tHE fEAR 

I remember my childhood and I wish that I wouldn’t, I can’t say anything good about my
so-called family. They are the family that wouldn’t say bad things to your face but behind
your back, they sure will. When I was born, my mother had left me and my Grandparents
took me in and eventually adopted me. I wasn’t sure why they decided such a fate for me
when they treated me like a stranger and if I was the elephant man.

My Grandmother was the cruelest and the coldest person would ever meet. But in public and
not behind closed doors she was the best lady around; she volunteered for everything, she
baked for all the clubs in our little town, she was president for the Ladies Auxiliary at the
hospital and the treasurer for The United Church, she volunteered at the community bingos,
everything she did, but being my mother she couldn’t be.

I was adopted into the Addams Family, and there was a couple of family members that were
down to earth and not messed up like the rest.

From the time I was about 10 years old, my Grandmother would treat me so terribly, and I
would get the worst beatings ever. I didn’t have to do anything and I got it; it didn’t matter
with what she gave me a beating and trust me, I mean anything. I also must include that just
because I was also different than the rest in my family I got it for being myself. My biological
mother is Ukrainian and my biological father was a Cree Native man. They were even
married before I came along, so I don’t understand why my family had such cold hearts
towards me. But after I grew up a bit more, I finally understood why I was hated so much.

My Grandmother hated my dad and also because my dad was native. She had a real problem
with that fact. So then the problem was with me. I was part of my dad and my Grandmother
hated me for that. My Grandfather would go to the reserve to do some ice fishing, and there
was never a problem with my Grandfather and I. It was mostly my Grandmother who had a
cold, hate for me.

There was a time that I skipped school with a couple of girlfriends and when my
Grandmother found out about this, she waited for me with a baseball bat. When I walked
through the front door; she whacked me right in the face and broke my cheekbone and my
nose. She gave me 2 black eyes for about 2 weeks. I couldn’t go to school like this so she
wouldn’t let me go to school until I was healed. She made up an excuse to my teacher that I
was really sick, and to send someone to the house to drop off my homework. That was so
wrong and I even told a few people about this and they all thought I was bullshitting them.
My Grandmother could never do these things to me, she was an important lady in our little
town. She had so much pull that when you said my Grandmother’s name; people knew who
she was and I didn’t know that person. That says a lot. She worked the night shift at the

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hospital and she was usually gone by 10:30 pm and my Grandfather would go to sleep right
after she left to work.

I was only a kid growing up in a little country town full of old Ukrainians and nothing to do
at all at any time. We did have a movie theatre but the owner passed away and the place fell
apart. So one day it was just gone. They tore it down completely. There was only the
foundation left, and the kids made that into a BMX track; just for messing around and having
a place to be a kid. It was a great plan I think. Well at that theatre I had my first date and my
first kiss. I will never forget that memory. I was only 13 years old and to me at that time in
my life, I wanted to hang out with my friends and I never really wanted to go home, I would
wait for my Grandfather to come home before I would. That’s so sad to be afraid like that. It
was most of the time; not just here and there, it usually happened for no reason and when I
deserved it I still really didn’t deserve it at all. It was just no point trying to make her happy
and that was never going to change my relationship with my Grandmother. She was raised to
be cruel and not to show any emotions, her mother was a cold woman as well.

I remember a couple times going to see my Great Grandmother, she would yell at us kids for
playing to loud in the basement, or even when us kids would be too loud outside, she would
scream at us or come outside with the wooden spoon and try to hit us; so to think that my
Grandmother would be any different than her mother I’m just fooling myself. One time my
cousin was talking back and just being a kid when our Great Grandmother just wound up her
one arm and smacked my cousin until he actually spun off the chair he was sitting in and hit
the floor so hard that it make the floor in the living room rumble. There was no proper
reasoning to hit someone so damn hard, and it had to be hard to make the floor rumble all
the way into the other room.

To expect my Grandmother to be any different was just in my head, it was only my wishful
thinking that she would be nicer and not be so cold and hateful towards me. There were other
Grandchildren that never had the opportunity to see our Grandmother’s other side, she was
like completely caring and you could just see how how two-faced she really was. My own
Grandmother hated me, and I don’t care if anyone believes me or not, I know what I had
experienced growing up in a little country town where I was the black sheep and being native
just made things that much more difficult for me. You have never experienced or felt shut out
by the whole town you live in until it happens to you. That's what I had experienced when I
was a kid; a kid damn it. I had nobody to protect me or to tell anyone that what they all
thought of me because of what my Grandmother had told them, was wrong and way off and
that what was going on really was happening behind closed doors.

