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I remember the morning everything changed, I remember getting up in the cold room and walking out to the kitchen to make breakfast, I remember seeing mum sitting there with her mum. Her mother had her arm on my  mums back and mum was just staring out the window. I remember thinking okay that’s a bit strange but also I was hungry so I didn’t think to much about it. Then mum opened her mouth and said she needed to tell me something. I was a little scared at this point because there were tears running down her face and she looked so white. Like a ghost. She told me that dad had just passed away. That he was sick and didn’t make it. She broke down at this point and all of a sudden I wasn’t hungry anymore. I felt sick, what did she mean? I had only just seen him recently and he seemed fine? Sure he seemed a little lonely but he had just come and seen us the day before to say goodbye ( which I didn’t think anything of at the time) was only just out the back of his house digging a trench a week ago, he had only just taken us for lunch at McDonalds. What did she mean he had died? I felt overwhelmed with shock, I didn’t believe it. No way, dad didn’t die, he couldn’t have. Mum hugged me which I always hated. Hugging made me feel awkward. But this was a big hug, almost confirming that dad had died to me. I walked back to my room nd sat on the bed, staring at the white walls and trying to come to terms with what just happened. I was only 11, dad wasn’t supposed to die yet. We were supposed to have many more years, he was my person, my favorite parent you could say, He cant be gone, he just cant.

But he was, as the other children woke up they were told the same thing until the whole family was quiet, shocked by the news, the house felt so much colder now. My older siblings were more vocal about there pain, they cried and hugged and grieved together, but me and my brother went and sat in our rooms. I didn’t really feel anything, I didn’t feel sad, I didn’t cry, I didn’t want to be around my other siblings, I just wanted to be alone.

Family started to show up at the house later that day, mums sisters showed up one by one wanting to hug us all which I hated. Everyone was just crying everywhere I looked , I felt like maybe I should cry to, so I went to me room and tried to force myself to cry. But nothing come out. What was wrong with me?! My dad just died crying should be happening automatically and I cant even force it to happen. I left my room to an amazing smell filling the house, someone had come over and started cooking chow Mein for us in the kitchen, the smell was so inviting and warm, it felt like a warm hug, but not the physical kind of hug because I hated them, it was more of a mental hug. There’s nothing like a big warm fresh bowel of food to cheer everyone up right? But no one really ate except me and my brother. We were so young we weren’t physically and mentally capable of processing what had happened like the others, we kind of just went about our days. I don’t know if my brother cried behind closed doors or if he just sat on his bed staring at the white walls like I did.

And the funeral, well that was something else. I had never been to one before and it was the first time I was in a room full of complete sadness, there was pain in eyes everywhere I looked. People were crying, some wore sunglasses to hide it but it was obvious behind those shades that there were tears. I didn’t cry though, I was still in shock especially from the viewing we had a few days before. I literally stood in a room and stared at the corpse of what used to be my father and it was traumatizing. He was there but he wasn’t. And after that I never wanted to see a dead person ever again.

As the days went on more family and friends would show up with food or gifts and even more hugs. There was sadness everywhere. I was sitting in my room one day and my aunty come in, she tried talking to me about it all but I didn’t have much to say other then I wanted to paint. I loved painting and for me at that time it was a way of dealing with it all, I started painting dads name amongst a sunset and my aunty just sat and watched me. It was a nice moment for me. It was a step forward with the grieving process. But I still hadn’t cried, and I wondered if I ever would. One of the ladies mum worked with was married to a big shot doctor, and they had gifted us with a week away in Sunraysia resort in Mildura. We all went and spent the week in the warm sun, swimming, playing golf, watching shitty tv, it was something nice to come from a shitty situation. The days seemed like they were starting to get a little easier for mum and the others, I still felt sick every time I thought about dad and the fact I wasn’t going to see him again. But life went on, we all went back to school and we all started to grow up without dad being there to see ny of it. His birthday would arrive and mum would ask if we wanted to have a special tea for him, which was just takeout from somewhere but it was nice to do something to remember him by. We did this for a few years until we just stopped one year, we stopped celebrating him and we stopped talking about him, I remember still feeling so sick about it all, I couldn’t shake this feeling inside me and I think by not getting professional help I wasn’t ever really given the tools to grieve the way I needed to, we should’ve seen a counsellor, mum should have. She started drinking a lot, I think it was her way of self medicating, but it made her really angry at times, sometimes I just felt like a punching bag.

