January 14, 2010

Wow! 2010! I know this is a delayed reaction. It just struck me what year I was writing. Sometimes I am amazed at life-my own life, the fact that I'm still here! I am forty-five now. My eldest son is twenty-five. My baby girl is seventeen! It just does not seem possible sometimes. When I was my daughters age I cared nothing for my life. All I did was party, drink and drug (though I was never very big in the whole drug scene) rock n roll, skip a lot of school-I still do not know how I did as well as I did-until I dropped out. I was a pathetic loser though I did not know it. I was very liberal with my body at the time because I felt accepted and loved. I drank because I did not feel accepted and loved. I smoked pot with my "enlightened and intelligent" friends-who, as it turned out, where neither enlightened nor intelligent. And I popped uppers (20/20's, yellow jackets,black beauties) so I could do whatever was expected of me to do and not have to think about my pathetic existence. I had absolutely no respect for authority since it did not seem to have any for me. 'Authority' had chucked me from home to home, told me I was not good, that I would never amount to anything and basically just kicked me in the teeth. So, at seventeen, I set out prove 'Authority' right. If I had not gotten married and pregnant at nineteen I probably would be dead now. Or in prison or prostitution at best. In a way having my first baby saved my life. I suddenly realized that there was something more to this living thing than being self-serving. I now had a child dependent on me and I was not going let my child have the childhood that I had. He was going to know that he was, is, and will always be loved. It's funny though how we get so intent on how we are going to do things with our own children that we sometimes go just the opposite extreme. I sincerely hope that I have not been to suffocating. I would hate to think that I did not give them the opportunity to find out who they are for themselves. I mean, I know we as parents try to give our children our own values, morals, and often our views. Whether we mean to or not we do this. I just hope that my influence on them has been more positive than negative and that they have had the chance to develop their own individual personalities independent of my own. God made them unique entities to shine own their own and I want them to do just that. I want them to be the best of what God created. At least I know that I am not the total loser I thought I was because God would not have given the responsibility and privilege of raising them if He did not see something worth saving. Though they screw up sometimes I am still very proud of my children. And I am so glad they did not have to go where I have been to become the people that they are.