Chapter One

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As The World Discarded Me
(I Learned Where To Put My Feet)
                                
"The things you think are a curse can turn out to be strange blessings."

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During my upbringing, my parents weren't married. To complicate matters, my father was already married to another woman, whom he left with their children. In the years of my birth, this unconventional situation was a strict taboo in society. Despite the ever-changing nature of societal rules, the cruelty of society's behaviour remains constant when you defy their norms.

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The prevailing societal rule was crystal clear back then: 'You must be married to live together and have children.' My parents chose not to adhere to this norm, leading to their rejection by society, a rejection that extended to every child they had. Even the family of the town drunk, with all their flaws, felt entitled to reject us when we dared to move to their town. Perhaps they were associated with the town drunk, or maybe he was one of them, but at least they were married, giving them the privilege to join in the rejection."

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So, one grows up.  Time alone will ensure that.  

 

Yet, what would the rings show if one could take a core reading of the years as with a tree? Drought and a lack of proper nutrients would show in a tree ring sample.  

 

What would show in a human?  How do you tell in a human? The body does not grow well without food.  The brain does not develop because of a lack of nutrients.  Lack of proper nutrients creates a stunted tree.  It is not hard to surmise that the reason for the stunted tree is a lack of food and water.  It is easy to see when a tree has not been cared for.  Is it so easy with humans?

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Everyone has their story.  My story can be found in any country at any time in history. However, my story happened to me while living in my skin, in Canada, at this time in history.  The faces may change, the story remains the same, and the results are always hard on the individual to whom it happens. 

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I have come to believe that the world creates many discards. Society is a reflection of the world's values at that time. What the world values today may be forgotten tomorrow, so society constantly changes its value system. To depend on society for what you should believe in and try to follow is as stable as a chip of wood on the ocean. It just is not so! 

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So, how does the world discard people? What does it do with the discards? What happens to them, and where do they generally end up?

 

People are not "things" to be remodelled, recycled, and redone. Fifty-five years later, I can now speak of it, try to understand what I can, and learn to accept what it did and whom it made. I have to; there is no choice because I need to learn to be able to live in my skin. All discards must learn this. 

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It starts with standing back from your story, quitting it being so personal, and letting go of its uniqueness. Like the detective on that old show who said, "Just the facts, nothing but the facts."

 

So, what are the facts? 

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Let’s start with my parents.  

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I believe my mother was educated in grade eight, and my father said he never went further than grade two. I think he was joking.  He had a math brain like a calculator but could barely write his name.  I do not know what nationality his ancestry was.  My mother was Romanian.  My father’s real name is Uhoss.  At least, that is how it sounds; it may not be spelled that way.  I asked him once about his parents. He told me, “ Something happened to them, so I went and lived with these people, and I just took their name."  My mother's name was Toma, but all of their children were registered from birth as our dad’s name. So we remain. 

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As I figure it, my mother meets my father as she is waiting in a truck stop.  He is broad-shoulder, narrow-hipped, and a good talker.  Both are looking for a party, and five children later are still paying the price for the party.  My father never bothered with a divorce from his first wife, and so my mother was thrown away by her family and really had few options.  She had become a "fallen woman."   

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I remember better furniture when I was younger, but we always had to move, and things got left or broken.  If one is not running from society, then the law or the bills.  Mostly, people were not willing to put up with someone who was breaking their rules.  Society loves its rules.  If society does not like you, it is mean and cruel.  For those that society likes, the face is kind, considerate, and tolerant.  There are two sets of rules, always.  It is a means of population control.

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Children understand these rules as they grow.  It is not that it is verbally taught. By observing conversations with spouses and other adults, along with their actions, children learn that they do not want to be the ones rejected by society.  And because children mimic their parent's behaviour, they will be vicious to those they can.

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Children can be the nastiest form of humans. They are not complete. They are a reflection of their parents and other adults around them. Children want and need approval and acceptance. They want to be part of society, be noticed, and be important.  

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Yet, because they are still being formed and learning disciplines, children are vicious when they are given permission to be mean and bully. They do not understand the consequences; they do what they feel. Children made my life a living hell. I never went to kindergarten, so from grade one on, it became pure survival, a fight to exist.

