And you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?”
I am a product of my programming.
This is the one where I begin to reveal my childhood traumas.
Trigger warnings and all that – in case you need to, back away now.
1979
My parents separated and then bitterly divorced, and I was living with my mom, by beginning of Grade 1.
That was 1979. I was 6. We were the children of divorce. My mom, the dreaded single working mother. We were the latch-key kids. My mom was a pioneer!
We only rarely saw my father; he was a very busy successful businessman.
He co-owned a company named Hitec Steel Construction Ltd. He built steel structured buildings, worked on Skytrain, the company erected the rollercoaster for EXPO 86 and we got season passes, he worked on Bridges, built major industrial machines, and worked on the massive machinery at the docks around the harbours in Vancouver. My dad was on speed dial for ports like Neptune Terminals and Westshore.
In my twenties, I ran the office for the company, but that’s another story for another day.
This is the one about being baggage.
Dad bought a 1978 Corvette. He would drive it out to pick up my brother and I – on the rare weekends he made available when he wasn’t sailing around the Bahamas or working – or who knows what. We weren’t close in any sense of that word. I vaguely recall living as a family before the divorce. I remember them fighting. I remember my dad moving out to live in a little apartment in Granville Island area, before he bought out my mom and she bought a house in North Delta and he kept the 767 West 28th house in South Cambie.
So for me, I felt like I never had a father around, ever. He was just someone that occasionally showed up.
You understand, there are only two seats in a Corvette. I had to lay down across the luggage area in the back. Literally risking my life in the near hour-long drives between our homes. Wasn’t I cute? That is about 1982-1983.
I think my love of tee-shirts with fun things on them started young. That’s Greg with us.
I was quite literally luggage.
Now let me say, I am 50 now, and mostly healed. I love my father very much, flaws and all. He was just doing what he was programmed to do.
Life is generational.
I have had enough conversations with him, and he sees the past from his own memory, his own mottos, and his choices, and his feelings. He has his own justifications for his existence – same as anyone else.
I forgive him for unknowingly (and even if occasionally it was knowingly) hurting my feelings in my youth. He had his reasons, and I accept them. I have my reasons for what I have done in my life too.
I have reconciled everything with my mother too. I don’t present my past as an excuse.
I present it as character development, since the things we experience as children, typically set the foundational work of our emotional and mental development.
I have had enough therapy in my life to get here.
Literal Baggage.
Cramming myself in that little luggage area (3:25 mark in this video shows inside the Vet) and staring up through the back window as the world went by – I felt like an afterthought.
My big brother (4 years older) was in his glory, he was always riding side kick. Very young children of divorce often assume the blame, assume the fault of the parent leaving – as theirs.
I most certainly did. I believed I was the reason my dad left. I believed if I had been more like my big brother – maybe he would have loved me enough not to shove me in the luggage area.
My dad also had a baby blue station wagon. He drove that until it rusted out in the floor where your feet go. We could lay in the back area and ride along. We went on a family camping trip every summer. I remember most summers it was a 3 hour drive to Kawkawa Lake – just outside Hope, BC. Or to Osoyoos, BC which was a little further east. Then it was 6+ hours drive out to get there from Vancouver.
It wasn’t all bad. Many other people had it worse. I am in no way pretending this was hardship.
My grandparents (my mom’s parents) would let my dad borrow their boat, and often in the Osoyoos days came out in their motorhome – with my younger cousins. My grandparents lived in South Surrey near White Rock in Amble Green in the 80s.
My grandparents raised my younger cousins. But that too is another story.
Vancouver Baby
My parents had bought a home together in 1970 after my brother was born. They owned 767 West 28th Street in Vancouver. My dad kept the home until 2005. So some major parts of my life took place in that South Cambie area of Vancouver.
My grandmother (my dad’s mom) lived a few blocks away at 791 West King Edward and the family owned that house until 1997, after her passing in December 1996.
