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First person: Gemskii on regaining control of her life

March 12 2014
The route back from homelessness is a long, hard one. But it's been worth it, says the DJ

I don’t really know how I ended up homeless. It just happened. You might think it shouldn't have, my schooling was private and so I pretty much always lived away from home. College accommodation was a shared room but that was still paid for by my mum.

By the time I was there, I had already started self-harming. But here was when I started taking overdoses. I knew about overdosing from TV and films, but how many do you have to take? The bottle said 12. I edged up the dose slowly. 12 didn’t kill me, it turned out.

Once though, after overdosing, I fell down in a Manchester doorway and was shocked that people pass you by. No one stopped to help me. A small time later I overdosed enough to have my stomach pumped. Ha! I never did it again after that. I mention all this because it shows that at 16 I was pretty miserable.

I moved out of the cramped room and into a love triangle where she fancied he, he fancied me, and I fancied she. I had sex with he. My first consenting sex was a shameful secret and that did nothing for my developing sense of self.

I got several flats in a short space of time but ended up in a derelict one with boarded windows and mice. I met a woman, she was considerably older and was established so I moved in. After a couple of years it ended and having nowhere to go I ended up street homeless in London. I was 19.

During that first night a man approached me whilst I ‘slept’ (I wasn’t asleep - it was too cold). He offered me a can of coke that I didn’t want but in any case I accepted his kindness and sat up. I remember not wanting to talk to him; warning bells were ringing so I lay down to sleep.

He got on top of me and started thrusting. My coping strategy was to disconnect and disappear inside myself. Luckily another man was passing and rescued me.

Next I answered a dubious job advert and ended up in Italy, in a brothel. One of the customers bought me out but set me to work with his friends – after a while he tried to have sex with me too. I ran back to the brothel and stuck it out so I could get paid and escape.

Back in the UK, I stayed briefly with parents that didn’t understand, mainly because I never told them. Why? Because their love felt remote.

There were more girlfriends, one was really violent, but I didn't leave because I had nowhere to go until I got a job as a resident DJ. It was cushy, short hours, high pay, no rent, and I became a party girl with a really good skunk habit.

In the end I got arrested for my drug use, caught by CCTV camera and prosecuted. Suddenly my homelessness was visible. The courts intervened in 2000, placing me with St Mungo’s. My last suicide attempt was here but I survived with arm stitched inside and out.

They placed me in supported housing. It was a turning point. For a start it was the first time I had a place that was mine and not dependent on a relationship.

It’s 2014 now and I’m very different because I’ve had to unpick all my internal tangles in order to survive. I now have a home that I share with two dogs and four goldfish. I got my first sofa yesterday, a friend’s cast-off one, but it is leather and comfortable. I don’t want to die any more, I don’t drink or smoke and if I have sex these days, it’s completely my choice.

I work for myself too, both as a theatrical practitioner and as a cleaner – building maintenance I prefer to call it. I have an award-winning one-woman show, Transformation, which tells the story of my journey, plus I teach. It feels good to take control of my life, to tell my own story.

Gemskii took part in the Where From, Where Now project.

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