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I understand that I have never learned to be a physical fighter. I learned to stand my ground and be verbal. I made it as if I did not care about whatever they wanted to pick on me about. "So" became a favourite word. Pick a subject—clothes, parents, school work—and they were downright mean. I care not for females as a species. Whoever said females were "sugar and spice and everything nice" never met little girls away from their parents.

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I learned to leave, but people remained the same. Cynicism is born in the young and nurtured in the old.  You have to see enough greed, nastiness, indifference, hate, and violence in order to be cynical.  Yes, there are the "intellectuals and such" who are cynical because they choose to put on a cynical air.  I am speaking about the "average Joe,"  Called peasant, surfs, slaves in times past.  Yet the majority in numbers of any population. 

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To be able to believe in something starts when you are young. Psychotics are started when they are young.  Whether the net of safety and security was ripped away traumatically at once or bit by bit does not matter.  There comes a learning of not to trust anyone.  Adult or otherwise.  Police are useless because they have no power to stop the ripping and tearing of the souls of children.

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I saw my first stabbing when I was four.  Parents are nowhere, and men still drinking.  They decided they were going to visit our bedroom.  Five girls.  Their attitude was that since my mother did not marry my dad, she had to be a whore and since that's how us girls would end up, well, "we will just get them started right".  I remember the words, and I remember the pictures.  

A man in a sailor shirt with the longest waxed moustache I had ever seen. He stood in front of the door saying no and for his troubles, he was stabbed.  He came once after he got out of the hospital, brought me close to him, looked me square in the eye and said, "You can survive this, but you are going to have to get real tough inside."  And he left, never to be seen again. 

I have a brain that records every word.

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Cynicism kills.  It offers no hope, no ability to believe in good things, good people.  Life can suck all these things out of a person before they even get started.  It does it through hunger, rape, beatings and rejection by society.  What is there to believe in?  People?  They are the ones doing the raping and beating.  Parents?  They cause hunger and rape, beatings and violence.  Everything about them is unstable.

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I am five the first time I am raped.  It became part of the rhythm of my life.  If not the father, then others.  Everything is pain.  I see this show when I am nine or ten.  It is about a young girl who kills a boy and has absolutely no remorse or conscience about doing it.  She is not convicted because she kept cool as a cucumber.  They could not trick her.  I decided I wanted to be like her and began to work towards my goal.  No feelings, no pain.  

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I found ways to ensure kids left me alone as I got older.  I learned whatever was necessary to survive.  Some instances are very dangerous; if hurting others gets you away, then learn what you need to. But make it quick and deadly.  And the psychotic person continues to grow. 

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Many of the world's discards become very cynical and bitter—not all, but I would say the majority. As society's rules change, many discards are created from generation to generation. Not all are psychotic, but the greater majority definitely have one form or other of mental deviations. Where do they go?  

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The shady side of life.  Some end up in jail, and some end up as hookers, pimps, and con men.  Me, I became a burlesque dancer.  Look all you want, touch me, and I may wish to shoot you. 

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Thousands live on the shady side. Some keep jobs and pay taxes, but most don't. Most prefer the "jobs" on the shady side. There is no honour among thieves. They will always do what is convenient for them. If they had any honour, they would never be thieves to start with. All who live on the shady side do what is convenient for them.

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To call it a lifestyle is an insult to the word.  There is no life on the shady side, and there is very little style.  It is about money, and that's all it's about.  When I started, mafia-type people owned the business.  It's business to them; you are only in business to make money.  If you want it and have money for it, it is available.

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Anything anyone desires.  If someone wants it, someone is selling it.  Maybe not for Average Joe, but definitely for those with the money.  It is why people want money.  So they can indulge in anything they want.  Yes, there are pleasures, but there is also the control of others.  Money can buy that and much more.  The world's discards easily fill the list of wants.  The world and society do not notice or care.  That only happens when they are embarrassed by it. 

