Edges Issue 15: Charlotte's Life On The Road

EDGES MAGAZINE Issue

October 1998

CHARLOTTE'S LIFE ON THE ROAD

My name is Charlotte and I am 23 and I was homeless from the age of 13 to 23. First of all I was in a kids home and when I was 13 I got adopted parents. They only kept me for one night because they had two boys and two girls and they said that I didn't fit into their way of life. They had very strange values and the way they lived, I didn't fit into. So they got the Social Worker in the morning and I got put in a halfway house.

I was too old to go back to the kids' home, so I went to a girls' hostel and I had to be there for nine months before I could live on my own. I liked it there but I couldn't speak to many people, they had musical instruments that I played all the time because I couldn't talk to people, so I got good on them. Then I moved into a flat and it was the most horrible flat you could ever move into. You couldn't use the front door - you could only use the back door and it was all flooded with water, the wallpaper was peeling off.

On New Year's Eve I'd been out for a party, a drink in a pub and then when I came back somebody had slipped some drugs into my drink and it was "acid" and I had a very bad time; I was crying for my best friend and I didn't know anybody and just seeing the wallpaper peeling off, and there was this other girl and her boyfriend living there - he was a dwarf, not that I have got anything against dwarfs, but he was very frightening in the situation I was going through. So the next day she complained to the landlord who got the DHSS to come and get rid of me because I hadn't paid up my rent because it was Christmas and he hadn't sorted it out. So they put me into a halfway house again and a woman said that I had stolen a jumper; so the police came and I was in the cells for 4 days over Christmas. I went to court and they said I was to go to a another hostel - I didn't know what it was or what was happening.

The policeman had said that I was going to the local "pros house" and I didn't really know what that was. When I went there I had to share a room with a girl they called Sue. It was a horrible place and I just got classed as a prostitute because that's what it was, it was in a prostitute area but I am glad to say that I never did get into that, that's one thing I couldn't do. I had a bad experience when I was 13. I lived on the road and I was spiked again by some people that thought it would be funny to give me these pieces of paper and said that they'd make me laugh, but really it would make them laugh; after a while I had a chip butty in my hands and it was just splurting through my fingers and everything seemed strange and my face seemed strange to touch, the grass was different colours and I didn't know where I was and what I was doing and then I woke up and everything was awful and I couldn't remember everything that had happened. I just remember that I was hurting and a man hurt me and I didn't know really what had gone on. But as time went on I met a girl that talked to me about things and she'd been molested, and she told me that it sounded to her that's what happened to me, and the more I thought about it the more I think that is the truth and after that I couldn't let anybody near me and I've always been funny about people coming near me. I don't have a boyfriend and a sexual life because they don't understand that I don't like them near me.

I've been living on the road since I was about 11 going on 12. It helped me in a way that I wasn't allowed to be a child, I was deprived of being a kid I had to grow up quick, you couldn't cry and moan because people didn't want to know that you were upset about things. At times I lived with my parents in a kind of a commune. They were hippies. They were a kind of a school but with just books and you could just draw pictures, do tapestry, there wasn't much to do really in the way of learning. I crave for knowledge now but I find it difficult because I think I am what they call dyslexic. Because I never was told so, I don't know if I am but I know that I'm a slow learner. I crave to read and I crave for knowledge and I want to know more, I want to learn but I don't know where to begin.

I've always had lots of dogs because dogs never answer you back, all they want is love and attention and they give you unconditional love. If you sit there with your head in your hands and you cry, they come up to you and they put their head on your shoulder and they put their paw on your leg and they try to understand by making a little sympathetic noise, they're just there; and when I was sleeping rough this man said that this dog was very protective, he said that when I was asleep the dog had its front paws on my belly, and if anyone came near me he'd give a little growl and wouldn't let anybody come near me. I never had my dogs on any ropes or leads, they just followed me everywhere I went. If you give a dog love and affection it will never leave you, it's just there for you - dogs have been my best friends.