As the years continued on dad became a distant memory we never spoke of, it was like we couldn’t anymore, it was just to hard. But I thought I was doing okay. I would make jokes about his death in school which is really messed up to think of now but at the time I think it was a cry for help. My school ended up having a meeting with myself and the school counsellor to discuss the issue and how they could help. But I had shut down from it all by now, it had been so long where we just pretended he didn’t exist anymore, like the pain didn’t exist anymore. So I just said I was fine and didn’t need any help. But God knows I did. I needed professional help but since I hadn’t gotten it for so long it had become normal to me to feel this emptiness, to feel so cold where you could joke about your dads death? Yup, that was me.

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One night my best friend was sleeping over and she had been talking to a guy that lived down the road and we ended up sneaking out of my place to see him and his friend, which was actually my friends brother, we were all standing around chatting when the guy my friend was seeing started to joke around, he was so drunk that even when the jokes were shitty they were still hilarious because he was so drunk he said it in a way that just made you laugh. God I loved that night, up until he let out a simple sentence that changed my life forever. All of a sudden he mentioned my dads death and how he killed himself. I just froze. I said what, and my friend responded with ‘’you weren’t supposed to mention it she doesn’t know’’. And I said ‘’no what?’’ And by then it had gone so far there was no turning back. For so long I thought dad had died because he was sick because that’s what I was told by mum. I had assumed that he had gotten sick and just passed away due to cancer or something like that. But they ended up telling me the truth about how dad died and I will never forget that moment as much as iv always wanted to. I couldn’t move, i felt sick and upset and very angry at mum. I was angry that she hadn’t sat me down and told me the truth about it. I was angry that for so long she allowed me to think that this world took him from us, but now I knew he chose to leave and that broke my heart. How could he want that? How could anyone want that, I felt like shit most of the time but I was dealing with it in my own way, So why couldn’t he have just dealt with it like I did? The night had been ruined by that point. The guys ending up leaving and we went back inside and me and my friend chatted about it and she told me exactly what she had been told, I shut down for the rest of the night. All I wanted to do was go and yell at mum but I was to heartbroken to move. How long was this going to go on for? Was she ever intending on telling me the truth? Yes I understand that he obviously was sick but she should’ve told me the whole truth, someone should’ve. I shouldn’t have had to find out by a drunk friend accidentally blurting it out 3 years later.

I struggled to sleep that night, I couldn’t get it out of my head what had just happened and when i saw mum I was instantly furious, I never said anything to her though, but now I felt even worse then I did before. And I needed to find a new way to deal with things because I couldn’t cope with the amount of pain that was inside me. I needed to escape it all like he did.

By the age of 16 i had been introduced to alcohol and it had become something i used to escape how shit i felt all the time, for a moment alcohol seemed to make all those shitty feelings go away, it would make me feel good for a little while before everything come crashing down and I would loose it, i would cry and become an absolute drunken mess, the kind you see at a party and think I'm glad that isn’t me. Well it was me and because alcohol brought me a brief moment of happiness I continued to do it, despite the absolute mess I would become after, that brief moment was a high for me that I continued to chase. My friends would always end up in the crossfire of it all and they would always have to end up taking care of me because when your that drunk you cant take care of yourself.

I would take a bottle of vodka to a party and by the end of it 90% of the bottle was gone and what do you know, there’s me crying in a corner to my friend again. Sorry guys!! It was like I was mimicking the behavior of my mum, she had become such a big drinker, she would drink every night, and nearly every day she would come home with a wine casket and would just drink, I’m pretty sure the only meal she ate was dinner, the rest of her diet was just wine. And I had started to do the same. Little did I realize I was only hurting myself more by doing this but I think also when I was that drunk I could cry, and I would cry over and over and I would feel everything. It allowed me to be so emotional that I would start grieving and I think because I hadn’t ever really done that in the first place that it was a way of me getting it finally out, in the worst way possible though. I cant recall a drunken night where I didn’t get emotional. It was a toxic cycle of briefly feeling good and then feeling everything all at once and exploding. But I continued to do it for years and no one really knew what to do about it, christ I didn’t even no, all I knew was that I wanted to be drunk all the time. Half of the time we would have a girls night intending on hitting the pubs and I would hit the alcohol so hard that I would never make it out. Someone would have to drive me home while I was crying in the back, I remember getting home one night and just crying in the shower and mum kept asking me what was wrong and I just wanted her to go away so she called my sister for advice as she didn’t no what to do, my sister ended up coming over in an attempt to try and calm me down, and I think it did, I’m not sure if it did because of her presence or if I had just used up all my tears and finally got to the point where all I needed was bed. Who knows.

