Things Haven't Always Been Easy

Life is not easy

Things haven't always been easy. I guess you could say now is an easier time than others, but it's still not an ideal situation for anyone. I've lived this way now for about 2 years, going on 3. I used to be depressed about it, sad… but now I accept it. I kind of like it, the freedom, not answering to anyone. But it's not what I want forever. I left when I was 16, not long after my birthday. I needed out. Needed a change. I couldn't handle my life there anymore. Who knew it wasn’t the easy way. I thought I had it so hard. You live and you learn right? I burnt my bridges, burnt them all the way down to ashes, there is no going back. Whoever coined the phrase “no regrets” didn't do anything stupid in their life, or just had no conscious to make them feel like shit later.

You might wonder where I sleep at night. Well, wherever I can get comfortable and feel safe. Sometimes I make my way into a youth shelter, sometimes I sleep at a friends house, and sometimes I crash at a park. It depends who I am with and what's available that night. A lot of the time I’m either too drunk or high to care, and just end up sleeping wherever I crash.

I have a small group of friends that are trustworthy. The rest of them are horrible people, but they keep me from being lonely, and sometimes that's all I've got. I make my money in a respectable way I guess, I NEVER sell my body. I squeegee or pan handle, but I never use sex to make a dollar. I can't do it, I don't know how people do. Most of the money I make goes to booze or drugs, sometimes food. I haven’t bought new clothes or shoes in years. I only need what I can carry in a backpack, the rest I leave behind.

Music is my life. It makes me happy. Makes me feel safe. There is nothing like putting on a Nirvana CD and just escaping into the music. Thank God I still have my disc man, and I make sure I always have batteries. I don’t have many CDs either, since I follow the whole, whatever fits in the backpack way of life, but I always make sure to have a few with me. I find in life, music is usually a center point for everything. It influences your friends, relationships. Who you hang out with, who you choose to stay away from. It really is a huge part of who a person is.

Tonight I’m hanging out with a few of the guys at Brad’s house. I met Brad when I first started living this lifestyle. He is one of the only people I know who has a home…

I guess I should start somewhere near the beginning, how I got to this point. Where I came from. Why I wish I never came out here in the first place. This part of my life story started when I was just 16 years old… Thought I knew everything, thought I was smarter than everyone. I made stupid decisions, and now I have to live with them forever. It’s just how my path in life was supposed to go I suppose… So let me begin with that fateful night in August, way back in the 90s, when life was a much different time.. Before Facebook, cell phones and the entire digital age mainly. We had pagers, passed handwritten notes and actually had to call each other… Let’s step back to that time… In August 1998…

CHAPTER ONE

I guess if I really thought about things, really deep down, I wouldn’t have made the decision I did. But being 16 years old, and being tired of groundings and trouble, I thought what I was doing was right. I didn’t get along with anyone at home anymore. I figured they were better off without me. I would miss them, but I just didn’t think I could take it anymore. I wrote them all letters, and at 4am, I set out into my new life alone.

I stopped off at a friends. She has left an envelope in her mailbox for me with some quarters for the pay phone, and a couple of bucks for food. I had my backpack with some clothes, my disc man and some CDS. I had no clue where to go. Later in the day I would be meeting some friends downtown, but for now I had to figure out somewhere to stay safe in the middle of the night. I went to the local Tim Hortons, had a coffee and then was lost on what to do. I went back to my friends house, and laid down on the couch on her porch and waited for her to wake up.

Around 8am, I felt someone nudge me. It was her father.

“What are you doing out here?” he said.

I just looked up at him sleepily.

“Come inside,” he said “let’s get you something to eat.”

I went inside. He went into my friend's bedroom.

“Lisa, I found your friend Jess on the porch. Time to get up. Let’s go”

“Ok dad,” Lisa said.

She came out of her room. She looked at me like ‘what are you doing here?’ She sat down at the table with me and we both ate some cereal quietly while her father read the paper.

“I’ll leave you two to talk,” he said. He obviously knew something was up, since I was sleeping on their porch.

“I thought I was going to meet you later on?” Lisa said.

“I didn’t know where to go, it was late, there were a lot of weirdos out there…” I said.

“Well, I’m going to get dressed and we are going to get out of here,” she said. “Before my old man gets too suspicious. We need to get downtown to get you settled.”

The plan was, we were going to go downtown and meet up with some of my friends. One of them was the guy I was dating. He was living in a youth shelter already. Kind of where I got the idea I guess. We were going to meet up with him and a few other people, hang out and then he was going to help me get into the shelter. Seemed like a solid plan at the time anyways.

I was scared, and worried. I was thinking about how leaving would have affected my family. My parents would have been so upset. But I left for a reason, and that’s my own choice. In reality, I made a stupid decision, but at this point in the picture, I thought I was doing what was right for me. And looking back now I know, I was a complete dumbass.

Lisa came downstairs, dressed and ready to go.

“I’m going out,” she yelled to her dad, “I’ll call you later!”

We left her house and walked up the street to catch the bus. This was actually happening. I was leaving my life behind in start of something new. We got on the bus and headed into Downtown Toronto. I had only ever come down here on a school trip once. It was a lot to take in at the moment, but eventually it would just seem like the same old.

