The Life I was Dealt.

Growing up, I never really cared about my looks, or ANYTHING. You see all I knew then was, what I was use to. Eating out of dumpsters, living under a railroad track (at one point) and scavengering for food or my next meal or partial meal. I wore clothes that were either too small or too big for me. I don't remember ever owning a brush, or even a tooth brush, those just were not important. I grew up in a sort of survival mode. Taking care of myself, and my younger siblings. Mom and dad, didn't and couldn't the drugs, sex, and alcohol got the best of them. 

Going into the foster care system at eight years old, I weighed about 40 pounds, I was mal nourished, dirty, covered in lice. The firt few years in the system were pretty crucial. I ended up developing a very bad eating habit, due to the lack of food growing up, and the inconsistency of my home life, and not knowing when my next meal would be. I became a food hoarder, not only that I would gorge myself until I made myself sick. My reasonging was because I honestly didn't know if there would be a next meal so I better eat all that I can get now. I would hide food in my room, at a lot of my foster homes, sometimes getting up in the middle of the night to eat it, just in case there wasn't going to be breakfast. It got better as the years passed by, I was able to break the habits to an extent. But, as time wore on, I noticed patterns developing, that I seemed to not be able to control. If I was upset, scared, nervous, depressed I ATE. My coping mechanism was to eat. Food never let me down. In elementary It wasn't so bad to be the odd ball, the "foster child" the child who didn't fit in or belong, or the new kid at school. It was my normal, something I had grown accustomed to. That is what happens when you bounce from home to home, and end up spending your elementary years at 13 different schools. Making friends? that was hard, I made a few, but mostly aquaintences. Once I got close to someone, it was time to move on to a new home and a new school, so I built a shell. I was at school to learn all that I could, not to make friends, besides, everyone already had their groups of friends, no room for new people. No room for the girl with the clothes from good will, and the old sneakers she wore last year. My weight started to be a problem for me when I was in Jr. High. I knew I wasn't "fat" but I also wasn't the skinny cheerleader type. My body was awkward, while most girls were just developing breasts, I had already had them for years. While some girls were just getting their periods, mine had come at the age of nine. I had been sexually abused at a very young age, and growing up as a sexual abuse victim, I often times turned the other way when a boy was walking towards me. I didn't really take interest in boys until late into my high school years, because I had no self esteem what so ever. I hated my entire being, everything about me, so who in their right mind would even look at this in a postive or loving or attractive way. This mind set stuck with me well in to high school. I shyed away from big groups of guys. Fast forward to graduating high achool and starting my life as an adult. I was out on my own by the time I graduated high school. No real family, no one to really teach me the ends and outs of living on my own, money wise, food wise, home essentials. All the good things most kids/ teens take for grantite being able to do, being taught from the time they were little so that when they do grow up and move out on their own they are PREPARED. I mean don't get me wrong, I knew some of the basics, I knew how to cook some things, I knew how to do my own laundry, I knew how to clean, I knew some things. I didn't know how to balance a check book, or anything about credit cards, or money management or budgeting, or buying my first car, or getting a job (which I did right away) or what I would do when somene broke in to my home (which happened when I was 19, and in my VERY first apartment.) I didn't know how scary it would be to live alone, how frightening every little noise was, how terriefied I was that something bad would happen to me, and how convinced I was that if it did, no one would even care or notice.  Imagine going from being surrounded by people your entire life, from foster home to foster home, to being by yourself for the first time in your life. Pretty intimidating, I didn't have a mom or dads house to run to or a grandma and grandpa's house to run to when things weren't going right or when I felt home sick. I felt home sick all the time but home sick for what? Which home? Who? I spent many years just skating through life, doing the necessity to survive.  By the time I was about 26, I knew things needed to change. This was NOT going to be my life. I was NOT going to just live in the shadows of this world, I was not going to just let life slip through my clutched fists. I needed to take a stand not only against the world but against myself. I need to change my mindset, and how I viewed myself. I needed to stop hating the person looking back at me in the mirror. If I didn't learn to love me how could I possibly think someone else could. So that is what I did.

Always, 
Becka