The Beginning??????

To be honest, it is very difficult to know where to begin, because I'm not really sure where the beginning is.

I think that I was a normal happy kid till we were wrenched away from our middle class suburban lifestyle shortly after my 9th birthday. Suddenly, one day my dad no longer went to work and our beautiful house - the one that I loved and adored with all my heart went up for sale. No one told me why. Suddenly there was no money. My beloved ballet classes had to stop, my parents friends stopped visiting and no one told me why.

I suppose with hind sight my parents did manage to shield me from all that was going on but at nine you are not a baby. As I look back now - I recall some people coming to view my beautiful house - the one that I loved. I knew that my parents were trying to sell it and deep down I knew that ultimately meant me leaving everything that I had ever known and I was clinging to my happy life with everything that I had.

It must have been in the winter, cause it was dark enough for my dad to need light to show the people my bedroom. The room was big - large enough to have two light switches. I hid behind the wardrobe, next to my Animal Crackers poster and pulled the light cord (just slightly). I knew that this would stop him from being able to put on the main light. I don't know how I knew this. He was frantically flicking the main switch and I could feel his anger.

"I am really sorry" he kept saying - "I have no idea why this light isn't working - maybe it's the bulb?"

My room was big (or at least in my memory it was big.) I shared it with my sister - we had shared since I was born. At sixteen, she is seven years older than me. She must have known what was going on - but no one told me.

Then one day the removal men came, I tried to hide so that they couldn't take me too. First all the furniture and then everything else - even the carpets. I sat in my bedroom, my beautiful bedroom with my dog and cried and cried and cried. I pulled at the floor boards because I could see lost toys and bits of lego not wanting to be left behind. I would gladly have changed places with them and stayed there lost forever.