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So, is there a point to keeping on if all you do is survive life? Do understand this: If you grew up in foster homes, if you grew up with addicted parents or violence, if you grew up in want and hunger, then you are part of the world's discards. 

For my time, my story is more extreme than some stories and less than others.  However, my response to my happenings is extreme.  I became a psycho, a chameleon, knowing no rules, no standards, and living without rules and standards. When survival is all there is, human nature will do almost anything to survive.

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When I was fifteen, I decided that if all life had to offer was rape, beatings, and moving from one foster home to another for repeat rape, I would kill myself.  Better faster than slower. I walked to Tache Bridge in St. Boniface in Winnipeg, Manitoba. 

The cathedral bell struck the hour.  I knew that it would not be the jump that killed me but rather the silt.  It was thick and deep, and once you jumped, you would be stuck and unable to change your mind.  I stood in the pouring rain, looking at the river, trying to will myself to climb over and let go.  I can be standing in front of you and wandering away, and I guess that's what I did.  

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For an hour because the cathedral bell ringing the next hour snapped me back. No one noticed, and I finally understood that I must stop expecting someone to notice.  A great anger rose up in me, and I literally raised my fist in the air and shook it at the world.  I shouted, "Go ahead, world, throw at me what you will, but I will not give you the satisfaction of me killing myself for you.  You will not beat me!" 

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Society and the world continued to throw things at me, but I just became colder and indifferent. They became nothing to me—something you learn to put up with. There is that which my parents did, that which the world (society) did, and that which I did to myself. Each contributed to the makings of a very psychotic person.  

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It is because I placed myself on the shady side that I was able to hide from my mental problems.  There, I was just known as crazy and wild. Never would be a hooker and was not social with anyone whom I worked with.  I kept to myself and stayed on the road.

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It would be easy to describe personal stories that can curl the hair or make one cry.  But that is not where life is at.  Such stories speak of pain, holes and devastation.  These are the results of such stories.  So, is it the story that makes the discard or the results of the story that make the discard? 

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I do not know about you, but pain is pain; I have never seen half a hole; nothing is ever slightly devastated.  With such things, why get stuck on how it got there?  People compare stories of pain and devastation, trying to outdo one another on where it comes from.  

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It is not where it comes from that has to be dealt with.  I cannot go back and change one iota of the story, no matter how much I talk of it.  It is the result of the story that I must work with, which is pain, holes and devastation. 

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These things are not easily covered up or ignored for long. Europe was greatly hurt by the first world war and definitely devastated by the second.  You can still see signs of it sixty or more years later.  Bombs are found that can kill way after the war is ended.  So it is with humans.   Unless attended to, the destructions caused by life can become ticking time bombs ready to explode when life is at its most peaceful state.

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When one is a child, you are only capable of childish things. When life demands adult things from a child, the child is incapable.  And so wrong thinking and wrong emotions set in motion courses of destruction that lead into adult life.  Tools used for survival as a child are kept because they worked as a child. However, none of the tools learned will help in the adult world. Why?  Because they are a child's tool, not an adult's.

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When I was twenty-six, I decided it was time to go to University. While attending school, I worked weekends at a Chinese restaurant.  They had a delivery boy there who, one night when it was slow, started asking some questions. What did I want out of life and such.  

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He talked circles around my answers. Sort of like this.

Question: What are you looking for in life?
Answer: Happiness!
His reply: Is not happiness a state of mind dependent on your circumstances?
My reply: I have never thought about it.
Question: Why not, what do you occupy yourself with?

I thought, "Who is this talking to me? A delivery boy. What does he think he is?"  I definitely was quite the snob.  

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Anyway, on my twenty-seventh birthday, I decide to have a party.  Invited the delivery boy (no clue what his name was) and he brought a present which was to change my life.  It was a book. It was by Ayan Ryan and was called "Atlas Shrugged."  It suggested that in life, if all one wishes is food, shelter, and money, then one would tolerate anything in order to have those things. Plus, such people refused to think because if they did, they may understand and in understanding is a responsibility to act on the understanding.  

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So, in order to avoid that, you tell me what to do, I will do it and if there is a problem, it is your fault because you are in charge.  I do not have to be responsible for my actions or ways.  I realized many things out of that book and the first was that I did not know how to think. 

