When you're lost, you just want to be found.

By a feeling.

By a place.

A person or persons.

A knowingness....

....you just want to feel safe and to belong.

I began taking drugs, because there was so much that I couldn't consciously face or understand. Drugs, were initially taken to give me new and wonderful insight into my life and in the world in general. I was feeding my morbid soul with new experiences. I was reading books by Carl Jung and Friedrich Nietzsche. I began delving into the murderous psyche's of serial killers. My diary and my writings became nothing but dark ramblings about love, life, religion and spirituality. My journey into finding out where I belonged, was running at full and unmanageable throttle. It was at this time that I bought my first ever crystal, who is still by my side while I write what I am writing today—my point that I'm desperately trying to make is this...I was just trying to understand.

To soak up all of my inner confusion and my inner hate for myself, I wanted to learn why what had happened to me, happened to me. I wanted to understand the human mind, the human heart and the human soul.

I had so many questions that needed answering.

Maybe I was born to be different?

Maybe different people can't be treated normally?

Maybe I had to be raised in darkness, so I could find my own light?

I had always sensed that there was a spiritual awareness within myself, I was just too young to understand it at the time. It was always an ingrained feeling that never went away. When I began reading more and more books about the higher consciousness and even more books about all things paranormal, a piece of my missing jigsaw puzzle finally felt like it had been found. When I had curiously studied about various different religions, I realised that I didn't seem to fit into any of their beliefs or into any of their religious boxes. Yet with what I had experienced with the little old lady who used to come and sit on my bed when I was very young; that began to make sense to me. Many different religions, they just didn't.

Some might say that the drugs were influencing all of my newly found beliefs, that they were camouflaging my newly born spirituality, because I was simply, under the influence of drugs, but I think it was much more than that; drugs had opened up the doors to my tightly shut consciousness. That consciousness had been glued shut because of my parents, the Catholic school, the molestations, Brandon and all of the many other hurtful things that had happened in my eighteen years of life. Drugs, they gave me an open gateway. They had opened something in my mind, that had never been opened before—truth.

With truth, even the painful ones...comes strength.

I wanted to be stronger.

I needed to feel stronger.

So many people or circumstances had stripped me of my strength, that it made me want to feel strong again. I had never felt strong, but drugs, they did.

They gave me an attitude.

They gave me answers.

They told me that my mum never cared, neither did my dad. They told me that the Catholic school was simply a religious setting from which they could teach their shallow and small-minded doctrines. They told me that Ivan was a sick bastard, and that Maria and Mario were just younger sick bastards. They told me that Brandon was nothing but an egotistical seducer, who took what he had wanted from me, before flying his self-obsessed ass back to America.

Yeah, drugs...they gave me the bitter truth.

Something that my mum had never been able to give me.

Drugs had reminded me of a time, of the only time, when I had tried to talk to my mum about Ivan. I remember the day so well. It was while I was that resentful and angry fifteen year old that I told you about. Mum was ironing some of her clothes, because she was going out somewhere, and I just felt so unbelievably angry with her on that particular afternoon. I was so angry, I felt the anger constricting in my veins. "Do you remember Ivan, Ada's lodger?" Out of the blue, that question to my mum just fell from out of my fifteen year old mouth. I just wanted to see my mum's reaction. I wanted to quell something that had unnervingly been growing deep inside of me.

"Yeah." Mum said, concentrating only on the ironing of her clothes.

"I remember him." Was my very brief reply. I had said it with such a vengeful tone to my teenage voice. I said it, because I just wanted mum to ask me why I remembered him. But mum being mum, she didn't. I know I had watched her just ironing whatever item of clothing that she was ironing. I was trying to tell her something. Something, that had twisted me up in tormenting knots so many times, yet she was more interested in what was on her stupid bloody ironing board. From out of nowhere, my rage wanted to be heard. "Do you know what he did to me?" My scream came out as unhinged and broken.

Mum stopped ironing, and there in her vacant, unmotherly blue eyes, I saw it. "I don't know what you're on about, Mary Rose?" She couldn't even look at me. Or, she just didn't want to.

"You did. You did know. You knew and you didn't do anything about it!" My scream became more unhinged, more broken.

Yet mum, had still remained calm. Abnormally calm. "Mary Rose, I don't know what you are going on about, I really don't."

Jason even came into the kitchen at this point, just to see what all of my screaming was about. "Did Ivan, Ada Woodcock's lodger, ever touch you?" I needed to know whether my brother had been touched too.

Confused, Jason's face screwed up with all of his confusion. "What? What are you on about? No! No, he didn't!" He knew that he had just walked in on something huge, catastrophically huge.

"Well, he touched me, and she let it happen!" My screaming went on.

Jason had looked from me, then to my mum, then back to me. "What is she on about, Mum?" My brother now wanted answers. Answers that would never come.

"It's nothing, Jason. It's just Mary Rose being Mary Rose." And that was all my mum ever said about it. About Ivan, the touching...it was never brought up again. Not with mum, not with Jason.

On that day, mum could have been truthful.

