I'm sitting at work watching the rain come down through my freshly cleaned store window. Water Street is wet, but no puddles seem to be occurring quite yet. At least not out front of the store. And the weather is keeping customers to a minimum. Thanks to parking downtown being insane at the best of times are clients are usually walk-ins out enjoying the weather, or people that are here for specific items. Take a bus downtown and walk the part of Harbour Drive that isn't torn up, Water Street, and Duckworth. Check out George Street in the daytime...or the night, if you don't mind drunken crowds of people roaming the street.

I love St. John's, rain or shine. Or drizzle. Or fog. To say that St. John's is unique would be an understatement. Honestly, I never thought I'd live in a place this big again after spending four years living in Chilliwack. I've lived in Vancouver and North Vancouver. Spent a year in Calgary and hated it. Was supposed to spend a year in Oshawa but lasted maybe 6-7 weeks before heading back to Langley. And now I'm in St. John's.

I don't plan on leaving either. At least not for anything more than a visit elsewhere.

I feel at home here. For the first time in my life I actually feel at home. Before I came here I never felt quite right about anywhere else I've lived. There was always something missing, something I could never quite put my finger on. Now that I'm here whatever it was that was missing has been found. I think it was a piece of my heart, or a piece of my soul. Whatever it is isn't missing anymore. Maybe it's a connection to the land itself?

Maybe it's also the fact that Newfoundland holds no negative memories for me. Yes, my mother's second husband is from St. John's and he's a man that terrorized me from the time I was 8 until I was 13, but I don't associate him with St. John's. I associate him with Langley BC. And as far as I know he's still driving a taxi in North Vancouver somewhere, now denying that he ever laid a finger on me. But as I told a friend of his (who happens to believe his innocence) that a 13 year old would never make up stories about getting the shit kicked out of them and ending up in the hospital more than once. And when he spent time in the Riverview mental hospital he fucking admitted to abusing me and my mother. Bitter memories? Yes, but I deal with them better than I used to.

As I look outside I realize that I'm where I never expected to be when I was contemplating my life about 20 years ago.

/>Twenty years ago I was in Oshawa ON living with my father, bat-shit crazy step-mother, and young step-brother. Things were not good even though I pretended otherwise. This was about the time 20 years ago where my father and step-mother first attempted to sell my 'services' to a man old enough to be my grandfather. Of course because everybody was stone drunk I thought it was all a joke.

Until a week later when the old guy tried to shove his hands down my pants one night outside of my bedroom. He was telling me that he was setting up a bedroom for me at his place so I could come live with him and be his little sex toy. And that he would pay me and my father for my services. Everybody was sober this time around, but I wanted no part of this at all. It was disgusting and wrong...so I started trying to find a way out.

I was convinced that my mother didn't want me coming back home so I couldn't even talk to her about what was going on. I took to locking my bedroom door, or blocking it so it couldn't be opened easily. And when school I tried my best to pretend that my home life was good, even though it wasn't.

I don't know what is worse - going home and not knowing if I was going to get another beating, or going home and expecting to be forced to have sex with the old man my father was trying to sell me to.

My step-mother is a certified nutjob. She was actually proud to show me the psychiatrists' reports that showed just how unstable she really was. Perfect woman for my father, a man who felt it perfectly alright to take my virginity from me when I was a tiny girl and to now try to sell me to some old rich guy.

This woman actually attacked me because I dared to move my bedroom furniture around one day! I'm really surprised that I didn't end up scarred from where she dug her fingernails into my face and neck as she attacked me. No, I didn't back down from her and gave as good as I got, if not better. I did nothing wrong but she freaked right out, yelling, screaming, and lashing out at me. And when I fought back she tried to tell me she was going to call the cops and have me charged with assault. Until I told her that they wouldn't charge me, but they'd have no problem charging her...especially with her documented history of insanity. Forget just mental instability...this woman was just freakin' insane.

It was the third week in school when I got to go to classes and show the wonderful gouges my step-mother gave me. And gods bless my teachers for noticing that something wasn't quite right. One of them kept me after class to talk to me about the marks on my face and neck, and I admitted where they came from. By law the teacher had to report what happened...and I'm not sure how everything came about but three days later I was on a plane heading back to Langley BC, to my mother and the man who became my next step-father.

I found out later after talking to my step-mother's half-brother (who had been my boyfriend for about two-weeks before I was shipped back to BC) that both my father and step-mother never did go back to the townhouse we were all living in. They skipped out of town and headed to somewhere in Nova Scotia, haven't heard from either of them since. No great loss, in my opinion.

Apparently my father and step-mother had accepted money from the guy who wanted to buy me, assuming that I would let myself be bought and sold like a piece of chattel. And he'd paid them a fair bit of money to have a nubile young woman in his possession...dirty fucking pervert. I was all of 15 when this was going on, and a whole lot thinner and in better shape than I am now. Perfect pickings for perverts. And of course with me leaving it meant that those two now had to give the money back...and rather than do that they split town.

And I also heard from my counsellor at the time that Children's Aid had contacted the house about what I had told my teacher. I guess it was a case of 'the jig is up and it's time to get the hell out of Dodge before everything blew sky high.' It really doesn't matter because I got away before anything truly bad could happen.

I missed my first flight from Pearson's International thanks to my fuckup father, and trying to get my flight changed was a nightmare...until I called my mother to tell her what happened. I didn't know the phone number and couldn't spell the last name the number was under, and was quite panicked. Even if I knew the number I couldn't dial worth shit because I was shaking so hard. Thank goodness the operator picked up the line and talked to me...I spilled everything to her and that I was trying to get a hold of my mother. The operator got me through to my mother and stayed on the line throughout everything...to this day I wish I'd gotten her name so that I could thank her. It was a struggle to get the new flight arrangements settled, but I was bumped up free of charge from a standby ticket to first class in order to guarantee that I'd get home to BC safe and sound. Five freakin' hours spent walking about Pearson's, starving until one of the security guards fed me after finding out from one of the ticket counter workers what was going on. And then I was on a plane bound for the west.

I haven't gone to Ontario since, unless you count the brief stop in Toronto to run from one plane to another on our way to St. John's. And honestly, I have very little plans to visit there anytime soon...even if my parents ever do manage to sell their house in Vernon and finally move to Woodstock, or wherever. I can't really afford it, and if I ever did go there for a visit it would be more to see my little sister again. And the man I call my Dad, the man whose last name I carry proudly now. My mother? Well, not so much.

But now I live in a province that doesn't hold the same kind of negative memories for me. And I can honestly say that when it comes to the big picture that I'm happier here than I've been anywhere else.