I had to live like that for 15 years until I had to move out and live with my boyfriend who
everyone hated, and that turned out badly in the end as well for me. I had the worst luck ever
and it was like as if a curse had been placed on me and that’s just never going to stop there. I
had run away a few times and ended up in a psychiatric hospital with people who needed to

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be locked up; I wasn’t like these people and I didn’t deserve to be there either. But my
Grandmother placed me there to get help. Help with what? Being myself? Trying to be a kid
with an abusive parent and the other parent an alcoholic? What was the reasoning for locking
me up and for telling everyone that I needed to be in a place like that? I was there for 8 weeks
and it was the worst 8 weeks of my life. Can you imagine the bull I had to go through and the
ridiculous sessions of talking about nothing that had anything to do with the abuse, but the
way I was treating my family and why I was such a rebel and why I had to hurt my family
with the things I did? I wasn’t doing anything, but being a kid. I would sneak out to party
with my friends, I didn’t do anything else.

I was abused and grounded all the time for being late or skipping school, or sneaking out and
getting caught. I didn’t do anything else. But because I am who I am; I did everything wrong
and I had to be taught to be a proper human being; like my Grandmother would say. Wow!
What a lesson to beat your kids into being someone who was hateful and cold and to be a
monster just like them. I had a life that I didn’t deserve and every time my Grandmother
would lay a hand on me, I would pray that she would kill me already and just end this
sickneSS i Had to endure. Why should anyone ever feel that way? And especially a child?

They were my Grandparents and I was still their family, but to treat anyone that way, they
deserve something too.

I swore to myself that if I had kids that I would never be that way ever to them, and that I
would only love them and show them love, not to show them hate and the crap I had been
shown and everything I had to experience. I would say something a different way; almost like
an accent and I would get hit in the face and I had to learn to say it in proper English. I didn’t
say it wrong, it just wasn’t her way, and when your a kid, your learning new words and how
to say them as is, so it wasn’t wrong just wasn’t up to her standards so it was wrong and
punishable.

Let’s just say that I’m an English major now and I went to college and university; got my
degrees and the learning experiences I wanted. Too bad that with everything that I have had
to encounter on this planet in 43 years pushed me over the edge until I had a nervous
breakdown and shut myself out from the world because I can’t handle too many people
around, can’t be in crowds of people anymore. I really don’t leave my home, I do everything
from home, and I leave if I have to.

I witnessed so much in my life and been through so much that my mind and my body can’t
cope with people and I don’t feel secure enough around anyone.My life is different from the
regular 43 year old woman, and it doesn’t bother me that I am this way. I have survived abuse
by my parent, I have lived through that and then came abusive boyfriends, drug abuse, jail,
having kids, divorce, more abuse, more drugs, overdosing three times, living on the streets,
never prostitution. I had met so many people, so many different people, different cultural

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people, good people, bad people, people who have shown me how to find myself and be that
wonderful person. It took years to locate Paige again, it took a lot of tears and a lot of anger,
and a lot of blame; took me into a dark place in the beginning of my journey to healing all the
pain I had to deal with and shut away in my mind.

Someone in my shoes who has never had to go through any of the things I have, would have
committed suicide or been locked away period. Someone doesn’t just recover from
everything like I have in such little time, if at all. I had been rapped, I almost was a payment
by my dead husband for drugs that he owed money to a drug dealer. I was left behind in
strange cities and strange people’s home. I have woken up with the wildest people ever;
people that only come out at night. People that don’t have a soul, some would just look at you
and you would get this cold shiver up and down your spine; to the point where you would
feel intimidated. These are the things that I had lived through and here to talk about today.

Nobody should ever go through these horrible things, ever in their lives, and should only be
in a movie or a book. There were times that I just wanted to die or someone to kill me, life
was hard on me and I hope that nobody ever has go through any of these experience or
witness any of these terrifying things like I have. I had seen people die, I had seen people get
really hurt, I had seen people being tortured; who wants to have those memories in their
head? It hasn’t been the life I expected to have and I don’t blame myself anymore, I used to
everyday and for what? Nobody took me serious enough to listen, they all thought I was
making things up for attention and just to cause others problems.

I laugh at these people now and I think to myself, if there ever was going to be the ned of the
world, I’d know how to survive and those who didn’t believe me and didn’t listen, wouldn’t
have a clue how to survive in the real world. I wouldn’t wish anything bad on anyone, but for
those who have made me into solid, amazing, strong, intelligent woman I applaud you, thank
you. I have so much in my life now like my children, my imagination, my pets, my friends,
and my hopes and dreams. And the best part of all, I’m still here to talk about this all. I am
grateful for that too. I have so much more to say but maybe in my book I’ll get to finish my
life story. But this was my fear and what molded me into this woman that I am today. I am
proud of who I am and where I come from, I get to breath another day.

By

Paige Kostyniuk

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