local community college.  I had dropped out of school while in California, so I decided to try and get back into school in Seattle.  I was so overwhelmed with the "big city" school system that was 95% black, that I quit going after about a week. I began wandering the streets.  After my sister and her boyfriend got into a huge fight over finances, I decided that I best leave to save them paying my way.  I left my sister's house and started hitchhiking south, back to California, where my friends were.  My parents had quickly sold their house and moved away in their trailer right after my sister and I left for Seattle.  I truly had no home. I hitchhiked around California and lived on the streets of my home town for a couple of months.  I got raped again, at gun point this time, by a truck driver at a truck stop.  After a while, I decided that I could "live off the land" and "be abused" just as easily in other parts of the country and there was so much to see.  I decided to head towards the east coast and see what it looked like to watch the sun "rise" over the ocean.  It took me two weeks and nearly freezing to death in a blizard in Texas, but I made it to Florida to discover white "squeaky" sand and stunted palm trees (compared to those in Southern California). One day I watched the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean and set over the Gulf of Mexico.  After getting raped, yet again, and having all of my belongings stolen, I was feeling pretty "beaten" by the world.  My next ride, after this latest abuse, was a young military man that gave me a ride all the way from Florida to California while feeding me, housing me, buying me some clothes, and never laying a finger on me.  This gave me hope.

Summer - Second in Season of my Life (oil on canvas)

I turned myself back into the police in California.  I had nowhere else to go.  I had no idea where my parents were and I didn't want to burden my sister anymore.  Somehow, my case worker found a relative that I didn't even know I had.  She found a cousin in Reno that was willing to take me in.  So, off to Reno I go to live with a man I had never met. This cousin turned out to be my soulmate in many ways.  We broke all the "rules" and ended up falling in love, but I get ahead of myself.  I stayed with this cousin for about 3 months, but I began having very strong feelings for him and I didn't want to start trouble.  After all, he was married, though not very happily, but none the less married.  I took off, yet again.  This time I hitchhiked through Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico.  I learned about the wind rising with the sun in Zion National Park.  I learned how to keep my hands from freezing by using newspaper from a bum in Wyoming.  I learned how to "read" the intentions of people BEFORE I got in the car with them.  I learned that I really did have a guardian angle looking out for me if I only listened to it.  I wrote in my journal and meditated and wandered for about 3 months until I got lonely for someone, anyone that might call me family.  I went back to Reno to confront my cousin and tell him how I felt about him.  I told him why I had left, he told me he had fallen in love with me also, and wanted me to come back.  He told me he would leave his wife, which he did the next day.  Thus began my training as an adult.

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