I lived in that house between 1995 and 1997 with my first husband. But that’s another story.
Years later my dad bought a GMC Jimmy and I remember he had one of the first portable phones in that truck in the 80s. My friends were always in awe of his show of wealth. Vanity pieces. My dad was a techie type – in his first job before he owned his company – he worked for Brittain Steel.
My dad wrote a manual for the steel industry – using Wang computers. So naturally in the 1980s we as kids, got hand-me down computers from his company whenever they upgraded theirs. We always were given presents like Nintendo, a VHS VCR and a microwave and any latest cool tech for presents. Sure it was cool – but having a dad around that actually spent time with us, had a connection with us, would have been cooler.
Money and things, don’t replace the time spent together building a relationship.
Sure the pictures make it seem like it was amazing. A swimming pool. Sailing vacations. A giant Smurf. Race tracks. Video games. Windsurf boards. The best money could buy.
But those photographs are of those very rare moments we actually saw my father. He loved taking pictures to remember everything. So I have a lot of photographs of times with him, but very little of the times with my mom. It skews the perspective.
And again, life wasn’t hard by any means – we didn’t have much at mom’s but when dad came around we were given gifts as a means of making up for the missed time together.
And eventually, I came to totally resent the money and things. I loathe the idea of being bought.
My mom worked hard, worked full time and hardly got any child support. My dad made sure of that.
We wore hand-me-down clothing mostly. Aside from occasionally getting my grandma to tailor us a one-of-a-kind knock-off. Reality was, we weren’t wealthy.
My dad was. My grandparents were. But us 3 – we were the cast offs, the shame of the family. All because my mother decided she would rather be a divorced single mother instead of staying with my father and his cheating, and his fucking sexist bullshit. Things I would come to learn about in my teenage angst years.
Parenting 101
My dad was a busy man, and hardly came around, often cancelled weekends due to emergencies his company had to rush to repair. My dad says my mom often didn’t inform him of important events, but I remember his phone calls – when he was cancelling on us. I remember the disappointment as a child. As we got older, I think eventually, we all just assumed there was no point inviting him to school plays and the like, because he most likely wouldn’t make it anyway.
If he had girlfriends, we never met them or saw them. He became a stranger, that we saw on Holidays or special occasions, when he would swoop in like some saviour with grand gifts.
My mom moved on rather quickly after the divorce – her parents lived on Trites Road over looking the valley and Mud Bay in 1979. She met a Hungarian widow that lived on the street. We quickly became a blended family, with his 3 daughters (Lisa, June and Amanda) and mom and him were engaged to marry.
The Mount St. Helens major eruption of May 18, 1980 happened while we were in that Trites Road home.
My mom still owed her house in North Delta, and we lived there but we always spent a lot of time at Trites Road. The family had booked a family vacation to the Hawaiian Islands for after the wedding.
Then, quite literally with only a week or two before the wedding day on August 24, 1981, Bronco Horvath was riding his bicycle up the hillside on King George when he was run over by a drunk driver and died from the impact. His daughter’s became orphans. I recall my mom keeping in touch as best as she could.
Years later in 1991, his youngest daughter Amanda died in a car accident.
My mom was devastated after Bronco‘s death – as anyone would be.
I remember being too young (I was only 8) to fully grasp the concept of death, and one day later on, at school we watched the movie Old Yeller – in case you don’t know it’s a story about a dog, and the dog had to be killed – I remember it hit me. I sobbed uncontrollably for the rest of that day.
By the early 80s my brother was in football. He was the star player. The quarterback. Winning the trophies. I felt like I was just dragged around like baggage to everything. My mom started hanging with the football parents, lots of parties, loads of booze.
She was broken, and hurting. I remember her passed out around the toilet and me putting a blanket over her. And it was then I realized, even if I didn’t quite understand it, that I was on my own.