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When we moved from the country to Winnipeg City, my father moved us to Skid Row.  I was already a watcher, and I watched.  Pool halls (did not go in them), bars (I did go in them to get my father), children on the street and school.  Somewhere, my head got the thought that if one had a well-rounded education, one could deal with life.  

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Hence, the desire to go to University. I did not go to "become" anything, though I signed up for a faculty.  I went to take a look.  Is this worth anything?  Is this how to gain knowledge to fill the holes left by not growing up around others and x amount of years on the shady side?  I was greatly disappointed when I realized one was "processed," not educated."  Processed to a particular viewpoint of life.  No, thank you.  Enjoyed learning, but not the route for me.    

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Of course, I had no clue what was the route, so I stayed dancing.  Very practical.  It fed me and clothed me.  It was a place to put myself that was familiar.  Not safe, just familiar.   My father had many sayings.  One was "curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought him back."  I have always been curious. About everything.  The school taught me that other families did not live like mine.  The only good thing that school did in the first years was fill my hunger for learning.  I wanted to be able to read books.

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Growing up was no food, warmth or good housing.  No shoes, gloves or warm coats.  Many bones were broken, and physical and sexual abuse.  No newspapers, no television, no radio, no social life, no knowledge of "others."  No manners, no proper habits.  

The list could go on but I am sure the point is made.  I stole my first book in grade two. Not to keep, to read and return but I was not supposed to touch them.  It was on Greek mythology, and I will not say I understood all the words.  I did not.  But this I did understand.  If the gods war, then that accounted for life.  It was war.  Made sense to me, the god's war, so life was war.  Learn to survive it. Period.

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I sometimes think that if foster homes were not a repeat of home life, maybe life would have been different, I would perhaps not be as psychotic.  Yet this is a thing not to ponder.  Life is what life is. Wishing and what-if-ing will make no difference. 

The shady side was a continuation of home life and foster homes. In certain things less, in other things more.  Guns are common, and one can get to see firsthand the result of such weapons.  I have found that one is never prepared for the result the first time that violence involves guns.  Yet even such things as that one can get used to.

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It's funny; back then, bullets were fired and no police.  Police do not tolerate it these days, but police tolerated Al Capone in bygone days. Then, they did not tolerate him. 

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Play with guns, and things happen.  Certain pictures never leave. And as I got older and more pictures were added, I realized that staying would kill me.  Less and less did I fit in or belong.  It became a liability.

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I had an abortion.  Never expected it to hit me like it did.  I figured, after all I had seen and done, that not too much would get to me.  This did.  Especially after an incident around guns, it's over, and I end up puking in the toilet.  My brain said, "Gloria, where have you brought yourself to?"  

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I left the people with guns but kept my own.  It took time to get tired of the shady side.  Time to make my heart stone.  Yet by the time I am thirty, I know that if I do not quit, I will end up dead.  I no longer belonged.

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There is this thing in each stratum of society.  It is a spoken and unspoken set of rules.  Things are either done or not done. If you wish to belong, you conform to their standards and rules. Generally, each is born into some certain strata of society.  Skid row is the lowest of society.  It is always the oldest section of the city and becomes the "wrong end of town." It is where welfare people live en masse. Natives have their own way, and each culture has its own.  

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Not all people who lived in the older section were on welfare. They bought houses when they were young and watched the neighbourhood change, but they did not.  German, Italian, Ukrainian, Polish, Scotch, Irish, Romanian.  They came, worked in factories, bought a house, and lived their life.  They each are islands of different cultures, all in one area.  It was neat to see and grow up around.

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Foster homes introduced me to other strata of society. I was put in upper-middle-class, middle-class, no-class, and utterly high-class homes. It was only an introduction, but it was enough to see that I would not be a "wrong side of town" person.  I wanted nothing to do with the ways of life and living I saw growing up.  I watched my mother be an outcast and a drudge.  I may have been an outcast but I would never be a drudge. 

