INsideOUT
by Crystal Favel
How will I ever be able to live through the chaos and crisis that has tormented my life since I was a child? When I was a very young child, I have watched my father try to kill my mom. I have watched my first boyfriend die of heart attack at my soccer game when I was sixteen. I have prosecuted my father and he was convicted of Sexual Exploitation. I have been beaten up and threatened by many.
I have slept on park benches, coat closets, underneath beds and on Canadian beaches. I have lived in a youth shelter for battered teens. I have grown up in the social and justice system but I am still antisocial and the justice system has failed me. I have felt betrayed by everyone I have loved and even sabotaged myself. I have been misused, misunderstood and thrown out to the wolves. I have been to locations in North America under duress, not knowing if I would live to see the next day. I have been called a squaw by white people, china girl by black people and prairie dog by native people. I was born bi-racial; blended by two cultures that will fight each other until environmental extinction.
I have never had a father or father figure and I have men issues like they're going out of style. I have deep resonating pain that comes out in forms of tearful waterfalls, rage and self loathing. I have searched for role models in my life but my level of standards were set by my father, a convicted pedophile, who preyed on helpless young girls, and by my mother who let her guilt and shame manifest into physical punishment, emotional torture and the sacrifice of my self-esteem for 35 years. Needless to say I trusted the wrong people and tripped and fell into womanhood pretty fast. I get scared when I have to go out at night and I purposely don’t wear certain colours outside so I don’t attract attention to myself. I have been pulverized by words and have been dragged down stairs by my hair. I have been diagnosed with a digestive disorder recently; my trauma has finally caught up with me, and manifested my rage and hurt into glass and needle pain in my abdomen. I am reliving every fight I’ve had with my mom through demented dreams and murderous memories. I thought that I was supposed to make a difference in the world; I thought I could be the one to bring peace and love to everyone. But my journey seems more ambiguous and now I doubt my very own existence. So I fell to sleep and had a little dream…
I was driving in Toronto in the area where I grew up in Scarborough; the ghetto is what they call it now.
I was driving a small lowered truck that had passengers. A black car slowly drove by me conspicuously
and then continued to drive on but I thought nothing of it. It made a U-turn at the corner to come back
the same way I was going. The black jacked-up car started to cruise by me in the same direction, but
appeared to slow down to the left of me. They slowly rolled down their tinted windows and started to
shoot at me.
What appeared to be a friendly ask-for-directions approach quickly turned into a drive-by shooting.
Everything transpired in a slow moving fashion and I became a target for death. One bullet entered my
chest, another into my cheek bone, several into my arms. When a bullet hit me it would puncture my
skin and pierce my body, but I could not feel the pain. One hit after another the bullets penetrated my
skin like it was jello. I watched with my very own eyes, the blood started to soak my clothes.
The seatbelt was the only thing that kept me sitting up and trapped as my body was punctured with
speeding bullets. Bang, Bang, Bang, is all I heard. By the time I realized I was a target of a shooting
they had sped off and no faces or traces had been found. A massive crowd from the intersection and
bus stop started to gather and one woman opened my door. She quickly unfastened my seatbelt and I
fell to the ground, but I still did not feel the pain. She was crying uncontrollably telling me to hang on,
but all I could feel was my body separating from my spirit, as I was bleeding profusely.
There was mass hysteria, people were trying to stop the bleeding from my chest, face and arms. I was
dazed and confused not knowing why I was even still alive. I looked up to the sky and then looked over
to my right hand. I noticed that my hand was clenched around this blood-stained blanket and I would
not let go. In fact no one could pry it out of my hand. I started to try and sit up from lying down in
someone's arms, people told me not to move. But again I tried to sit up and people were trying to keep
me down. Again I tried to sit up and successfully pried away from the grips of the on-lookers who were
trying to save my life.
As I sat up I told them,” I'm not going to die” but no one heard me.
I looked up to the sky but it was too bright to see anything, I looked to my left and saw a beautiful
sanctuary with a cascading earthy green lawn as far as the eye could see. I wanted to go into the
sanctuary and lay down by a tree, but I would have to get up and walk. I started to bend forward to
make efforts to crawl towards the sanctuary. In the background I could hear emergency vehicles quickly
approaching, but their sirens were not piercing; in fact, they made me feel that I must quickly get into
the sanctuary.
I miraculously stood up, hunched over and walked over to the green grass as I entered the sanctuary.
People and kids were crying, telling me to stay still, but I kept telling them that “with this blanket I shall
not die.” I staggered past the sidewalk, over a bed of flowers and walked 3 steps up and barely passed
under an arch way. I could see the earth as far as the eye could see. It was a beautiful sight. I just barely
walked over to a tree and then collapsed. I laid on my left side and began to throw up blood and
damaged tissue. I could feel the warmth of the blood as it passed by my tongue and teeth, yet I could
feel my skin take on a coldness and start to lose its humanness. I threw up many times and then laid my
head to rest while laying on my left side, my eyes became heavy. But, my spirit was very much awake
and would not allow me to stop living even though my eyes would blink in desperation. Someone was
screaming, “she's dead, she's dead!” But I knew that I had much life in me yet.