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Amongst all the alcohol ii had started to find attraction to men, especially older ones. I had missed having a relationship with my father and so seeked out connection from other males to make up for what I had missed out on, feeling wanted by a male made me feel really good. It was like another high for me. And when you feel low most of the time you’ll do anything to feel that kind of high. And for me alcohol and men did that, they were able to make me feel really good, they were also able to make me feel really bad. But the point was that I was actually feeling things, which was something I was unable to do on my own. I was self-medicating between the grog and the boys. It was a horrible way of dealing with things but It was my go to for years, for years I drank myself silly and slept around constantly chasing that high. I didn’t care what they guys actually thought about me, as long as they wanted to sleep with me I knew they wanted me, and I knew I would feel that high that I was craving to feel again, it was a messed up way of thinking. But hey, if you cant tell by now  I was pretty messed up!

After a while I started talking to a guy who really grabbed my attention, it was the first time I had started to want something with a male other then jut sex. I started talking to him regularly and I started to realize that it made me feel really good as well,  so I continued to pursue this connection and I ended up falling HARD! I’m talking obsessed, I thought this guy was everything, he gave me butterflies he made me feel really wanted and I hadn’t even slept with him yet! I think that was a bit of a breakthrough for me, for so long things had gone a certain way but this guy really changed things for me, I started to feel a little better about myself ,he made me feel so loved, at least he did for a while before it all come crashing down. Surprise surprise! And it was all on my end as well. I fucked up, in the process of talking to this guy I had started talking to another guy as well, he also made me feel really good. So it was hard to choose which one to pick, So now I have two guys who make me feel amazing, why have one when you can have two right? Wrong, That was a big mistake, both guys ended up finding out about each other and in the end neither of them wanted me anymore. Had I just self sabotaged myself without even realizing? Did I do it because I was more worried about how they made me feel over anything else? Or was I worried they would leave me in the end like dad did so I had to do something to jeopardize it before they could. The truth is all those reasons were why. And low and behold I was alone again, back to feeling empty and cold,, so what did I do? You guessed it, I started sleeping with other men again, and I hit the alcohol pretty hard, it was how I knew to turn a bad feeling into a good one. I ended up sleeping with one of those guys I liked as well, it wasn’t an emotional connection that made it happen though, he didn’t want me like that anymore, he just wanted to sleep with me now, and he did. But after that happened I didn’t hear from him again. I was devastated by what I did, I cried for weeks wondering how I could ruin something so good for myself, I ended up just telling myself that I deserved  it. And I believed it, I was a mess, how could anyone love someone who doesn’t even love themselves. So I hit the alcohol super hard and for a little while it helped until I got to drunk and que tears and emotional wreck. Looking back I probably should’ve stayed away from alcohol  especially at that point in time but I chased the brief feeling of happiness it gave me, like I said when you feel like shit all the time you’ll do anything to feel better even if its short lived.

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So as time went on I like to think I moved on, but truth is I didn’t. Not from one of the guys anyway, I forgot about one of the guys but this other one, Jesus I  just couldn’t get him out of my head no matter how much I drank and how many men I slept with, he was always in my head. I don’t know if its because he was at the same campus I was at school so I saw him regularly and it killed me, or if I just realized that he was the one I should’ve chosen. I just wanted him to want me again, but I pretended like I didn’t care and I forced myself not to look at him whenever he walked past. Even though all I wanted was to look at him and to see him looking back at me. And he did look at me, but it was only to tease me now, his friends would always yell out things to me that weren’t nice to hear, and he would go along with it to. I guess that was his way of dealing with heartbreak. How could I judge him though ? God knows I deserved it.

