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| by Anya Peters |
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| by Anya Peters |
ABANDONED
‘Abandoned’ is the title of Anya Peter’s book, published recently published by Harper Collins and nominated for the ‘New Media Award’ 2006.
More about Anya can be seen on her blogsite http://www.wanderingscribe.blogspot.com
Feb, 2006. For the past five months I have been living alone in a car at the edge of the woods – jobless and homeless and totally unable to find my way out of it. I can’t sing, I can’t dance, I can’t scream loud enough, all I can do is write. So here I am laying down tracks … hopefully the start of another paper trail out here (Started writing this blog-journal at the beginning of February, 2006. So probably best to start reading, backwards, from there – in the Archives).
Someone e-mailed yesterday saying they'd just randomly come across my blog, and asked me whether it was true, whether I did actually live in my car for all that time. I can't believe someone is still asking that — I don't know whether to scream or cry.
Most of me wants to just shrug it off, not even bother answering. But a tiny part of me, some soft part in under the ribs, wishes they could feel some of the pain still here in my back and neck that I'm still seeing a physiotherapist for — the way the muscles in them contract at the slightest onset of cold, as if they still remember how it was out there the winter before last; or about the thyroxine tablets I'm now having to take because of the hypothyroid problem I developed during those nine months in the car — because my hormones and metabolism got so messed up with all the stress and fear and hunger, and all that brutal cold. Or the way I wake at night, occassionally still sometimes, in a panic, disorientated, facing that big, black emptiness again that I woke to night after night in the woods, my body scrunched up between the sheets the way it had to be sleeping across the front seats, feeling tiny, not knowing which way around I am sleeping, ready to flip myself over to ease the pain I used to have every night in every part of me, with my neck and legs shoved up against the car doors — all that fear as I look around me, that for a long, dark moment I'm gripped with again. Believe it or don't believe it, all I will say, one last time, is that yes, it is completely true, every last moment of it, I did end up having some kind of breakdown and lived, hiding out in my car, not knowing what to do or where to turn, waiting for it to pass, for the healing calm of the trees and nature to strengthen me. And it was terrifying how easy it was to fall off the radar and into that spiral downwards, how it all happened so quickly, as you'll see if you read the book.
Some respect for the courage and pain it took to write my heart and soul in a book which hopefully will go on to help others too, would be the decenter thing — or, at least no emails questioning my reality. It might also be good to realise that some people don't fit into any of the boxes you try to put them into, no matter how big you try to make them. And yes, even people who end up homelesss can read and write — and all had lives before getting there.
I came into London today to talk on a local radio show about my book. It was a very strange thing to do. Not only sitting in a dark booth at BBC studios infront of a console with such a bewildering array of buttons and dials that it looked more like a cockpit, but just the talking about the book at all. Writing it was bad enough. It is definitely not a comfortable thing to publicise. I have been psyching myself up for it for weeks, though I was very glad to get it over and done with today, particulary given the cold I have. But the presenter's reaction was so lovely, and in a way unexpected. I assumed like most people his interest would be in the homelessness bit and how I wrote the blog. He did talk about the shame and secrecy of homelessness, and how it had been for me living in the car for those nine months, but he focussed mostly on the earlier part of the book — on some of the childhood stuff. He said he had young daughters himself and couldn't imagine a man wanting to do anything but protect them - that bit I did expect from him - and that he thought these stories should be told - I probably also expected that, though it was good to hear. But the thing he said that made me not know what to say back was that he almost wanted to apologise for what happened to me. I didn't know what to say. In ways I still feel almost apologetic myself for having written about my life, in sometimes such graphic terms. But I also think part of moving beyond such experiences is having them heard and people not being appalled and rejecting you for them, I think that is what finally ends that shame. It is also what chips away at that taboo about talking about it. Abuse is a dark, grotty subject, nobody would choose to talk about it, but silence makes it perfect for abusers. What they need to know, those people who do it, is that the children they abuse don't stay children. That one day they will grow up, and some of them will go on to write books, books about their abuse and the people involved. One day, this child will not be a child. And they will not forget — children do not grow out of their memories.
Just for the record, let me say that I was wrong...writing books is not as easy as I thought. Obvioulsy I didn't think it would be a walk in the park, but after all that time in the car, living how I was living — on the outside of everything, depressed, isolated, without focus or purpose, no job or project to throw myself into — I thought everything would be easy after that, that nothing could phase me and nothing could beat me — which hopefully is true, now I have fought my way back - and I thought that since I love writing, that that would be a joy to do for the next six months.
And occassionally it was. The times when I forgot that I was writing about me and just sank into it, but writing your own story is hard. And writing books generally takes everything you've got. Not nice...Feel wrecked. But at least it's over now. Now I can start rebuilding...
And now that it is over, I am looking for a job — (any offers gratefully considered;-)). Surely now I have completed this whole project I have demonstrated qualities and skills that I can put to use — hopefully it won't be as hard getting a job now that at least I have somewhere to live this year. No job hunt can be as bad as one done while living in a car.
I hope none of you ever find that out the hard way. But I'm beginning to see that anyone can end up living how I did really, especially in this country and this age of easy credit and staggeringly high debt that too easily swings out of control. Most people, apparently, are only a couple of paychecks away from being homeless — which is scarey. I think if people were being honest, and the statistics known, it would be a huge number who had found themselves down to the wire and heading for that big slide down. Of course most would go to family or friends if it ever happened, or think they would. But if like me that first night sleeping in the car wasn't planned, just happened, and they survived it, maybe they'd do it for another night, never thinking it would last more than a very short time: days, a week, a couple of weeks...? Then maybe, like me, they'd decide to wait until they got back on their feet again instead of going through the shame of telling anyone, maybe afterwards nobody need know. I'm sure I can't be the only one that has happened to, once the slide begins it is soon overwhelming. Though, from all the emails I got from people at the beginning, people telling me how they had either been in my situation, or come close to living in their cars themselves, emails saying: 'there but for the grace of God go I.' I know that many of you know that already.
Very disorientating weather. Feels like the first days of spring today. The laneway looked fabulous on days like this, all that green, jewelled light falling through the branches of trees tightly wrapped in ivy — magpies and squirrels and jays hopping along the banks or flying across branches. I shouldn't say this, I've tempted fate too many times, but sometimes I miss it. Not living in my car there, of course not that, but things about it, that extraordinary silence, just being a part of it sometimes.
Happy 2007 to all
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