Valerie V.
DOB: 3/18/64; Van Nuys, California.
Basically my childhood was like a lot of being alone.
I was born an only child.
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It was just me and my Mom since I was two and I was physically and sexually abused. I was physically abused by my baby sitter for a long time and sexually abused by my step-father when I was like nine and when I was twelve my step-father and my mother got divorced and we moved all around a lot.
We moved a lot. In between the age of one and twenty I moved twenty four times. After my step-father and my mother got divorced, it was just me and my mother and I can remember being left alone quite often. Basically my childhood was like a lot of being alone. Reading books and playing solitaire, doing a lot of things alone.
My mother worked from nine to five and went out after work and didn’t come home until two or three in the morning and sometimes not at all.
I guess when I was thirteen I was being . . . I was alone a lot, I was living in this apartment building, I met these kids, I thought they were really cool. They smoked pot and drank beer and I didn’t want to do that, but I wanted to be friends with them so I did it.
I got into a lot of trouble — minor trouble. After my step-father and my mother got divorced he sort of went crazy. After twelve I was basically surrounded by a lot of mentally ill people. My grandfather was mentally ill. He stayed with us a lot. My stepfather was mentally ill and he stayed with us. My Mom had boyfriends a lot and they were always over.
Well, I got into this group of people and just started smoking pot in between the ages of thirteen and sixteen on a daily basis. I was going to school and then I met another group of people and was always in a different group of people. In school I did pretty good. I loved . . . I always loved to go to school. I couldn’t wait to get to school. I graduated and I loved school because school was like home to me, like I didn’t like going home. I couldn’t wait to get to school. I went every day and I won awards for the best attendance.
Then when I was like seventeen I started drinking, but not really that bad, just drinking and taking Quaaludes every so often. Then I started getting into punk rock and rebelling. My mother had married this Lebanese man who I hated. I wanted to kill him.
So I moved out when I was seventeen because I couldn’t stand him. My mother always chose her boyfriends over me. They came first, before I did. So I moved out. I moved to Hollywood with my aunt, who is also neurotic, and started getting really heavily into the punk rock scene and having lots of fun and it was the only time that I ever felt accepted. I just tried to meet the people that were in the most, who were in the scene and hang with them, and like I said it was the very first time in my life that I felt cool.
Then I met this guy — a boyfriend — and he was a junkie, and I was hanging out with a lot of junkies for a few years, but never using. And so when I lived with this guy I started using and then that just went on and on, us using, and I got on methadone maintenance when I was twenty one and I stayed on methadone maintenance for three years and worked in bars and drank a lot. And I started to gain a lot of weight and that’s basically what sort of like got me to realize that something wasn’t working.
I gained like seventy five pounds, so me and my friend went to a meeting one night. We saw a lot of people that were clean from my past, our past, and it was really neat to see them clean and I figured if they could do it I could do it for sure. so like I just was going back and I got talked into going to a hospital and then I detoxed and I was really scared when I did that. Everybody kept telling me it gets better, it gets better, and I didn’t believe them. I just didn’t believe them. I didn’t think it could get better. And it did get better.
And when I got out of the hospital I didn’t have any place to stay, I didn’t have anything. I had lost everything. I didn’t have anywhere to stay, no money, no car, no job, and I have all those things today. It’s only been four months. I feel really good. I feel a lot better about myself now. I’m getting . . . I’ve lost twenty five pounds since I’ve gotten out of the hospital. I get really scared sometimes but I’m learning that everything is okay no matter what it is. It’s going to be all right. I can get through anything.
And I have a Higher Power. And I am in conscious contact with my Higher Power all the time and I know that God’s going to take care of me. Whatever I know, whatever I’m going through, is just what’s meant to be for me. It’s God’s will. I have a lot of friends — a lot of friends.
It’s really neat, it’s really neat to have good friends. Not people that you expect everything out of, just people that you know are your friends. I am just really excited. I have been going out, I am learning how to go out. Socialize clean. Which I never did before and it’s getting better. It gets better all the time. It really does.
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