Continued

The ambulance took me to the hospital after my mothers friend found the note. After they took care of me they would not let me go home with my mom. They took me to a girls shelter. I was so scared. I am a pretty shy person, so going through all of that and suddenly being put into a shelter with a bunch of strangers was pretty scary. I eventually started talking to some of the other girls, in a way it was probably good for me because I learned that I wasn't the only person in the world with this crazy life. I don't really remember how long I lived there, it seems like it was about 2 or 3 months. It actually is one of my good memories. Sometimes in the middle of the night a few of us would sneak to the kitchen, the cook would hear us and he would come out and make us hot chocolate. We would play volleyball all of the time, before that I had never really played a sport, but I really loved playing volleyball. A few times the boys shelter would come and we would play against them. As I said, being there was scary at first, but it is now a good memory, the people there truly cared about us girls.
I left there because a foster home became available. 4 or 5 other girls already lived in the foster home. They were all very pretty girls and I come along at that time I was overweight and felt that I was very ugly. The girls were nice to me but I never really fit in with them. I guess the foster parents weren't bad, but I wanted so much to go back and live with my mom. She had made a lot of mistakes, but I still loved her and wanted to be with her. The social worker would come pick me up and take me to visit my mom. For a long time it had to be supervised visits, I would get to see my mom for a few hours at a time and then I would have to go back to the foster home. Finally, during a Christmas break I was going to get to stay the night with my mom with no supervision. I got to her house and she and her boyfriend Jim had everything packed and ready to go. We ran away to Florida ............. More to come, I have so many stories of my abuse, of living in the shelter and in the foster home, and later being found in Florida and put into juvenile JAIL for being a runaway (what the heck, my mom took me) that I want to write about.