The teasing went on for a long time, and in the end I learned to appreciate it because it was effort he was putting towards me, even if it was only horrible things being said he must’ve still cared? Why bother otherwise, that’s what I used to tell myself anyway , it was still a connection with him so I learnt to look forward to those brief moments. After a few more months he started dating another girl in my year level, which meant I got to see him even more now which I loved but also hated because it broke my heart seeing him with another girl. But I did what I do best, I pretended I didn’t care and I would keep my head down when walking past them in the corridor. The only positive to come from that situation was that the teasing had stopped now, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t miss it because I did. It was the only string that was left that tied us together and now it had been cut and I had really lost him now. But he deserved to be happy and I didn’t. And I thought I had finally moved on until I was invited to a party his new girlfriend was having. And you bet I took a whole bottle of straight vodka to that party and I drank 90% of it straight out of that bottle. It’s the only way I could cope with the pain of seeing them together outside of school. And I was fine most of the night until I had drank to much. And I exploded with tears, my friends ended up finding me in a corner crying and yelling to be left alone, it was super embarrassing but I was lucky to have some great friends who got me out of there and organized a ride to get us all home. I was the most wasted I had been in a long time. Vodka used to be my go to drink but after that night I couldn’t stand the sight of it, and I never drank straight vodka ever again. I also never got invited to any more of her parties again.

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Soon enough I was in my final years of school and was now at the new campus for the year 11’s and 12’s. Which meant I hardly saw this guy anymore, and as time went on I wont say I ever really forgot about him but I had moved on sort of, I was more focused on hanging out with my friends and getting drunk, I was also attracted to a bunch of new guys now to which took up most of my attention, I never pursued any of them though, I think I was to afraid of the same thing happening again so I just admired from a distance now.

One night a girl from my year level was having a party and there were heaps of people there. A bunch of us ended up taking tents to crash there and while I was admiring my friends dad who was an absolute dilf who I couldn’t take my eyes off, I got a message from that guy. I was shocked and almost instantly I got butterflies. I didn’t open the message for a while because I was a little scared of what it would say. I finally opened it and he had somehow knew we were at that party. Turns out he was just around the corner having drinks with his friends. We ended up talking backwards and forwards and he asked to meet up. And of course I obliged. Some of my mates went with me to his friends house and it was a pretty good vibe there, we ended up going out to a caravan and we slept together and it was the most amazing thing, I don’t know if the sex was really that great or if it just was because it was with him. I didn’t care, I just enjoyed every moment of it. He was finally mine again. Even if it was only for one night. “

Over the next few weeks you can bet the teasing started again, but I loved it. It reminded me of that special night and I held onto that for as long as I could before eventually that high ended. Eventually that night become a distant memory and  so did the guy. Although there was the occasional tease when I crossed paths with him and his friends, but that is where it ended. There were no more messages or spontaneous nights, we just went our own ways. And eventually I started to feel like crap again, sleeping with that  guy made me realize what I had lost and reminded me of what I had stuffed up and that made me sad. It made me remember how I deserved it all and how I deserved to be used by now both the guys.  I would sit in my room playing sad songs and I would cry, yup i could finally cry and now that I could I did it all the time, I was alone all over again, even though I was living in a house with mum and my brother I was still alone. Mum was rarely present and when she was she was just drunk and angry, and my brother just spent most of his time in his room playing xbox. The house was always quiet and cold, not physically but mentally. I couldn’t talk to mum about it, we never talked about anything, if I'm being honest I used to avoid her because she scared me. Most of the time she only spoke to me to ask me to put veggies on for dinner or to yell at me over something I had done or said. So I just spent most of my time in my room. It was my safe place away from everything. It was my safe place away from her.

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Mum and I rarely got long, she would get angry and I would fight back, I was the “wild child “according to her. I would spend most of my weekends at a friends getting drunk as I hated being home, the only good thing I had there were my xbox and the animals. I spent most of my time at home outside avoiding everyone but the pets, they were my best friends. I would take my horse for rides down the road at sunset and I would feel the cool breeze blowing on my face and it was welcoming . It occupied my mind away from all the sadness. My horse was my best friend, he and I were bonded and it was the longest relationship I had with a male. After an argument with mum I would go for a ride or simply sit and talk to my horse, but he gave me a way of getting things out instead of bottling them up. And I was so thankful for him in my life.

Mum and I continued to argue and at times I would go and stay at a friends for a few nights, but eventually I would go back home until one night I did something that would lead to me leaving home and never returning.

