So I left home at 17, then-well, 16, I went to a psych ward in my junior year of h.s.-(read, "no junior or senior Prom") and was then whisked off to a hellacious private boarding school out of state, for a year & a half. I was subsequently kicked out, at barely 18, living on the street a few weeks, and my parents were not even told I was no longer there. If not for the caring concern of a local woman, whose teashop and bookstore I'd wandered into, one day, I may not have lived to tell this story.
I then fell hard into a life of drugs-mostly pot-and alcohol, and OTC and prescription pills, for the next 6 years, and it took a few years after that, to get clean and sober. I then wound up first in county housing-got married-unsucessfully and unhappily-then divorced, and for the last 10 years now, been existing-not living-but surviving-in state housing. I don't know which one was worse, both have been pretty much the same trap-but I just keep hoping and praying that one of these days things might get a little bit better-if only just a LITTLE bit
