KIDS AT RISK
KIDS AT RISK
JANUARY 24, 2014 SOCIAL SERVICES
My teenage years on the streets of Vancouver
Rebekah Demirel survived the mean streets of Canada's big metropolis. It wasn't easy. This is her story.
"I LEARNED EARLY ON TO IGNORE MY FEELINGS OF FEAR AND DANGER BECAUSE I DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO EXPRESS THEM."
By Rebekah Demirel
When I was 13, I was living on the street in downtown Vancouver’s lower east side, home of many heroin addicts, prostitutes and some of the most down-and-out streets in North America. Though it was scary and dangerous and no place for a young girl, I still felt lucky to be alive and free from where I’d been.
I grew up in East Van, with my father and my older brother. My father drove a cab and was co-pastor of our local Pentecostal church. My mother fled the violence of our home years earlier, when I was three and my brother was six. She tried to take us with her, but my father forcibly took us back and I didn’t see her again until I was 12.
My dad and my brother, Robert, shared a bedroom across the hall from mine. Most nights, I’d hear sounds coming from their room. I didn’t really understand the sounds, but they made my throat feel like it was full of concrete, so I’d cover my head with a pillow and try to sing myself to sleep.
It was my job to wash clothes on the ringer washer downstairs. I saw my brother’s bloodstained underwear and did my best to scrub them clean on a washboard in the concrete sink. But I never said anything about it. I didn’t know what to say and my silence earned me preferential treatment: Unlike Robert, I wasn’t beaten or sexually abused.
above was just a snippet
the rest is here:
http://crosscut.com/2014/01/24/Kidsatrisk/118188/rebekah-demirel-growing-up-homeless-in-Vancouver/?page=single