I found an old diary the other day from my childhood. I dreamed of going to New York City and becoming an attorney. I dreamed of being completely on my own, making a lot of money and marrying some rich guy. What I did was completely opposite. I became a homeless druggie and ended up dumped by my own drug dealer for girl after girl after girl.
I was on drugs for years. My family begged me to get help. Thankfully, I never had any kids or they would have been part of that nightmare. I could not believe how fast time flew. One day I was a teenager dreaming of graduating in two years, the next I was a drugged out high school dropout who did not care about anything but my next fix.
I finally got clean when I was in my 30s. I moved back to my home town from Sacramento where I was just losing it with one drug fix after another and took courses to help at a local drug rehab center that appreciated the fact that I had first hand experience and could offer a different type of help to the teens and local townspeople. I would run into people I knew and they would be shocked at my appearance. I looked older thanks to my drug use.
I found that old diary in the garage when I was cleaning it out for my mom. I sat and cried over what could have been. Then I remembered that now I am making a difference. Just the other day I took part in a graduation ceremony where a young girl thanked me for helping her through her detox and listened to her fears and dreams. She is only nineteen and has her whole life ahead of her. I just know she can do it.
I may not have become a great attorney in New York City and married some millionaire but I am richly blessed all the same. I am making a difference in my own community, with the kids of some of my past classmates, and I just started dating a wonderful man who is the brother of someone in my Narcotics Anonymous group.
My life did not go the way that sixteen year old girl dreamed in that diary over twenty years ago but I have been given a second chance and I appreciate it more than words can say. I made a success of myself after all.
January 7 has long been a sentimental date for me. It is not a birthday, it is not an anniversary but it is the day I found out that Christmas wishes do come true. I remember being 17 and crying because my parents were fighting again. My dad was drunk again. I had the television on hoping to tune them out. I had my headphones on and was playing on my computer. Multi-tasking and just trying to not hear the screaming going on in the house. Still, it was all about my dad’s drinking and before I realized it, I was typing in on search engines “my dad is an alcoholic”.
Then I saw it. A link about an Alcoholics Anonymous group for family members. There was a phone number and I reached for my cell phone and dialed the number. The lady on the other end listened to me and told me I was not alone. She said alcoholism affects every member of the family and that there were others who understood what I was going through. She walked me through the steps to get in touch with a local group so I could go to a meeting for teens who have parents who are alcoholics.
I went to several meetings that got me through Thanksgiving and the approaching Christmas holiday from school. A couple of days before Christmas, a sponsor at the group helped me to meet with my parents one Thursday evening after my dad got off work. She told my parents I had been going to a meeting for teens of alcoholics and that I had something I needed to say to my parents.
I looked at them and told them I loved them both. I then looked at my dad and told him that listening to the two of them fighting over his drinking hurt and that all I really wanted for Christmas was one whole day where there was no drinking and no fighting. My dad actually looked ashamed. My parents looked at each other and then my dad hugged me and promised me I would get my Christmas wish.
Then, a couple of weeks later, on January 7, he knocked on my door and asked if he could talk to me. My mom walked in right behind him. He told me that he had just returned from his first AA meeting! That was two years ago. I am in college now and still living at home and today marks the two year anniversary of my dad’s sobriety. It also marks the day I began to believe in wishes again.
I found an old diary the other day from my childhood. I dreamed of going to New York City and becoming an attorney. I dreamed of being completely on my own, making a lot of money and marrying some rich guy. What I did was completely opposite. I became a homeless druggie and ended up dumped by my own drug dealer for girl after girl after girl.