One night me and some friends were having some drinks at my sisters house, she had allowed us to drink there while we were still underage and we drank and played music and chatted through the night. We decided to head down the street to a food place that was always open for the drunks after they left the night club. People would stand around eating kebabs chatting before they went home, so we decided we cant go out so lets go hang at that place and hopefully meet some guys. And we did. My friends were talking to some other guys and I was fond of an older man that was there , we ended up chatting and he had told me that he was a police officer, I already thought he was cute but now I was really interested. I had always had a thing for older men and now I know that its because I lacked a man in my life so I would seek out older men to give me what I had lost, but at the time I was 17 and didn’t know any better. We continued to chat for nearly 20 mins and he told me he was single and gave me his number before he offered to give me and my friends a ride home. We were so happy we didn’t have to walk because it was freezing cold. During the drive home I was seated behind the drivers seat and he kept grabbing my leg down the side of his chair, he would slowly stroke my legs and by this point I knew he wanted me. Once we were home we all went inside and my phone buzzed. He had messaged me asking me to come out for a kiss. I told my friends and they all wanted me to go for it but I was already out the door , it didn’t take much convincing. I gave him a kiss and said we should catch up sometime again but he said I needed to wait until I was 18. Mind you he was a 40 something year old man. Yeah I know what your thinking, what was I thinking? Hello Daddy issues.

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Although he had told me I had to wait until I was 18, that didn’t stop us from texting backwards and forwards as the months went on, I was drunk one night at the folkie, which was a big festival in a town 20 mins from home, me and my group of friends were so smashed down the main street, because that’s what you did at folkie. And low and behold who did I run into on the job? The bloody coppa. I ended up texting him asking if he wanted to meet up but he had said he couldn’t due to being on the job. So I just went about my night and hit it hard, I was taking md, I was drinking and I  was smoking weed all through the night with my mates, it ended up being a huge weekend in the end and I’m not gonna lie it was a hell of a lot of fun. The hungover hit hard though, I think it took me  days to recover from that weekend. I don’t even remember if I really ate over that entire weekend. I definitely ate enough MD though.

I was almost 18 now and year 12 was a struggle for me, I used to skip going to school more often then I actually went, I would get ready for school then go out into the shed and wait until mum had left for work, and I would go inside and play xbox all day. Sometimes I even skipped parties because I wanted to stay home and play xbox, I know right, me skipping a night of drinking with friends? Xbox had that effect on me though, it had become and new obsession and distraction and I enjoyed it a little to much. Plus I hated school, I was no good at it. Even when I tried really hard I just couldn’t seem to get the jist of it all, I struggled to study because there was so much going through my head 90% of the time it made it hard to take it all in. I gave up trying in the end, I think the teachers all gave up on me as well. There was one teacher though who refused to, he was my outdoor ed teacher and he continued to push me despite me always letting him down, no matter how many times I failed he continued to push and believe in me, and outdoor ed ended up being one of my classes where I did the best. I guess sometimes all we need is to be believed in, especially when we don’t believe in ourselves. 

As time went on me and the police officer talked less and less and I ended up talking to this new guy, I cant remember how exactly we met in the first place but I know I was very attracted to this person, any time me and my friends would drink in town id always end up meeting up with him and sleeping together. It had become a part of the drinking schedule. Meet up with friends, get drunk then end up with him somehow and somewhere.  This went on for months and I was starting to see this going somewhere.

Schoolies was fast approaching and I was excited about it because me and my friends had decided to go to the gold coast and I had never been there before. We booked our motels and flights and soon enough it was time to head to the Gold coast. I was excited to get drunk for 7 days straight, but I was strictly off boys atm as I was still talking to this guy at the time and wanted to see where that could go. We spent every day eating out and getting ready for the nights, we hit all the nightclubs and met some great people. We even met a group of boys that was from our town staying in a motel not to far from ours, they were so much fun. We ended up at there motel some nights and my friend and one of the guys ended up getting pretty close.  One of them was really cute but I was strictly off men atm, my attraction was towards that guy I really liked. So I just partied alongside them all as a mate.

I was sitting in our motel one day getting ready for the night and I messaged this guy I really liked, I told him I was keen to see him when I got back and that I missed him. And what did he reply with? Well that asshole replied ‘’I have a girlfriend now’’. I was shocked and confused, literally a couple weeks ago we had slept together. I replied ‘’what’’ and he just said something along the lines of sorry and the conversation died down pretty quickly after that. I was devastated and all I wanted to do was get smashed so I didn’t have to think about it anymore, I had devoted myself to this person for months and all for nothing? I had literally turned guys away for this prick. Fuck men seriously. I hit the alcohol hard that night but can you blame me, I was heartbroken. I ended up dancing with other guys that night but couldn’t bring myself to do anything more, I tried to, but I just couldn’t. I was to hurt by men.  Every time I had pursued a connection with a male it had failed, sometimes it was my fault and sometimes it was there’s, but either way it just never worked.  Dad didn’t stick around and now all these men didn’t want to either. What was wrong with me? Was I really that hard to love, didn’t any one want me? Apparently not.

