Living the Good Life

It's only when you've lost everything that you can truly appreciate what you had. Most people will live their entire lives oblivious to just how terrible a hand life can deal. They never realize that some people live in conditions more terrible than they could ever comprehend, that they have only caught glimpses of on the television. A safe, nurturing home and a loving family are two of the most wonderful gifts a person can have. I would count myself among the lucky few to have realized my wealth, but maybe, I wonder if I'd have been happier in ignorance.

My memories of hell are now a muddy and painful, disarray - as chaotic as my mind was during the year I spent there. When I search back into the murky waters of my past, I can remember clearest the feeling of confidence with which I left home. I felt I was brave and adventurous, smarter that all those other kids I knew who lacked the courage to escape our backwater little town. Getting off the Greyhound bus and looking up at the towering forest of high-rises overhead, all the hopes and dreams inside me blossomed in the radiance of a thousand glowing street signs and lamps. Later, I can remember the grudging awareness of my situation setting in when I realized that Vancouver wasn't the haven I imagined. I was too foolish and ashamed to consider returning home, had I even the money. In the end, the city streets proved to be a far craftier trap than hometown Salmon Arm could ever claim to be. Of the miserable winter I spent on the streets of Vancouver's Eastside, I can remember the coldness, the loneliness, and the hunger – I was always hungry. When I was lucky, my pain was numbed by a drug-hazed oblivion; when I unable to find income, I spent the dark nights racked by the near physical ache of withdrawal. Many a time I considered that it might have been better just to end my misery, but I never could. I would like to say that it was because of my faith in God or my confidence that I could turn my life around, but it was because of cowardice, and a total apathy to anything by finding my next hit that restrained me from committing suicide. Exact dates, places, or people, seem to evade my memory, but sometimes they will rise up unexpectedly with disturbing completeness and detail. When my father tried to hug me for the first time in a year, back in the rehab centre, I could once again hear the harsh, lustful breath of an anonymous man against my neck and feel the purposeful trailing of a shadow hand down my hip, during one of many embarrassing and painful encounters. Even my father's familiar scent brought back a horrible jumble of senses, and raw emotions of fear and humiliation, and I shied wildly away, feeling nauseas. He leapt back, apologized profusely, but I knew it was really me that should be telling him I'm sorry – sorry for destroying what a beautiful family we had. Seeing what I'd done to my mother and father, and all my friends, I knew that I deserved every bit of misery I brought upon myself for what I've done to them. Looking out the window of rehab centre, the familiar greenery partially obscured the city from view, but the mountains rose up in the east and I yearned for home.

Years later, I will spend warm summer days on the Shuswap beach with my dog, watch the sun set over the mountains, and lie on the benches at the end of the pier with my boyfriend and look for shooting stars. The pale dusting of lines that mar my forearms are the only physical reminders I have left of life on the streets, but the wounds that scoured my heart never quite healed right, and have left ugly scars that will perhaps always be tender to touch. I lost everything to my foolish naiveté, but by some miracle, I found my way home. I now know what a wealthy person I am: wealthy in friends, family, love, and hope. I've taught myself to appreciate all that I have now, but given the chance, I think I would rather I'd never learned.

A/N: Salmon Arm is a small town in British Columbia's interior on the Shuswap Lake. A mountain range and a four-and-a-half hour drive separates the town from British Columbia's coast and from the city of Vancouver - which I'm sure you've all heard of, or else you need to dig your heads out of the sand. What may not be well known about Vancouver is that its eastside is something of a black hole that sucks in many unfortunate young souls – those from the interior and others who've come over from Asia - looking for opportunities but who end up homeless, addicted to drugs, or in prostitution.