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Mini Locker courtesy of Cameron Morissette

Rusty locker

“I’ve lost everything I owned several times, and this I somehow managed to keep. It doesn’t seem like it’s ever a possibility to lose anything when you’re younger. And then it’s just suddenly the reality. You adapt to it prey quickly. And the things that you do have become really special, and you’re excited about those”

Cameron grew up in southern California – not in one specific place, but across the region. Her parents often fought.

So, what was my childhood like? It was bad. It was a bad childhood. It was strange circumstances with strange people who shouldn’t have had children. It was a weird situation. We moved a lot. We were in the beach areas, like Redondo and Hermosa, San Pedro, unl I was 11. And then I ended up in the Inland Empire.

It was also around age 11 that Cameron’s parents got divorced. This introduced a new level of instability into her young life as she faced neglect, abuse, and a long‐distance move.

After that is when things got really crazy because my mom was single again, and she started going on these websites, online dating and all of that. She started starving me and my brother. We got one 99-cent chicken sandwich from Burger King a day. And she’d just be in her room, doing drugs and chatting online with men, trying to get a relationship.

Her mother ended up dating a man who was in the military, and would be visiting Washington state. So the family moved there, leaving most of their possessions behind. This was the first time Cameron lost nearly everything she owned. A few years later, the family was living out of their car in Sacramento. Cameron was 14 when an aunt came to pick up her brother. She jumped at the chance to leave.

My brother was bailing, and I got to leave with him. I got to grab one box, and then my mom flipped out and wouldn’t let me take anything else. So that’s how I lost everything I owned that time.

The third time Cameron lost nearly all of her material possessions came a few years later, while she was living in Running Springs with her aunt, and the wildfires swept through. When searching through the ashes, they found the remains of Cameron’s mini locker. She recounts how she first acquired it:

We were at Roundtable Pizza and we were playing on the arcade games. This was before the whole mess, my parents were still married, there was money, and we were fed. My brother really wanted to win this locker, so we were all trying to get the tickets – my mom, my brother, and me. I was really good at the light machine, so I did a lot of the work to get the tickets to win the locker.

When my brother didn’t have anywhere to put it in his room, he shoved it in the closet. He didn’t want it, and I was like, ‘I want it.’ I covered it in stickers. At one point it was probably Brittany Spears, Spice Girls. And those cat stickers with all the glitter. It was decked out.

Today, Cameron keeps the locker on her desk, as a piece of art. But it also serves as a poignant metaphor for who and what she’s become.

I just really like it. I think it looks really cool. And it’s the one token from my childhood that has a bit of a fond memory to it. I don’t have many of those.

It used to be this brand new cute little thing ... The locker looking like this feels like more of my personality now than what it used to be. It’s kinda darker, rusty, antique ... I guess I’m a burnt out rusty locker now. I don’t mean it in a negative way; I just mean it in the best way possible. I don’t think that I’m this falling apart, rusty pile of crap. The locker it’s an aged art piece. It’s been through a lot. And it’s better now.

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