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You can bet your ass I messaged the Coppa once I got home. We started talking again regularly and he made me feel wanted again, he seemed so interested in me and I needed to feel that by that point, I was still a little heartbroken and disappointed in men so I did what I know best, I threw myself at a male in the hopes that it would take away my pain. And it did, he made me feel so wanted and made me feel like I was everything. That high I used to chase started to come back and it made me want more. I looked forward to messages from him and now that I was 18 , well lets just say he really got into detail about what he wanted to do to me, and I loved every second of it. He would ask me if I could dress up in my school uniform for him one day and I wanted him to tell me more. Looking back on this now its pretty bloody disgusting that a 40 year old men wanted that from an 18 year old, but at the time I didn’t see it that way, I was to young and dumb to see it for what it really was, so I just went along with it all.

We messaged back and forth for weeks trying to organize a catch up but he was always working and never able to. One night I was having some drinks at a friends house in town and he and I were messaging. I told him we should catch up but again he said he was working, only this time he was keen to catch up still. I had to wait up until pretty late as this was the only time he could come see me. He ended up organizing a time to come get me and I told my friend I was going to go see a guy and waited out the front patiently. I was so excited but also really nervous. It was finally happening. All of a sudden a police car drove up the road I was waiting on and I couldn’t believe it. I thought to myself ‘’this is every girls dream come true to get picked up in a police car by a coppa’’ and not for the usual reasons you would get picked up in a cop car. He pulled up beside me and I got in the car. I was so mesmerized by what was happening. I remember looking around at everything inside the car thinking ‘’wow’’. There were so many buttons. We chatted while he drove and he ended up parking outside a building and told me to wait outside the car while he signed off from work. I still couldn’t believe I was just picked up in a police car. Like this is the kinda thing that only happens in movies and I was living it? How lucky was I.

We ended up going inside to this building he said was his and we ended up sleeping together. I had really high expectations on how I thought it was going to go, I mean I just got picked up in a bloody police car this better be the best sex Iv had in my life. But it wasn’t , in fact the sex was pretty average. But I was still really pleased with my accomplishment So I felt pretty bloody good regardless. We got back into the police car and he dropped me back off at my friends house. To be honest I didn’t want to get out of the car I wanted to stay and drive around in it admiring everything from the passenger seat, but he had to get back to work so I said goodbye and went back inside. I was on such a high I wanted to tell my friend all about it but by this time of night she had gone to sleep. I laid down on my bed with my eyes wide open and couldn’t believe what had just happened. It was literally a fantasy of mine come true. I couldn’t really sleep that night no matter how hard I tried. The next morning come around and I told my friend what had happened, I left out the part about how old the officer was but everything else I told her. Her eyes lit up when I told her he picked me up in his car just like mine did. I mean hello? It was pretty bloody cool. Not everyone can say they’ve been picked up in a police car. And got to sit in the front seat. God I felt so special. 0He had made me feel that way and I didn’t want that feeling to go away. We continued to msg over the next few weeks and I had asked him if he wanted to meet up a few times but he was unable to due to work. Time ticked along and we started to msg less and less but one night I messaged him asking to meet up and he called me back. He was pretending like he didn’t no who I was and I was so confused, he kept saying I had the wrong number and I had no idea why he was pretending like he didn’t no me. I ended up hanging up the phone and soon after I received a text message from an unknown number. It was a female who was apparently this police officers partner and she wasn’t happy. I thought to myself FUCK. I instantly felt sick to my stomach and didn’t no what to do, the msg said something along the lines of I know who you are and what you’ve done and I will be telling your mum. Again I thought FUCK. I ended up replying something like I’m sorry I didn’t no he had a partner and il never contact him again. I had hoped that my message would have been enough for her to leave things be but it wasn’t. A few weeks went by and I was starting to think that what had happened was the end of it. But mum come home one night and come into my room and said she had just gotten back from the hospital. She had gone to see the woman who had messaged me. Apparently her finding out about me and her partner put her in hospital which I instantly felt shit about, this poor lady was so shook by what happened that she ended up in the hospital, FUCK. How could someone do that to someone, I never would’ve pursued him if I knew the truth but he spun me a web of lies so he could get what he wanted out of the situation and the whole thing just made me feel sick. Mum pretty much started yelling at me and blaming me for the entire situation, I tried to get a word in to explain I really didn’t no he had a partner but she wouldn’t let me talk, the room filled with anger and she called me things like a ‘’slut’’ and that really hurt hearing that from your own mother.  She left my room and was yelling out nasty things at me and I just wanted it to stop, I understood she was upset but she didn’t need to scoop so low, I knew I had fucked up, but it wasn’t just my fault. She made it seem like I was the only one to blame .Not the 40 year old man who took advantage of a vulnerable 18 year old. Nope lets not blame him. I hated mum so much already she, she was just an angry alcoholic who spent most of her time neglecting us and this was just the tip of the ice burg. I hated being at home because of her and now i could just tell that it was going to be so much worse then it already was. I ended up calling my sister asking her to come get me, I was just in tears the entire phone call. She kept asking me why and what was wrong but I couldn’t even say I was to hurt. I Ended up messaging a friend and telling her what had happened and asked if I could stay at hers for the night. I packed a bag and went out the front, I had called a taxi to come get me and as I stood out in the cool air waiting all I could think to myself was what have I done again.

