Tamara Mayer:  

I tend to think I was a nerd. I grew up in northern Minnesota and North Dakota, so when my family moved to Salem when I was 15, I thought we had landed in LA! We moved around A LOT when I was growing up, so I was always the outsider. Back to the point, when we ended up in Salem, there were 3x the amount of people just in Sprague than the whole town we just moved from. Talk about the outsider. To my rescue (and demise) the neediest, lonliest bunch of dope fiends and alcoholics. They honed in on me like I was standing alone in the middle of a field. WOW! It was so good to finally feel like I belonged somewhere and that people seemed happy to see me I got sucked right in. In the midst of all the chaos, however, I still managed to pull A's, join band, participate in marching band, and learn some actual social skills. I made some friends that truly did care about me and my "partying" and they tried so hard to help me. One thing I remember the most is that they never treated me like a freak. I was a mess in high school. Lotsa drinkin', drugin', oh and yes; plenty of fighting. One of the biggest suprises of my life was when I was 17 and my friend picked me up for school. At this point in high school, I spent the better part of my first 2 periods hiding out in a bathroom stall waiting for the welts and handprints on my face to go away. That particular morning my friend picked me up for school and saw my face. That was the very first time in my life that anyone had ever told me that being beaten every day was not OK. I never talked about it to any one because I thought it was normal. Within two weeks I had mov...Expand for more