It took us about 45 minutes to finally get downtown. We met up with Jacob and a few of his friends, and we went over to College Park to hang out for a while. I waited for my best friend Hannah to meet us there too. Her boyfriend Zack was Jacob’s best friend. That's how I met Jacob. But Zack and I hated each other, for many reasons. Mainly because he was a douche bag to my best friend, and I hated him for it.

We hung out for the better part of the morning at College Park. Lisa had to leave and get back to her house to try and smooth things over with her parents. Hannah and Zack decided to go somewhere else for awhile too. That left me and Jacob. We walked over to Yonge Street to check out the Evergreen. Jacob knew a lot of people there, and we could get something to eat for free. I was really nervous, this was a whole new world to me. We met some random people, I can’t even remember names at this point, but I learned that most people didn’t go by their actual name, they all had ‘street names’. It was for when they were causing trouble or in a situation, people could call out their street names and the police wouldn’t be able to figure out their real identity. Jacob made his rounds with his friends. I sat at the table quietly. I didn’t know anyone… I felt really awkward.

Jacob kept talking to other people and ignoring me. I started to get pissed off. He should have realized that I don’t know anyone, and that I was in a whole new world. I went outside to have a smoke. A guy came up to me and introduced himself. He said his name was Noah. He asked if I wanted to smoke a joint. I said ‘YES, PLEASE’. We went around to the back of the building. He asked me what my story was because he hadn’t seen me around before. So I filled him in.

“What about you?” I asked.

“My dad used to beat me, I dropped out of school, so my mom kicked me out. Pretty common story around here really.” He said. “Are you actually dating that scumbag?”

“Jacob? Yeah….. Why?”

“Well, I’m surprised he has a girlfriend. Usually when he and Brooke break up, he doesn’t commit to anyone else, he just has fuck friends.”

The hair on my neck stood up. What had I gotten myself into…

“Well, I’m not too sure about Brooke, Jacob and I have been dating for about a week… That’s it.”

“Where are you staying Jess?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said, “I guess we are going to try and work that out soon…”

“Well, if you need me, you can find me here… If I’m not here, you can leave me a message on the message board and I will get it” he said.

“Thanks Noah.” I said.

“Jess! Where the hell are you?” I heard Jacob. I guess he finally realized I wasn’t sitting at the table waiting for him anymore. He walked around the corner and saw me with Noah. “What are you doing with this loser?” He asked.

“Brian was very nice to me, and didn’t leave me to sit alone!” I said.

“I’m gonna take off Jess, but remember what I said.” Noah said, “See you Jacob.”

“Noah is a loser,” Jacob said to me after Noah left. I chose to ignore his comment. My mind was racing. I was high as a kite. I never realized how much of a connection Jacob had to Brooke. I thought it was a short relationship. Not an on and off thing. I needed to talk to Hannah. My head was racing. With every action I made that day, I kept feeling worse and worse about my decision to leave…

Jacob and I went back inside. I was starving, and they were serving food. It wasn’t great by all means, but it was 10 cents a meal and I was hungry. Jacob asked me if I wanted to smoke another joint, so I said “yes, of course”.

We went back outside and smoked. We walked over to the park and laid on the grass, looking up at the clouds. Jacob cuddled up to me. “We have to figure out where we are going tonight.” He said. “If we wait too long to call a shelter, we might not get into one together.”

That thought terrified me. I didn’t want to be alone. I started getting tears in my eyes. Jacob looked at me.

“What’s wrong?” He said.

“I don’t want to end up in separate places. I am really scared. I don’t know anyone.”

“Ok, well then let’s go back to the Evergreen, and we will call around and find somewhere to go together. I don’t want to see you cry.”

Jacob leaned over and kissed me. We cuddled up for a few minutes and I started to feel better. He grabbed my hand and pulled me up off the grass and we started to walk back over to the Evergreen. When we got inside, Jacob went over to the phone, and I stood by the wall where the message board was. I saw messages pinned on the board to all different people. Some people had theirs addressed to them by their ‘street names’ instead of their real names. Jacob and Zack had street names.

Jacob hung up the phone and came over to me. “Good news”, he said. “I got us into a shelter together. We have to head over there soon to secure our spots.”

“Ok,” I said, “I am ready to go whenever you are.”

Jacob looked around. He saw no one was looking. “Come here,” he said. He grabbed my hand and led me down to the bathroom in the basement. We went into the bathroom and he locked the door. We started making out. He pushed me up against the wall. He started to undress me. I was really nervous. I was a virgin, and this was already an overwhelming day for me. Needless to say, after our bathroom meeting, I was no longer a virgin, and I felt even worse than I had before. It was lackluster, for lack of a better way to describe it. It was not what I expected. I was very disappointed.

We went back upstairs. “What shelter are we going to?” I asked.

“Touchstone” Jacob said. “I’m just going to tell the guys where we are headed so they can tell Zack and Hannah. We should get over to the shelter now so we don’t miss our spots.”

While Jacob went back into the common room at the Evergreen, I went up to the message board again. I wrote a message for Noah to tell him where I was going. I had a really bad feeling, and thought to myself that I may need all the friends I can get.

Jacob got some bus tickets from the Evergreen so we could head over to the shelter. We jumped on the subway and went about 5 stops to get to where we were going. At least it wasn’t too far from downtown. Once we got off the subway, we took a bus for about 5 minutes. When we got off the bus, we were standing in front of Touchstone. My life was about to change again.

To be continued......