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Jako
August 22, 1995
I decided to live through it until I was 18 and could legally get away. He kicked me out of the house every once in a while. He did that when I was 13, 15 and 17, 17 a couple of times. He'd kick me out in the middle of the night in my underwear and T-shirt. I'd call a friend, go to their house. He'd call the police, say I was a runaway, and tell them where I was. They would handcuff me and bring me back home. They didn't believe that I left because was scared of getting hurt and that my father had kicked me out.
Right now I'm feeling a little detached and my words aren't as full of
emotion as I think they would have been had I not done an interview earlier
today. It's so hard to describe what I'm talking about. I don't like the
idea of doing this interview and saying things that make it seem trite
or like it wasn't as incredibly horrible as it was. I talk about it because
a lot of the people I speak to can identify with this, especially when
I talk to direct rehab kids or kids in the inner city. Because of the poverty
level, there is a higher level of unhappiness and stress in parent's lives
and I think it tends to make for a higher level of abuse. A lot of times
after my speeches people say, "not only did I realize that I could get
infected with HIV, but my boyfriend hits me. I know I need to do something
about it but I don't know what." I think it's good for them to see someone
who is not in that cycle anymore.
As soon as I turned 18 I moved into a friend's house that went to high school with me. I rented a room from her mom for $100 a month. I didn't graduate; I just barely got by with attendance and stuff. I had one credit to go so I walked at my graduation but I didn't receive a diploma. I just wanted that to be behind me. I was so unconscious in high school. I didn't know my place in the world. I didn't think of myself as a human being. I didn't have an objective sense of my reality and my place in that reality. Everybody has to develop their identity and decide who they are going to be. You go through this thing like, "who am I going to be? Do I want to be like this person or that person? Do I like this part of me? Do I want to create this in me?" I'm feeling like this really isn't what I should be talking about, but maybe it's what I need to talk about, so I'm going to talk about it.
Meredyth: Whatever you want to talk about is fine.
Jako: I moved out on my own with a friend to a downtown Portland apartment. I finally felt freedom. I hadn't even had a boyfriend until that time. I had kissed a guy when I was about seventeen and a half but that was it. Even that was weird, about the fourth time I realized that wow, this is putting thrills through my body. I was so scared of men, so scared that my father would get mad at me and also I thought that boys were icky, for a long time.
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