My name is Texas, and I live in Toronto currently, but I've lived in the States and in Northern Ontario for 20-plus years before coming to Toronto. I lived in Texas until I was 10. And then I moved from Texas to Moose Factory in 2000. December 10, 2000 is when I crossed the border. Which is my birthday. I was adopted. My adopted mother is a crazy lady that decided to drive herself, six kids, and a wiener dog from Texas to Ontario in December. Yeah. And make a trip out of it, and stop in almost every state we went through for a night, or a couple nights, until we got kicked out of our hotel 'cause we're crazy bunch that people didn't want in their hotels anymore.

I've been homeless for like, ten years, so I sleep when I can, where I can warm and safely. And sometimes it's a while in between. Usually I don't even remember [my dreams] because I crash so hard that the only time I wake up and remember a dream most of the time is when I'm falling off of something and before I hit the ground I wake up. Which apparently is a good thing. 'Cause if you hit the ground and you dream, apparently you don't wake up. I don't know if it's true or not, but that's something I've heard.

I don't really remember ever remembering my dreams except for—it's gonna sound pretty, I don't know, I wouldn't tell anybody just randomly on the street—but when I was in like grade five or six, I had a dream that I was pregnant and in labor, and I guess I like was actually actively thinking I was in labor while I was sleeping, and I peed my bed because I was trying to push a baby out [laughs].

My older sister was moving back to Texas and [there was] a lot of family drama going on. Maybe, like, someone I knew was pregnant or shortly after that my, my sister did get pregnant. That [dream] was just like, one that I vividly remembered. Especially 'cause I peed myself and I didn't wanna tell my mom. Like, it's embarrassing, right? But now I'm like, whatever [laughs]. It is what it is.

If it's not something very vivid or whatever, which is rare, I don't remember them at all. Like, but then sometimes I'm not sleeping yet, but I am like in that in-between where I think I'm talking, but I'm not. And I'm dreaming, I guess, because it is just the most random things. And then I'll just start talking about it out loud and people are like, “What are you talking about?” Like, “You are talking about an avocado in a wig, like, where's this coming from?” My partner is not very keen on wigs because of a childhood memory. And he hates avocados for some reason. So, I guess I was dreaming about how I could torture him [laughs]. Like, by putting avocados everywhere and hanging wigs and putting them in his like dresser drawer and stuff. He doesn't remember his [dreams] very often either, but he remembers them way more often than I do.

I didn’t share my [dreams] with anybody growing up. Not really. Like I was adopted, right? I was in Child Protective Services till I was like 7 or 8, roughly. Like both my adoptive parents would work like night shift, or one would work nights and one would work days. Because they were both registered nurses. And like, they're Canadian, and they moved to Texas, and that's how they adopted us. So, we wouldn't have like sit downs for family meals and stuff. It was always just half of us here and there. So, we never really had family conversations like that.

But, um, when I did remember my dreams, I would—when I was a bit older, I would tell them to my partner at the time, Jay. And then my other partner after that, Nick, and then my now partner, Mike.

But other than that, I never really shared them with many people unless they were in them. They'd be like, “I don't know why, but you were in my dream last night and you were trying to ride a horse” and like, just random whatever, you know, weird shit that would never actually happen.

[Moss Park] is my home away from home, which is my home 'cause I don't have a home [laughs]. Like, they are amazing here and they've been part of my life since the first day we popped the tent up in the park. I can proudly say I was there and participated and helped with that and have stuck with it since. Yeah, I was there since the very first night. There's not many of us left around that we call ourselves OGs—Moss Park OGs.