When I was seventeen I lived with my dad for three and a half months. It did not work. Mom had fallen in love with a most unfortunate individual whom she went to live with in another town. She said I could come with her if I wanted or I could stay with my father and still live in the Greater Vancouver area. Her new boyfriend and I could not stand each other (no one could stand him it seemed) and there was a growing consensus between Mom and me that my father and I should become reacquainted. It seemed only fair, according to Mom. For two years he had defaulted on almost all the child support he owed me, since he did want to set himself up with his girlfriend and her son in a stylin' big house in a spanking new subdivision. The word blackmail was never, of course, actually mentioned!
He hated me. There was nothing about me or what I did that he approved of. The conflict began the first day I was there and climaxed when he tried to hit me. I escaped, barefoot and hitch-hiked into Vancouver where I stayed with friends. He was a miserable, ignorant alcoholic, making a new life for himself with his girlfriend and her pubescent son. There was no room for me in his life.
I stayed away as much as possible to avoid conflict. He railed at me for not being at home, where things would have gone from bad to worse since he hated the sight of me. He kicked me out in October and I went to live with my mother and her Fat Studly Romeo in a small town on the Island.
Mom and I bonded as friends while her relationship with Studly went quickly south. Another alcoholic, this time with violent tendencies and known to police.
Mom told me to get out when I finished high school and to try to live on my own. She would be abandoning Studly a month later. Without help or support from anyone, at the tender age of eighteen, I took my few earthly possessions with me and went to Vancouver where I struck out on my own.
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