Mom dated and I think even considered marrying this longshoremen named Norm. Then that didn’t pan out, and she was working at what is essentially AA by that point. She met a “recovered” drunk named Larry. He moved into the house. Lived in the basement rec room area. Which thinking on it now was utterly bizarre. There was a lock on the door. To speak to my mom we would need to knock on the door.
I remember coming home from school – we had a key to let ourselves in while she was at work – and finding him passed out cold, drunk. By then my big brother was always off with friends or some sport. I would call my mom and she would tell me how to pour out the booze. Larry always got angry at me for it, but I was just following her orders. One time I came home to find a sofa chair smouldering in the carport. He had passed out drunk with a lit cigarette. One time my mom had me help her pull out parts of his car so he wouldn’t drive drunk.
Yeah. My life was so privileged.
I wasn’t even a teenager yet. I would snag cigarettes from her purse. I would snag money. I would shoplift. My best friend C.M. and I were at the local Kmart one day when the store security was watching us like hawks. I warned my best friend not to snag anything, but she did. A pack of fucking Halls. Cough candies. These big security guys grabbed us and hauled us into the back rooms and threatened us with all sorts of horror stories, and called our parents. I hadn’t stole anything – that day – and I was defiant. It pissed them off. I pissed off everyone. They kept asking why I wasn’t crying.
My mom and Larry show up. My mom didn’t say anything. Larry on the other hand called me all sorts of wonderful shit, while she just sat in the passenger seat on the ride home – just staring out the window. I hated her in that moment. Some time after that my mom broke up with Larry. He moved out. I think he died alone in a hotel room or something years later. There isn’t one photograph of him in this giant box of pictures. Years of him, and not one photo.
I frankly didn’t give a shit about my mom or dad by that point – I felt they didn’t give a shit about me either given the circumstances. I was 12.
Black and Cold
At 13 I began stealing alcohol. I remember at Halloween time, going with my other best friend W.E. to a house part at this run down farmhouse on Scott Road. It was all old farm land back then in 1986.
I drank the vodka we swiped, just straight. I was running in the long grass in the field and tripped and fell. W.E. tried to get me to stand up – but I told her to leave me there to die. I was done.
My older brother was driving by this point and I remember him arriving. W.E. had called my mom to ask for help. She couldn’t call hers or she’d get whooped. Her mom was Venezuelan, and that slipper whopping was legit. I loved her mom though.
So my big brother – the endless hero – carried me out of the field and drove us home. My mom put me in a hot bath and lectured me. I honestly just didn’t believe she cared.
Then my troubled teen years came along. I felt utterly unloved. And that summer of 1987, at the age of 14 – while on one of those obligatory camping trips with my dad to Kawkawa Lake – I stupidly naively lost my virginity.
Or was it Rape?
I didn’t know anything about sex. Not really. Oh sex in the most basic of ways, was taught in school but not really. I had never kissed anyone or had any boy interested in me like that. He liked C.M. first, but she was a year younger and not at all interested, and so he turned his sights to me. I thought he liked me. I didn’t know what it meant to have sex. And he convinced me to let him insert his penis in me. While we were in our tent. And C.M. was literally across from us with headphones on. I had zero idea what any of it meant – aside from it meant this older boy was paying me attention.
It hurt like hell, I screamed, like loudly screamed in pain. Yet no one noticed or they ignored my pain, and it was over so quickly. I think he realized at the scream that I was a virgin, like I had said and he stopped immediately.
I bled all the next day. The girl that my brother met that trip, and ended up dating for a spell after, laughed at me, and pointed out the blood. She said, “Someone lost their cherry!”
Nothing Like The First Time
I wish my first time had been different. I wish it had meant something but it wasn’t and it didn’t. I can’t change that, it happened the way it happened.
It also changed the path of my life. I was 14. I was just stupid kid.
I thought the older boy liked me. Probably thought it was love even. In my 14 year old head, it had to mean more than anything else in the world. But it didn’t, he just wanted to fuck anyone he could.