I had seen the truth in her eyes that day, but she couldn't share it with me. She didn't want to. But I had seen it. She knew about Ivan. She knew that he had touched me.

Maybe, she could never face that truth?

Maybe, it was something she could never admit to?

She should have protected me, but hadn't...maybe that was just too much for her to ever accept?

Yet the drugs, they reminded me of that day. They had reminded me of that look in my mother's eyes. They reminded me of all the reasons why I no longer needed to care what my mum thought of my rebellious and spiritual life. I didn't need to care about what my dad thought about it either, because he'd only ever been a part time father when and how it suited him.

Yes, drugs...they gave me the stark truth.

And that stark truth gave me something from which I could build upon. I didn't yet know what that something was, but I wanted to have some reckless fun while I tried to rebelliously figure out how I would eventually build some stability back into my life.

That fun came in the form of one of the biggest revolutions in the British youth culture—raving.

Along with the drugs, raving also became a part of my life.

I'd always loved music anyway, so to be able to combine music with dancing and drugs; was something else that I quickly felt like I belonged to.

The other ravers, were all new and exciting to me. As I was finding new friends, I was just as quickly losing old ones. They didn't like the alternative Mary Rose. They didn't like the things I was doing and the people I was doing it all with, and Lucy was one such friend.

She wasn't happy when she found out that I was partying and taking drugs, but I didn't care at the time. It was all about me discovering myself. It was about me living on the outside of the boundaries of life.

I was different, I may as well have acted differently.

Being different, made me feel like a somebody when I was feeling like a nobody. I became part of something that was exciting and lawless. I could do what I wanted, when I wanted.

I lived for only the weekends, then bummed around during the weekdays with like-minded souls.

I felt cool.

Invincible.

Strong.

Just as I had lost my dearest Lucy, I found my dearest Cora.

We met at a local club, and quickly became inseparable friends.

We raved together.

Took drugs together.

Stayed together.

Cora would become the friend who would get to see me in my entirety.

The good.

The bad.

The broken.

The weak.

The immature.

The mature.

The lost.

The found.

Together, we have since grown into wives and mothers. Cora has seen every single side to me, and probably now knows me better than I actually know myself. If truth had an human form, it would be in the very beautiful shape of my beloved friend, Cora. She has always been open, honest and fiercely loyal. Dependable and staunchly trustworthy. She has been my anchor on so many occasions when I've been lost in one of my morbid seas.

When we first met, she knew a lot of people, yet preferred to be alone. One night, we just got talking. The lonesome girl who I kept seeing at parties or pubs, had finally caught my eye. That night, we danced and we laughed so much, that we ended up having an early breakfast somewhere. We had no sleep that night, but had gained an awakening friendship that I am sure will last the rest of our lifetimes.

It turns out, that beneath that lonesome yet confident shell that Cora had often walked around with, whilst wearing her distinctive bright orange Naff Naff jacket; there was a depressed girl.

Maybe it was our two damaged souls that decided to bring us together? Who knows? I'm just glad that we did happen to find one another.

For without Cora, I really don't know whether I would still be here.

Without her, I may not have met my husband.

I may not have became a mother.

My faithful friend looked after me, when I didn't want to look after myself.

She held me up, when I was too drunk to walk.

She pulled me away from guys, that she knew just wanted to sleep with me.

She held my hair away from my mouth, while I threw up.

She would be my common sense, when I literally had none.

At my very worst.

At my most abnormal.

At my most rebellious.

Cora stood by me.

That meant something to me. It will always mean something to me.

Friendships like that, they don't come along every day.

Even when I was being a weird bitch, she still stood by me.

Everything I used to do around this time, was to either shock or to offend—I had a large bread knife that I called Fred. I had two pet Coke cans, that I kept inside of an oriental wicker cage, I had entered my retro phase with clothes and hair—I was thought of as being very different, so I figured I may as well play that weird and different role incredibly well.

Between the age of eighteen and twenty, I was all kinds of messed up. I was still very much on the road to my own self discovery, just haphazardly winging my way through my partying life.

I would hang out with junkies and drop-outs. Reality and the people in it, held no interest for me whatsoever. The thoughtless and reckless parts of myself, were constantly testing the patience of those who cared about me. Or maybe, I had been testing whether they would still stick by me, whatever I did?

Nan and gramp did.

Cora did.

To a certain degree, so did my brother.

But many didn't. And I can't ever blame them for that. I was out of control. I wasn't caring who I offended along the way to finding the true me. It didn't matter if I took some casualties on my self discovering journey, all that mattered was that I was finding me.

With drugs in my system, I was trying to carve out some kind of future, by confronting my past. All of its bitter truths, I was facing. My broken spirit, was being put back together with amphetamines, ecstasy and spiritual knowledge. To be honest, I don't think I ever truly understood the gravity of what had happened to me, nor did I ever understand the gravity of how I had tried to cope with it. But at the time, the drugs and the partying felt good.

I thought I was someone.

I thought I belonged to something....

....how utterly stupid was I?