Homely & Homeless

Okay, I’m going to write about a time in my life that is very painful to remember, but since I brought it up last night in my diary, I’ve decided that I need to get the whole story out.

When I was 18, I moved away from a VERY abusive home (and, again, that is a story for another time). I didn’t go very far, and I didn’t go very high. I went to a program called Job Corps that was not even 30 minutes away from my parent’s house. I felt AWESOME being away from home, but also FRIGHTENED, because I had led a VERY sheltered life. On retrospect, the program was NOT good for me, and the people that I met were NOT good for me, but I had no idea of that at the time.

I really got very little out of the program, it was more like a way-station before I really got on the train, you know what I mean? But, again, my abused teenage mind thought of it as FREEDOM. Blah.

Anyway, one of the first people that I met was a guy named Victor. He seemed to understand my emotional needs, and liked me despite of them. We started going out immediately, and just as immediately he started pressuring me to sleep with him. Now, in a very real sense of the word, I was a virgin, but technically I was not (because of my step-father), so I used this as a barrier to keep him (Victor) at bay. For all the good it did me. The first time we had sex, I had a flashback that I couldn’t be "awoken" out of, so I was put in a van, trussed up like a turkey (because I guess I was being violent), and taken to the emergency room. The doctor that treated me also happened to be my mother and step-father’s doctor, and when I told her about my step-father’s abuse, she played it down and acted like I was a liar.

So, here I am going to Job Corps, away from my parents (except on the weekends), lost somewhere in my own mind, and trying to fend off my new boyfriend, who had octopus hands and a very big sex-drive. Truth be told, I HATED having sex, it hurt like hell, and I couldn’t justify it to myself. But I wanted him to love me, so I didn’t resist.

Time goes on….about 6 months, and I decide that I hate myself, I hate my parents, I hate my boyfriend, and I hate my life. I take an overdose of the Inderal that I had been taking since I was 14 for a heart murmur. I tell Victor, who in turn tells one of the RAs, and I am once again rushed to the hospital. My stomach is pumped out and I am made to drink that charcoal substance that makes you shit. A psychiatrist comes in the next day to talk to me. Decides that I did NOT try to commit suicide, I was just "crying out for help". My mother comes to visit me, asks me "why do you do these things to me?" and tells me that she cannot see me anymore if I am going to go on hurting her like this.

A few days later, I am out of the hospital, but Job Corps won’t let me come back, because of the overdose, and Mom won’t let me come home, because she knows that I told Victor about being abused. Dilemma. Where the hell am I going to go?

I ran away. Victor came with me. No money, no jobs, no food, no shelter, boy, were we just doing great? We walked all over Bangor, and then finally found the Homeless Shelter. We told the people that we were married, so they would let us share a room. The first night there were only two single beds, so we had to sleep apart. I was scared. I was over-whelmed. I was living in a haze. From the second night on, they let us share a bed, but I came to regret that. All this dude wanted was sex, sex, sex.

We spent our nights at the shelter, and our days wandering around the town, talking about what we wanted to do in the future. To this day, the post office in downtown Bangor brings back memories of this time. Eventually we went to DHS and applied for assistance and food stamps, and help to get an apartment. Nothing came of any of that, and we finally decided that we were being juvenile, and went back to Job Corps.

Victor was welcomed back. I was not. The program had a psychiatrist, and I was ordered to see him and let him decide if I should stay or not. After I told him my story, he said that I "was safer at Job Corps than I was at home", so he decided to let me stay.

So, now we are just doing our courses, and living day to day. Victor finishes his culinary arts course, and decides that he wants to go home (to Poland Springs). His father comes to pick him up (the man is 72 years old when I meet him, but Victor’s mother refused to come, so I never met the woman).

Life is lonely without Victor, I am just dragging my ass along and not really paying attention to anything that is going on around me. Finally, I decide that I am done with the program, and ask Mom if I can come home until I figure out what I want to do? She agrees, but tells me that I have to pay rent and I am NOT to fight with my step-father. Pfft.

Victor comes up and picks up me and my junk and take me back to Mom’s house. My room is the little porch area, and I have to sleep on the floor. Eventually, I find a job in a near-by town, and rent a room from a man who lives in town, and Victor comes up to live with me. Two months later we got married, four months later he left for the Marines, and six or seven months later he told me that he wanted a divorce.

End of this story….