He lived on Vancouver Island, and we wrote to one another letters and phoned one another. I don’t know why. Clearly he just kept it up for my sake.
He came to town for a rock concert. He was older. He was staying at his aunt’s apartment in Vancouver and C.M. and I road the buses to visit him. You see, he had wanted C.M. at first, and I guess he still did.
He literally hid his aunt’s cat in a closet and pretended it had escaped into the hallways.
We all had to go searching for it. I found it in the closet. It was meowing. As I wandered the halls looking for him, I hear him talking to C.M. So I stopped to listen to their whispers. He was trying to convince her to kiss him and as I came around the corner he tried to.
I was a sobbing mess. I cried, for what felt like forever.
I ran down to the lobby and slumped down in tears. I remember someone that lived in the building came in and asked if I was okay. Then explained they were a photographer and asked to take my photograph. So someone out there may very well have a photograph of me from that moment of my life.
Maybe my misery is their work of art.
By the fall of 1987 – at 14 I was partying at Changes the Young Adult Night Club. I was drinking.
By the beginning of 1988 at 15 – I was smoking pot. I even started doing acid that year at 15.
I often thought of killing myself. I knew, I didn’t want to actually die. But I thought about it a lot. Life seemed like it was only suffering and pain. My mom worked for the government in Fraser Mental Health by then, she was dating a co-worker for a bit, so I asked for therapy and they stuck me in a group.
I remember one assignment was to use two words.
My two words for the world and how I felt were black and cold.
The road of my self destruction was just starting. The road to my therapy and healing ran parallel in this weird wonderful dance.
Daddy Issues – Duh.
People like to try to insult me by suggesting I have daddy issues. Duh. Like I knew that at 14, in therapy. I know my programming better than some loser that thinks suggesting “daddy issues” is gonna “hurt” my feelings.
By my teenage years, I felt like my dad was just this unknown judgemental person that I was obligated to spend time with. It was a form of hell for me to go to his place and I eventually avoided it if I could.
Eventually the therapist realized group setting wasn’t working and started me on one-on-one counselling. It wasn’t a mental disorder. I wasn’t crazy. I didn’t need to be drugged for any diagnoses. My short life, and the events thereof, had fucked me up. The therapist suggested getting my dad in sessions and I said no way. My mom came to a few, but eventually I decided it was a waste of time.
There were too many things I didn’t want to dig up in my memories.
Things from my childhood, from the neighbourhood, that I wouldn’t face until much much later in my life. Things I discovered, that turned out, I was not the only kid on our block to experience.
But that’s another story.
By 15 – I was a goth. Or alternative looking. I wore black and dressed in weird mostly black clothing. I listened to ‘weird’ music. My dad could NOT relate at all. In fact he refused to be seen in public with me looking like I did.
Let that last line sink in. My father refused to be seen in public with me.
My dad was ashamed of my appearance and refused to go out in public with me if I dressed the way I preferred. Even when I attempted to dress down, and look more “normal” it wasn’t good enough. I was never good enough for a man I hardly ever saw and felt no connection to – but was my dad.
I felt totally disconnected from my own mother and resented her choices in life. By then she had little control over me and I didn’t respect her at all. Why would I?
My big brother seemed the perfect child and everything he did everyone seemed to love and praise. I didn’t know how to even relate to him anymore.
And I just hated the world.
And I wanted it to burn.
I think a little bit of 15 year old me still lives inside me, wanting to see the world burn. Humanity. What a plague.
I don’t think those thoughts will ever go away.
How did I get here? Well, that was just the beginning.
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again, after the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground
… You may ask yourself, “What is that beautiful house?“
You may ask yourself, “Where does that highway go to?“
And you may ask yourself, “Am I right, am I wrong?“
And you may say to yourself, “My God, what have I done?“
Uploaded July 13th, 2024