Edit. : I fail at life. Today I went to get a blood test, ended up getting four needles poked in my arm for five bottles of blood.

Because my veins were too small, the clinic sent me to another hospital to attempt to get my blood to flow into a tube.
That's one needle.
The hospital I went to was cool. The first lady was really nice; she tried using a smaller needle and a baby needle, still to no avail. That's three needles.
Then another lady came in, almost impatiently, and basically jammed a medium needle into a vein in my left arm, and good god, the blood almost splurted into the bottles.

LOL So I have two needle wounds in both arms and I'm so sore at the elbows.

Here's the happy story of this week, by the way.


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True story. We received this story from the charity that we represented for our Civics project: Pathways of York Region for Youth and Families (shortened to Pathways). Her last name is kept in file to make sure that her life stays private

The story is of a girl named Andrea, who is currently in her 20s. When she was seventeen, her parents kicked her out of the house.

Why?

She was struggling with depression, an eating disorder, and an abusive boyfriend. She decided to get into alcohol abuse, self harm, promiscuity, and suicide attempts. Sometimes she would starve herself--eight days was her record, and she would do things to hurt herself like heating a frying pan to burn her own skin.

So one night, when she was seventeen, she had a huge fight with her parents. She repeatedly began to chuck a 5 lb. weight at the wall (about 2.3 kg) and created a hole about the size of a basketball.

So the cops were called and they took Andrea away to a hospital to get a mental assessment. When she was discharged, her parents literally disowned her.

So she was kicked out of her house, and the first few nights, she spent it in a friend's car. It was December. For all of you people who live above 30 degrees in latitude on the earth, in December, it is friggin cold. Drops to negative 15 celsius, which is about... 5 degrees Fahrenheit, give or take.

Then, she slept in the Markham Stouffville hospital in the prayer room and that's when she began to panic for her life. She didn't want to drop out of school, worried she'd have to get a job to find a place to live.

Her Vice Principal then introduced her to Pathways.

So Pathways works like this: Their program is generally tailored to the homeless youth around York Region, and they have places called "Home Bases" which is an actual house for homeless kids to live in. They go to school like regular children, and what happens is that afterschool they all rendevouz back at home base, living like a regular family. The house currently houses about... 16 kids, I believe.

So what happened was that Andrea started to live in Home Base. They fed her, clothed her, taught her life skills, and even gave her chores that she was first very disagreeable to, but eventually she began to appreciate the responsiblity she learned. The staff did therapy work and career education with her, and she learned to cope with her depression to the point where self-harm no longer crossed her mind.

(This isn't made up; I interviewed the chairman of the charity, and he knew her personally. Since this charity is a grassroots charity--meaning that it's local and small--they don't have many stories to share, except the few ones they gave me and my group.)

So now Andrea's a Ryerson University student, on her way to working at a mental health care centre and programs working for children. She's made up with her family, and is living with them again, and soon she'll be moving to Vancouver to work as a counselor for adults with drug addictions. Of course, since this story is dated a few years ago, she's probably already there and working today.

Her plans are to become an elementary school teacher, working with first grade kids.

So yeah. If you know anyone who's life is fucked up, if they're at the end of the rope, or even desperate for a place to sleep at night, it's good to know charities like Pathways that'll take you in.

If you live in the Toronto GTA area, it's good to look this charity up. We talked to Mr. Stephen Lollar, a very kind and enthusiastic man who reminds me a lot of my cheerful grandpa (tee hee ) and I'm glad we got to learn of it. I'm a little sad our group didn't win for the charity presentations (this was for a project called YPI where the foundation would give $5000 of it's fundraiser money to the charity for expansion) BUT we got to learn about it anyways.

There's about seven, eight kids who have been helped by Pathways (est. 1989) who went on to get university degrees, forty of which received jobs after high school, and a few who are on their way to getting out of highschool unscathed Most of the people that Pathways help are ranged in age from 0-24 years old, with family counselling and programs for new couples and their babies.

They also have something called the Drop In centre, where showers and laundry machines, food, medical people, and recreation is available until 8-PM every day. I don't think a lot of people realize how hard it is to get a shower when you're a homeless kid, or how hard it is to get your clothes clean.

Here's Pathway's website, if anybody's curious. I'm not asking for donations or anything; just a little cheer up knowing there's good people volunteering their time to help out kids in need