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For a while, I thought it did not matter where one came from. Push hard enough, and you can gain entrance to any strata of society.  Please understand that I am not speaking of the shady side of things but Average Joe stuff. I finished high school and went to work as a secretary.  I worked around a hundred other females, and I hated it.  Stuck it out a year, tried a different place, hated that, tried a different place.  Did not mind that. 

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My mother left when I was nine.  Up to that point, there really was no contact with "others."  Sure, there were the drinking men, but nothing else till school.  Once my mother left, my father got an old car and took us to the drive-in theatres. 

We had not seen TV yet, and it was quite something to us. No one said the movies were not real and the lives were not real. Having no understanding of the real world, I took it as such. Movies are why I sound the way I do when I speak. I did not like my father, but I liked the men I saw on the screen, so I learned to sound like them. I am a chameleon. It became part of my colour.

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Most of my understanding of people comes from books, any sanity I obtained came from books, and my personality comes from books.  Books saved me in foster homes.  I started reading books about concentration camps, I began to study war, and I read historical fiction.  These books showed me that life could be worse, so if all that was happening was rapes and beatings, I could survive that.  Believe me, where would one go if these things did not happen?  If I could do nothing about it where I was, why run away? It would be worse.  At least I had food, shelter and school.  School became the only safe place.  I finished school because it was the only place where I would not be touched.

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I hate being touched, even now. That is why when I become a burlesque dancer, I never become a hooker.  No amount of money would allow anyone and everyone to touch.  Look all you wish, don't touch.  I did not belong on the shady side. I cared not for their rules and did things as I wished.  I stayed on the road for years and years. I travelled by myself and mostly kept to myself.  I indulged myself in clothes, jewelry, food and cars.  A peripheral person, I am a watcher.  I stay on the edges of things; I do not really participate.  Ten years in such a lifestyle takes a high price. It never occurred to me that I could not quit.

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I would watch girls and listen to their conversations. They would speak of quitting and living the "straight" life.  I would see them back six months, maybe a year later, more resigned, saying that "this was their lot in life" and that they should accept it.  I would look and think, "How do I have to think, and what do I have to do to not be like that?"
 
I have never really learned what to do. I mostly learn what not to do. Eventually, it gets down to doing right because that is all that is left.  It's not the greatest method, but it's mine.  When I decided to quit when I was thirty, I did just that.  I went to one of the few towns I had not danced in.  Prince Rupert, B.C.. Bring your web feet.  It rains all the time.

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I had become very sick from going to university.  I came out my second year a 113 lbs. of exhausted, blithering idiot.  A friend suggested the salt air would be good for me.  I went for my own reasons.  I wanted to know if God was real. 

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You see, I found myself really looking at my life.  I had more than one abortion, had constantly been around violence, and life was cheap.  I knew I could have money, but was that all there was? Was that what it was about the clothes, travel, and fine food?

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My sister in Toronto had an illegal apartment. Basement.  The television did not always work, but this one evening it did. There was a show on the island of Bali. When someone dies, they burn the body and paint elephants. They believe that when you die, you return to Bali, but it is paradise. 

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I was brought up Catholic but never had much use for church or God.  They both seemed pretty powerless, so what was their point of belief?  Yet, I found myself verbally challenging God.  

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I said, "You know what, God, if You are real and when I die, you take my good and bad and put it on your scale. Well, shoot me now because my bad will outweigh my good.  But I will take a shot if you are real and can take this stone heart and help me be human.  But if you are not real, let me know now, and I will settle for the money."

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He let me know.  He was real.  

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That is truly where I started learning to put my feet.  Before that, I aimlessly go around in circles.  Slowly, I have learned my direction.  I have been learning about Jesus and trying to walk with Jesus for over thirty years now.  It has taken a while to get definitions and an understanding of who God is, but the journey is worth it.  I started learning to live, not just exist, not just survive.  

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It was not the easiest journey, but I cannot imagine the last years without Him. But if one wants to learn to be "THE BEST THEY WERE MEANT TO BE," then the steps are worth it. There is healing, hope, and much more. It matters not the story or the condition. The discards of the world do have a place to go—in the arms of Jesus.