I was born in a town called Athabasca in Alberta, Canada. Shortly afterward, I moved with my family to New Brunswick where I stayed until I was 6 or 7 years old. To escape from an extremely abusive father, my amazing Mother escaped with us and we came West where we eventually settled in Regina, Saskatchewan. From that point on, with the help of child counseling and the most supportive Mom a girl could ask for, I led a relatively normal childhood.
Some of my best memories are of going camping with my mother and two sisters. I played a lot of video games, such as Super Mario and Donkey Kong for the now-ancient systems of Nintendo and Super Nintendo. I went to school and got good grades. We always had a lot of pets that ranged anywhere from hamsters to cats and even birds. I started doing art as a coping mechanism for my traumatic start in life at a very early age. I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. I showed an early interest in writing, writing poetry from the age of 9.
High school was an interesting time for me. I was a girl who took my own path in life, refusing to live by the standards of most. A “rebel” of sorts, you could say. I never had designer name brands because we were poor, and so I was never one of the “cool kids”. Instead, I designed my own clothes, often sewing them by hand in creative and unique styles that always stood out but often got me picked on in school. Although I was a unique, rebel girl, I never did drugs or fell in with a bad crowd. I did, however, start smoking cigarettes near the beginning of high school and continued to smoke into adulthood. The one thing I was known for during my teenage years was art. I had a style of art which, at the time, was incredibly morbid and even gory at times. However, it was my style and I loved it, even though it sometimes got me into trouble. My art teacher was very supportive, however, and took me seriously as an artist which helped me grow my talents and refine my skills. I was chosen two years in a row to have my art displayed in a school board-run art show and was presented with an award by the mayor of the city both times. When I graduated high school in 2003, I received an award for my art, and the school board purchased one of my paintings to be displayed in the school until it eventually shut down in 2008.
After high school, I got a job working in a call center. It was a wonderful experience and I met a lot of incredible people, many which I still know today and one who became the love of my life years later. I worked in this call center called Startek for almost 4 years. During those 4 years my youngest sister who was 2 years old at the time almost died because of an undiagnosed celiac disease that was causing her to wilt before our eyes. I also went through a house fire around the same time and lost everything that I owned.
I eventually quit working at Startek to work in another call center run by a an office supply company called Staples. During the years working for call centers, I was in two major relationships, both which did not work out because they weren’t what I wanted. I was in the second of these relationships when I quit working call centers entirely in order to work from home writing articles. Over the next year and a half, I wrote articles or drew portraits and made a living doing so. For a while, I was designing knitting patterns and selling them online, and I even went through a small phase of making and selling soap.
The relationship I was in throughout all of this was comfortable, and I never knew that I wanted more until it fell in my lap. An old friend from the Startek call center days named Dave had asked that we meet up for coffee via Facebook. About a month later, and working through the deep social anxieties I was suffering with at the time, I agreed. At the end of the evening, when he dropped me off back home, something had changed inside me. The world seemed more colourful and I felt, on some level, happier than I had ever been. It was like I had met my true love in a person who I originally thought would be a coffee-buddy.
A month later and my entire world changed. Everything I thought I knew turned upside down as I broke up with the man I was with at that point. I risked everything, and gave up all I had for a chance at true love with a guy I met 7 years prior in a call center atop the mall downtown. It wasn’t like me to take risks like that. I’ve always, as a general rule, been a very cautious person but this was something I couldn’t pass by.
Within a day, at the end of September in 2010, I moved out of the place I lived in with the ex, and into the condo of the man who had swept me off my feet, while simultaneously quitting smoking. Was it moving fast? Absolutely, and completely against my basic nature, but there was no other way at that point. Things kept moving fast. In October we got a dog together and named her Juno. At the end of November, I found out that I was pregnant just two months into this new relationship. To my surprise, Dave was happy with the news and we very much enjoyed the ups and downs of pregnancy together. I love his family, and he loves my family, and we see both quite frequently. Our baby, who we fondly nicknamed Squishy, was due in early August. The 5th to be exact.
Darwin James ended up waiting until August 16th to be born. He weighed 8 pounds, 3 ounces and I delivered him vaginally with no medication or pain killers of any kind. It was certainly ond of the defining moments of my life. It was the happiest day of our lives.
Unfortunately, the happiness was short lived. On September 10th, Dave died suddenly in his sleep due to suffocation following one of his seizures. It was the most difficult days I have ever endured, and every day continues to be a struggle. Raising Darwin alone is not easy but it’s something I have to do. We are fortunate enough to have people in our lives who care about us very much.
Nothing will ever replace Dave but I’m happy that I had the opportunity to know him and have him know me in ways nobody else ever has. I try to live every day in a way that would have made him proud.
