The first time I consciously heard a Smashing Pumpkins song was listening to 1979 on my mom's grammy awards tape. I loved the song. At the time I didn't have much feeling towards music. I didn't own a single album, and I rarely listened to music at all.

Back then we were still living in Terrace BC. I can vividly remember sitting on the brown ratty carpet in the livingroom of our house on 3612 Sparks Street. I sat, in something like awe, in front of the looming black monster which was our stereo, alone, in control. The only time I ever listened to music was when I was home alone. When the family went to the swimming pool I would decline, conscious that it was my only chance to be by myself, in the house. I'd put that tape in and listen to Stupid Girl and 1979, rewinding it over and over, the volume cranked.

It wasn't long after those times that we moved to Williams Lake. It was a horrific change for me. As a girl who had been brought up in the beautiful temperate rainforests of the coast, I couldn't stand the dry rangeland and the barren hillsides of Williams Lake. Worse, I was isolated. For years my stepfather had been sexually abusing me. After only 5 months in the new city I took a trip to the police station and reported him. With no way to escape except telling, no one to turn to for hope, I broke down and reported.

My mother didn't believe me. For all I know she still doesn't. So there I was, in foster care, a trial upcoming, with a mother who thought I was a liar -- sullied by his touch... I grew depressed. I stopped attending school. The medication they gave me, zoloft, didn't make anything better.

For some reason the medical professionals were baffled by my sadness, so they sent me to the child psychiatric ward in Prince George to have me "assessed". It was there that I met Anarchy Ashley, and there that she played for me, for the first time, all of mellon-collie and the infinite sadness.

It wasn't just the music that moved me, it was the art, the lyrics... everything. That CD was played many times while I spent those fruitless two weeks in the hospital.

I didn't get better, happier, or more scholastically inclined immediately. The albums never worked miracles on me, but they were there in the lonely hours when stars and shadows were my only friends. They still are.

This isn't the reason why I'm a fan at all. The answer to that question is too complex to fit in a little white box, but it begins the explaination of the thread of hope that binds the music of the Smashing Pumpkins to my life.