February 26, 2008

• Choice of a lifetime

  Featured_Grownups gave us several choices to write about this time, and truthfully, I wasn’t sure I was going to get this challenge done, but luck is with me and here it is. Since I have already written a letter to my younger self: read it here, and I already wrote about being Xanga true – you can read that here, I will go with Choices. This is especially fitting as in my last post, some of those choices came out and many people commented on them. So, now I can explain and meet the challenge at the same time.

   

  CHOICES ~ Life is all about making choices.  What choices have you made that have worked well for you? What choices have you made that taught you some of those hard life lessons? CHOICES

   

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  So let’s start at the point where this came up. Before I was 10 I had taken my first drink and started smoking. Of course it wasn’t something that was recommended, or good or any of that, but I was 10 (actually 9) what the heck did I know? I hadn’t been talked to about the dangers of smoking, drinking and drugs. Maybe in passing once or twice, but never seriously.

   

  My home environment wasn’t really conducive to a life without those things, although the drugs were never an issue my mom ALWAYS smoked, my dad usually did too. On top of that both parents drank, my dad heavily and was what I would learn later is a “functioning alcoholic” meaning that he drank every day, but still managed to keep his life somewhat on track. He held a job, managed to stay married (how I sometimes wonder) and never got in trouble (should I say, caught) by the law.  So at the young age of 9, me and 3 of my friends who came from remarkable similar settings, sat down in the alley and tried a stolen cigarette. Not long after we obtained a beer and tried that as well. Now, that would have been all well and fine, except it didn’t really end there. We kept getting cigarettes and beer. By the time I was 12 I had smoked my first joint and was a regular cigarette smoker. By the time I was 15 I was a daily drinker, daily smoker of both pot and cigarettes and had tried many other drugs on a regular basis. Since I was so little body mass wise (I was less than 5’0 tall and weighed about 90 lbs. soaking wet) I became a blackout drinker. I found out later that my body was so saturated with alcohol, every time I put anymore in, I would blackout.

   

  This was much more dangerous than I realized, but at the time who cared. Let’s face it, I wasn’t doing this for “fun” I was doing it for a deeper reason. I hated my life and escape was all I wanted. I didn’t want to feel. I didn’t want to care, or hurt. I didn’t want to deal with the anger in the house, or the pressures put on me by my parents. For you see, I had learned from the best, and even though I was at this stage, I was still getting straight A’s and participating in all kinds of things. From the outside, I was the perfect daughter, well-behaved, good student, with a bright future.

   

  Nothing was farther from the truth. When I began to hit bottom, I knew that I needed out. How though? The choices I’d made seem to bury me and I had no where to go. My parents, because of my fantastic façade, had no clue. My friends, who never really knew what was going on inside, couldn’t help. My teacher’s had no complaints, as my work was stellar.

   

  Then one day it happened. An assembly, where a teenager only a year or so older than I came and talked. He talked about drinking and drugging and not being able to stop. He talked about how to get out and they gave us names and numbers if we needed help. I knew that day that I needed that number. But how to go on from here? The choice in front of me was daunting. They were talking about changing my entire life. Opening myself up, and letting everyone see the real mess inside instead of the mask I wore. Could I do it?

   

  Not right away. I became depressed. I started thinking about not wanting to go on. I felt hopeless and unable to get out of the situation. I started doing things like stepping in front of buses. My friends became worried. One day I had a blackout episode. I came out of in my parent’s bathroom with a handful of all the pills in their medicine cabinets and a carving knife in my hand. That was no accident. That was God moving in my life.

   

  Those last couple of months, the façade began to crumble. I came home so drunk, I couldn’t stand up. I would throw up on myself in bed, Mom – being that good co-dependant she always had been – cleaned me up and put me back to bed to sleep it off. I guess they reached their bottom too as one night after letting me sleep a couple of hours they woke me up.

   

  I remember vividly trying to fool them, saying I wasn’t drunk, just sick. But they asked me to walk a straight line and I kept falling over. Then they asked the right question – what can we do to help you? A couple months prior to this I had told them about this treatment center for adolescents. I told them I wanted to go talk to them. They misunderstood, and thought I was looking into going into counseling as a career path and was interested in interning there. When they asked that question, I knew, here was my choice. That night I said two words in response “Call Westcenter”. On Sunday we went down to the treatment center. Again I faced a choice. Mom and dad weren’t really keen on me going into treatment; I think they really wanted to believe it was just a phase or something. They told me that it would be completely my decision.  When the counselors at WC asked if I thought I should say I wanted to scream NO!! Just let me go home and everything will be fine!! Instead I cried and said quietly – yes, I need help.

   

  That was over 24 years ago. It was a rough road, and I did go back to drugs and drinking for a month when I was 17. Since then I’m a non drinker – although nobody really notices. Mainly because I can get just as crazy without drugs and alcohol, and better yet: I remember it, can still drive and don’t wake with a headache!

   

  So the choices I made when I was 9 and 10 started me on a hard path. The choice I made at 16 changed my life and who I am forever. Would I do it differently? That’s a tough question. I am who I am because of what I’ve gone through and what I’ve experienced. I like who I am. Would I have liked to have skipped that? Sure. Did it complicate my life? Definitely. Regardless of my choices though, I feel as though God has a plan for my life, and puts things in my path that guide me to where he is. That boy at the assembly, my parents question that night, and all the other people that touched my life all helped to guide me.

   

  So in the end, the choices I’ve made have sometimes been good, and sometimes bad. I don’t recommend anyone ever take my path, as it was not easy and still to this day I sometimes struggle with it. Now most of my struggles show up in cigarette smoking, which I periodically return to in times of stress and then abandon for all the right reasons. While I don’t recommend my path, I can’t really say I regret it. And I’m forever grateful that one night while I was drunk and my parents stood in front of me, I made the best choice of my life, the choice to live.

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  This is a long entry and if you made it through kudos to you! There have been many other choices in my life, both good and bad, but when looking at the most impactful ones, there is no doubt this is the most important choice I’ve ever made. What choices have you made that changed your life dramatically?

   

  Please stop by Featured_Grownups and read all the other great entries and don’t forget to comment and star them!

   

  • 12:01 pm
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