a fortune found by many .

Hello. My name is Candace. I am seventeen years old. 1

I did not start living until I was eight years old. Before that, I cannot remember anything about my life before that. So, as far as I was concerned, I wasn’t alive until I was eight.2

My mother is a lesbian, and my father is a gas station attendant. My mother and father apparently divorced when I was five years old, but as I said, I cannot remember. My mother ran off with her lover, while I stayed with my dad until I was eleven. 3

Three weeks before my eleventh birthday, my mother and her lesbian lover took me away from my dad, and he didn’t protest. He said my mother could take better care for me than he could.4

I grew up in the small town of Tofino, British Columbia. My mother had lived there all her life, as her aboriginal ancestors did before her. She met my dad one afternoon while he was fishing, and after seven months of courtship, he eloped with her. Three months later, I was born. 5

My father was born into a white trash family, and they were outraged when they had found out that he had not married a nice “white” girl like his mother had wanted. However, when they got a good look at me, they instantly fell in love, according to mother.6

When my mother ran off with her lesbian lover, Carley, my father’s parents said that the had known all along. I guess, because of my mother’s very outgoing, bold attitude, and no desire to be girly, it might have seems obvious to others that her gender preference was for women.7

My father was a dominating man. Maybe that was the reason that my mother had gotten married to my father in he first place; he had forced her to. He would come home every night, tired from working nights at the gas station, and would beat my mother. She would scream and cry every time, begging him to stop, and asking him “why, why, oh why did he had to do this to her?” one day, however, she became fed up with it all, and left. I don’t blame her much. 8