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The entire taxi ride into town felt so long, I couldn’t bring myself to hold a conversation with the taxi driver, I felt mentally sick. Once I arrived at my friends house I climbed into her bed and she lent over and said ‘’are you okay’’. I said yeah even though it was the opposite of how I was feeling but I didn’t want to revisit what just happened, I just wanted to sleep and forget about it for the night.

When morning hit I got ready for work, I pushed myself to get there even though I just wanted to spend the day in bed, but I didn’t even have a bed to sleep in, I couldn’t go home. I had to ask my friend if I could sleep at hers for a few nights until I figured some things out. A few days went by and I was just couch surfing at friends houses, id spend a few nights here and there before having to find somewhere else to go. It was a shitty feeling bouncing between places. But I until I found somewhere more permanent this was the best I could do as I wasn’t going to go back home, it wasn’t a home anymore and after what had happened I never wanted to see mum again.

Work was an effort but it was a really great distraction for me and it gave me somewhere to go during the days, I remember being at work one day and all of a sudden I looked up and  saw the coppa enter the shop. I instantly felt sick, what the fuck was he doing here. He walked over to where I was working and once he was close enough I built up the courage to tell him to leave, he responded with’’ you need to talk to your mum’’ again I told him to leave and this time he did. I said I needed to go to the toilet and I just sat in there for 5 mins trying to calm myself down from what just happened.  I never wanted to see him ever again and all of a sudden he was invading me at my workplace telling me to talk to my mum, what the fuck.  I skipped lunch that day, I felt to sick to eat.

I never saw the coppa again after that day, I never wanted to. I also never went back home, I hated living there, I never felt like I fitted in at home. I never felt like I was allowed to make mistakes and that’s what growing up is all about, you make mistakes and you learn from them, but mum scared me, if I made a mistake and she found out I was verbally abused, sometimes hit and given the silent treatment for days. We hardly had any food in the house, mum would buy food for dinner but that was it most days, most days I went to school without food because we had nothing to bring, but I would just laugh it off and pretend I forgot my lunch again. But she always managed to have alcohol.

A lady from work ended up finding out about my situation and offered me a room to rent with her, she was older and one of the ladies at work you thought was a bit of a bitch, but I was desperate so I gave it a chance. She ended up being a really nice person, we were both smokers so we used to sit outside smoking and chatting away, I grew to really like her, we did a lot of stuff together and she always invited me to family events even though I never went. I preferred to sit at home by myself watching movies, family events were just to sad to go to for me, they made me realize I didn’t have a family and that hurt.

Even though I had gotten away from all the drama and bullshit and had found somewhere to live, there was still this emptiness inside me. So I started to drink a lot again, I had become friends with a new group of girls and we spent nearly every weekend together getting on it, not just alcohol either. There was a lot of party pills consumed as well. It had been a while since I had slept with anyone, with everything that had happened I think I was to distracted to think about having sex, but there was this one guy at work I started to find really attractive and I really wanted to sleep with him.