A spiritual man from the sanctuary came to me and blocked the heat and shine from the sun. I looked
up and mumbled, “with this blanket I shall not die.” But he couldn't hear me, again I mumbled
incoherently, “with this blanket I shall not die” and I took that blanket clenched by my right hand and
brought it closer to my heart.
The holy man rubbed my forehead with endearment and then carefully started to pick me up to carry
me over to the shade. He held me and said, “SHE IS NOT DEAD!” Again I threw up a phenomenal
amount of blood and grossness that made the crowd watch in disbelief. As I was throwing up the holy
man noticed small pieces of bullets that were coming up with damaged body tissue. He then realized
the Creator and Mother Earth were trying to save my life by making me throw up the bullets that had
tried to end my life. He started to count the bullets and the number became 12. One woman yelled out
to the crowd, “she was shot 12 times.” He tried to remove my blanket from me to wipe away the blood
from my face, but I got angry and said, “with this blanket…I shall not die” “I do not understand your
message,” he said. He put his ear to my parched and blood-soaked lips and I slowly said with conviction,
“in our culture, blankets give us life, heat, protection and tell the story of our ancestors.” “You must let
me keep this blanket,” I said. He realized that I had been blessed with the gift of life as long as I keep
this blanket in my hand and close to my heart. He connected with my spirit and finally understood that I
was the chosen one to live because I will bring hope and inspiration to the world.
He gently put my head down from his lap, he stood up and yelled , “SHE IS NOT DEAD SHE WILL LIVE!”
“But we need to get her help right away!” The sirens became louder and there was so much chaos going
on around me that all of a sudden I was surrounded by a whole bunch of uniforms and helping hands. I
knew then, it was okay to close my eyes as I repeated, "with this blanket I shall not die, with this blanket
I shall not die, with this blanket…I shall not die.”
At 9:30 am, Sat June 16th, 2007, I woke up from this dream and started to repeat the same verse, “with this blanket I shall not die, with this blanket I shall not die, with this blanket…I shall not die.”
And so I am sharing this message of hope and inspiration with the world. “You will overcome the odds and shine.”
“WITH THIS BLANKET I SHALL NOT DIE!”
It is still very difficult to read that story and not remember how touched I was to receive such a clear message of hope. One minute the doctor tells me that if I don’t change my life that it will kill me, then I have a dream that is so clear that I spent four hours writing every detail I could remember. I didn’t want to miss encapsulating the experience I just had. The dream you just read is one of many tools I use to cope with the trauma I have been through. Word by word, feeling by feeling, one karmic event after another is the platform of psycho spiritual healing. As skeptical as I am in life, there must be hope that I was born for a reason. There must be a reason why I have been challenged like this. There must be a reason why I was shot 12 times. There must be a reason why I continually tried to sit up injured while others tried to keep me down. Will my community be there for me? Someone must care?
I have become a very loving person in my life. I do motivational speaking and share from the heart. I perform to masses of crowds to combat my demons. I make music that fills my heart with love instead of rage. I live to write and write to live. But even as I write this message of hope and inspiration I still think there must be more to me than any human eye could surmise. I know that the bullets and pain I have endured is representative of what I have experienced in the past and am still enduring. I know that people have held me back in life and even kicked me when I was down. But ultimately it is up to me to rise to the occasion. The man in the sanctuary is someone who I wished was my father and could be a symbol of an angel. The act of throwing up the blood is reminiscent of all the times I have thrown up with this digestive disease sucking the life right out of me. I know the blanket is my only link to my Native culture and I hold it truly, dearly to my heart. I know that we must believe in something to ease the pain of disappointment and loss. I believe in my blanket so much that I published this story and had blankets made for people. I have been given the gift of turning the negatives in my life into positives. I am on the verge of jumping the cliff for what I believe in or just holding on till the dust clears. When will I touch the moon and the stars?
About the Author
Crystal Favel is the CEO of Urban Indian Productions and is a
proud member of the Métis nation. Ms. Favel is also known in North America as DJ Kwe – an award-winning DJ and cutting edge Music Producer who incorporated her own production company. Her trail blazing ideas and projects exude innovation, excellence and sharp-shooting organizational standards. She is known for her ability to inspire thousands of people through her ambitious vision. The world awaits her.
Popular Links
1. http://www.mediafire.com/?311fgpqzjwj - Free Inspirational DJ Mix featuring my spoken word called the
“Lifeforce of Bass” (tracklisting available upon request – promo only)
2. http://www.urbanindianproductions.com - Web site
3. urbanindianproductions@hotmail.com - Email