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I recently received an email that deals with issues of age, respect and elder status.

The person who wrote it asked me to consider what I was doing at specific ages of my life, while they, 5 years older, were busy building relationships and community.

“Where were you and what were you doing in the time I have tended those relationships?”

They clearly weren’t aware of what kind of trauma they were bringing up for me.
I don’t blame them, but I have been affected deeply by it.
So I wrote a poem

• Trigger warning of Emotional, physical and sexual abuse, racism, depression and drug and alcohol addiction

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I was 12

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One day during lunch, I mustered up the courage,
and told my first crush how I felt.
After school 3 girls followed me through the field.
They pushed me down and kicked me in the gut,
Over and over.
I couldn’t breathe.
My crush watched.

After that my mom took me out of public school,
and I was home schooled by her

My life at home started getting more abusive.
I witnessed my mother being beaten,
daily,
by my step dad.

I watched my 4 year old sister run in front of a cocked fist,
while her mommy lay on the floor with a swollen, bloody face.
To protect her.

He moved out,
but frequently stopped by.
After a 911 call,
because mom was threatened with a knife,
he was ordered a restraining order.

The morning after valentine’s day 2004,
my two sisters, our momma and I snuggled in bed.
Safe
Nestled close
Arguing for who got to lay right next to her
Happy

A knock on the door, and then a bang bang.
Social Services and a couple police officers.
Talking turned into yelling,
Mommy was crying.
They came into the room and grabbed us,
Forcefully.
The three of us, carried to their car.
No one explained what was going on.

My sisters and I were taken away
and placed into foster care,
because of an anonymous phone call
of unsafe living conditions.

The system is corrupt.

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I was 13

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In and out of different foster homes,
my life was flashing before me.
I was unable to do anything.
Sexually harassed by foster brothers.
Mistreated
Made to feel like an object, and an outcast.
I started to forget what family felt like.
I learnt what it felt like to be unloved,
uncared for, and
used.

Helpless.

My dad requested to adopt me,
and immediately his request was granted.
I had barely spoken to him growing up,
He wasn’t there.

He chased my mom around the kitchen table,
while she was holding just born me,
With a gun.
Threatening that he would kill himself
If she left him.

He locked himself in the bathroom
and shot himself in the stomach.
Pinched skin, two holes.
I’ve seen the scars.

He left her the day after my first birthday,
He found someone else.
Dropped her and I off on the side of the street with a bag of salt,
because she bought it with her own money.
She had no where to go,
He didn’t care.

But he was a paramedic and an auxiliary cop now.
He was trustworthy. Right?

I was separated from my little sisters.
He put me in christian private school without my consent.
Thinking that bullies didn’t exist there,
He was wrong.

One day he threw a phone book at my head,
because he was mad at someone else.

I forgot to do the dishes one day,
he put his hand around my neck and lifted me off the ground.
Pinned against the wall,
he screamed so loud my ear drums rang.
My face was covered in his spit,
and his hate.

When my report card came in my very first B wasn’t enough.

Oh but he gave me a roof over my head, food on my plate.
I owed everything to him.

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I was 15

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After 4 years my mother won the court case,
we all returned home.

Shortly after,
it was broken into.
We came home to find the window wide open,
Nothing missing.

I remember one day clearly,
mom wanted to go on a road trip.
As she was rushing us out the door,
I ran back inside to grab something from my room.
I saw a pair of legs under my bed.

She saw them too.

A breached restraining order,
being followed in grocery stores,
aggressive phone calls and threats.
A constant fear, my mom, sold her house and we fled the city.

We lived in a motel for 8 months.
I watched my moms depression overwhelm her,
I watched her drug and alcohol addiction form and consume.
She ran out of money,
we ran out of food.
She worked for the motel keeper
in order for us to have a place to stay.

He tried f*****g her
2 years later that same motel keeper came into my room
while I was staying, studying for school.
He tried f*****g me too.

After one week I dropped out of grade 8,
because I had to make sure my sisters were getting to school.
Their lives were put first.
I walked them to school every morning,
and picked them up.
On foot.

I bused to the food bank,
I picked up boxes of food,
I asked for rides home from the staff,
Every second week,
So that we could eat.
One night I was touched by one of the men,
mom invited into her home.
He brought alcohol,
among other things

Sleeping soundly,
woken up to fingers exploring.
Frozen in fear.

I stayed up countless nights making sure my sisters were safe.
That nothing bad would happen to them.
That no one would touch them

And at 16

I punched a man, for the first time,
who called my 8 year old sister a n****r.
So hard my hand hurt for days.

I held my 12 year old sister
as she cried to me,
because she was called ugly on social media,
by kids from her school.

Younger boys trying to use sweet words to make
my little sisters trust them.
Older men catcalling,
as they walked out of the ice cream shop.

The same men that have controlled, and manipulated our mother,
and fed her addiction.
The addiction that put her in her grave.

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Don’t devalue my experience
for age is nothing but a number