Childhood overview...

October 14th, 1985, Georgia Ann Lee is born. The leaves fell early that year, brown and sullen in the weeks of cold rain that had begun in September. Her mother, Liz, loathed being pregnant, plagued by morning sickness and abstinence from the drug-cushion usually shielding her from sharp reality. She felt she was doing all she could to give her unborn child a good start. Georgia's birth was complicated and her mother nearly died, yet she went home with with her birth mother, named after her mother's home state and her father's mother.

Shortly after Georgia's birth, her mother resumed abusing, adding new substances into a merry- go-round of numbness. Georgia suffered from near starvation and abuse in myriad forms and was in and out of foster care from her earliest days. Her father was an addict like her mother and finally left for the last time when she 2 years old. Her mother had a strange pride that would not allow her to ask for help and caused her to keep of a facade of coping, so Georgia's grandparents never knew they needed to be in the picture. Her mother finally ran out of luck and overdosed on heroin and died on the couch next her daughter while cartoons played one cold grey Saturday morning just after her eighth birthday in 1993.

From this time forward, Georgia Ann Lee had no one to call family and was in the foster care system, shuttling from one home to another until her 16th birthday. The grandparents she never knew had long since died, adding to the air of tragedy around her.

Unbeknownst to Georgia, she had an admirer of sorts from the age of 5. A mysterious male figure stood in the shadows of her life and made things happen. He first spotted her late one night while she was reading on the back step of her home while Liz was partying inside. He just happened to be passing through the shadows when he saw her blonde hair and upturned nose, he also sensed a keen intellect, which stunned him in someone so young. There was a sweetness in her that he desired, but knew that he couldn't have... yet. So he planned and waited and pulled strings in her life, continually weaving a tighter web around her and pulling her ever closer to him. He knew that his plan would not be achieved in days or months... it would take years to bind her to him as he desired. A tug on this thead, a snip on that one, she would be his, all in good time. She wouldn't be the first of his progeny, nor would she be the last.

The first of his heinous acts was to add to Liz's cornucopia of chemical assistance. When her mother ran short of money, it would appear out of nowhere, and Liz, in her addict's haze, wouldn't even question the origin. He then made sure that her grandparents could not aid her, taking part in their untimely deaths. He stalked her from foster home to foster home, making sure she never stayed long, except for the worst situations. He progressively funneled her into increasingly isolated situations until she dropped out of high school at age 16 and ran away to the city streets. At this time he befriended her more directly, first acting like a mentor, offering shelter and support. Slowly he insinuated himself into her life and emotions to where she became dependent on him, ending in her embrace on her 18th birthday, a day grey and misty and wet, much like the day of her birth.

Growing up, Georgia never felt rooted. Moving around was de rigeur. She had no memory of her father, maybe a vague distant impression of someone male. Despite her rootlessness, Georgia created roots as best she could. She was never drawn to the Barbies and teddy bears like other little girls, always feeling rather alien from all those pretty little girls with their pretty clothes and their petty little games. The one gift her parents had managed to give her was intelligence, despite their shortcomings and impaired coping mechanisms.

Georgia Ann had an extreme curiosity about the world. She always wanted to know "Why" and her mother was never adequately able to answer her inquiries as a child, mostly due to the drug- haze in which Liz existed.

Georgia found a haven when she entered school, luckily her mother did have the presence of mind to enroll her in headstart, though whether she made it there all the time was another question. She fared better when with her various foster families, generally being more well-fed and less abused, generally. Being bright, Georgia learned to read by the age of 4 and mentally devoured anything with words. With the shuttling of her life between her mother and the various foster homes, she clung to words and books like most children cling to teddy bears.

The most constant thing in Georgia's life was school, even with the changes inherent in her life. She didn't really make friends because she was rarely in one location long enough to form any real bond with anyone. There were a few teachers who did their best to nurture the child, but once the trust was beginning to form, she would be ripped out of one situation only to be flung into another. Georgia haunted the library of every school she attended, soaking up knowledge. Even if she didn't get to keep many books, many of them stayed with her at some level.

When Liz died, Georgia was only 8 and she viewed it objectively, almost clinically, especially for a child of her age. She recognized unemotionally what her mother actually was to her and what mothers were supposed to be to their children. She realized she might actually be better off since the foster homes she'd been in & out of all her life were generally better than any "home" Liz ever offered, she also knew she stood a more consistent chance of being closer to the libraries which sustained her. Despite her seeming indifference to Liz' death, there was a kernel Georgia that knew something was missing in her life, but she didn't so much feel it, as know it it was there. She was still unaware of the figure moving in the shadows of her life.

As Georgia grew from being a little girl to a young woman, she clung to knowledge and books, often shunned by other kids for being the weirdo, geek, bookworm, etc. She didn't react well to the name calling, teasing and bullying, often either breaking down in tears or flying into rages when the abuse didn't stop. Sometimes she physically hurt people, never feeling particularly remorseful in the aftermath. There wasn't much that could make her react emotionally, but she did have her buttons, often cued by abuse or dashed expectations.

Georgia's isolation increased with her age as her stays in foster homes got shorter and shorter as she gained a reputation as a problem child. Foster parents or family members would mysteriously fall ill or die (especially situations in which she started to relax and feel a measure of happiness), she was never implicated per se, but her reputation as "bad luck" grew, so the word of mouth about her in the foster system grew as well. By the time she was 15, Georgia was usually only being sent to the worst families, the ones usually reserved for only the toughest foster care cases. She still remained unaware of her shadowy admirer.