My father was a military man and tried to run his house like it too. He was abusive, aggressive and had to be in charge. I am not sure I loved him but if I had to say one thing about him, he was the start of it all.

When I was very young I saw kids playing around on fish boards, the kind of skateboards that are just a tail and actually fairly worthless feeling but seeing kids go down little hills looked fun and I was jealous. I asked for a skateboard for my birthday, that was the one time my father would be kind in a year and he delivered big. It wasn’t some questionable fish board that would just be a toy but a proper skateboard from a professional shop custom painted with a purple and pink decal. This was days before we were moving again so I hardly got to use it and befriend the local kids that race down hills that were little more than bumps.

I struggled to even stand on the board at first and sure I could sit to go down a hill I wanted to do it right like the big kids had done before the move. Within a few days I was starting to move myself around on it and it was so different from a bike, I felt more free, it was not in the way or constricting me. My style was likely wrong and causing problems but soon I was starting to go down those kind of little hills while mum kept an eye on me, insisting I wear safety gear and the amount of times I fell? She was right. I wasn’t allow to even touch my skateboard without knee pads, elbow pads and a helmet. It wasn’t quite under lock and key but always kept high out of reach where even she struggled to get it. Still day in and day out I went out and played on my board doing little more than that in my free time.

Friends? I didn’t really have them, I was always just a few months warning away from the idea I would be moving again, all I had was that board that would come with me everywhere. It became my signature item I would bring everywhere, a backpack with my safety gear and the skateboard poking out. I would just push myself around on any flat ground that let me, I loved every little hill, every surface that would give me a bit more speed. I became a bit of a speed junky I guess. Just the idea I can go faster, I can push myself sure but gravity did a much better job than I ever could.

A girl spending time on a board or in her room really is an outcast, skating wasn’t cool it was barely a sport at times but there were magazines, tapes and the crazy ideas people came up with. Soon I was the bullied tomboy at school, girls are mean, boys are mean but my board? My board I can trust. I gave her the name Silver after the silvery trucks underneath. I wasn’t allowed her at school but when the time for fun came around? It was always time to play with Silver. As a kid without the wonders of the internet trying to learn anything is hard but through piecing together pictures and any recordings I could get my hands on I finally got off the ground. I had managed my first ollie… and fell on my butt. Still after so many attempts I had been off the ground under my own power on Silver, not something you are really going to manage well on a bike.

I was covered in bruises, plasters and cuts, I looked like I was being heavily abused and people worried my father was doing it, he had a reputation but he was much more aggressive with his voice and emotions, he didn’t raise his hand to me, maybe if I was a boy he might have but even as a tomboy I was still a girl. A girl that liked her hair short to keep it out of the way, and looked more like a boy except everyone knew I was a girl from the colours of my board. If the board was more neutral or boy-ish colours? I would have just been seen as a boy doing boy-ish things. Everyone expected me to play with dolls and yet all I wanted to do was skate, no friends, no other toys even got a glance, even when the weather didn’t allow me to go out I was going over the magazine and tapes. I was hooked.

As a young girl I don’t get to do much without my parents say-so, luckily my father was not around much, mostly the weekends so I was free to play whenever mum let me, we had a garden that at least allowed me to work on my tricks and I had free reign to go out there but to play out in the front? I had to be supervised. That time however was special, the hill at the end of the cul-de-sac was my favourite spot, just a drop that went into the small road where we lived with a lot of off shoots further down. Racing down that on my board was my favourite thing to do. I would grab Silver, walk up the hill, position myself at the top with the tail under my foot and do what would actually be a primitive kind of drop in technique and race down. I had to keep my eyes ahead of me and make sure no cars where coming but I had a lot of warning. I was the kid all the neighbours got warned and worried about. Kids play in the road all the time but I was playing at speed straight down the hill. I loved every movement of it even when I had to effectively slam my foot down to stop and get out of the way of a car.

The adults considered me a troublemaker, the kids weren’t allowed boards because of how reckless I was and how it would seem I had more injuries than unmarked skin. Kids were jealous and picked on me but I got to race around as much as I liked as long at the weather and time permitted. Mum basically carried a box of plasters with her at all times, I wonder how much blood I had lost just from my falls. I was managing more tricks but I could never get into using them beyond minor movements and never with the terrain. I was in it for speed. I was a thrill seeker, an adrenalin junky, I was without a care in the world as long as my grades didn’t slip enough for my father to get angry.

He had threaten to break Silver as punishment multiple times, he had come even close once or twice. I wasn’t dumb I just didn’t want to focus on school when I could be racing down the hill or practising basic tricks. He wanted me to grow up, get use to the idea I was going to be a mother and have no chance to play with the very board he had gotten me. That I would have to work a crap- bad job. He really has a go at me if I swear but it really comes up a lot in my skater stuff that I had gone all in on it. I was not a bad kid and they were just words to me, words you used to express yourself or cry out in pain with but the idea was I was going to have a boring job, be a mother to children and everything boring about the world. Maybe if he skated he would get it, he would understand that it isn’t just a phase of my life, it is my life. That is when things got a lot worse. It was time to move once again…