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Day 3

What are your views on drugs and alcohol?

My views....  Don't do any of them!  Of course I'm kidding, but I figured I would say it.  

What is a drug?  There's the obvious meth and cocaine come to mind as does the ever popular weed.  No matter where you go the first two are illegal, no questions asked, but weed is given a little more freedom.  I am (my dad is going to shoot me for saying this) not opposed to weed.  I am fortunate to live in a state that has finally legalized it and I couldn't be happier.  Might as well tax it and make money off of it.  People are going to smoke no matter what.  Also, my other dad benefits greatly from it.  He is able to relax quite a bit and think more clearly.  It benefits him more than it could hurt him.  I've also seen my nephew on it and off of it.  He has the same problem as my dad.  He is very energetic all the time.  He has difficulty concentrating and has been diagnosed as ADHD and was prescribed adderall.  I've seen him on pot and adderall and I have to say I would rather see him on pot any day.  At least when he smokes he is not a walking zombie barely speaking and just sitting on a couch with his mouth wide open.  When he smokes he is calm and relaxed and isn't running a million miles a minute.  That being said I do get annoyed walking down the street and being hit by the putrid smell of the stuff.  It pisses me off driving down I-25 and not being able to get away from the smell there as well.  And if you aren't sick of the smell after a drive home from work, you now get to smell out down the hallway of your apartment building.  It's everywhere.  I stand in my kitchen and can smell my neighbors down the hall.  That's annoys the hell out of me.  If you want to smoke that's fine, but I don't and I would prefer not to have to smell your smoke in my house. 

Now...  If you want to really get technical there are drugs that we ingest every single day of our lives and they are perfectly legal and accepted.  We feed them to our children daily and don't even bat an eye.  Let's look at sugar for instance.  Our children wake up and we immediately shovel it in the mouths in the form of cereal and orange juice.  We send them to school with their lunch boxes and for lunch they are ingesting fruit snacks, juices and sodas.  Again packed with sugar.  When they get home we give them a healthy snack, or so we think.  We give them more fruit snacks or crackers.  The snacks again have sugar and the crackers are loaded with dye (just like your childs cereal) and we don't think twice about it.  On to dinner and you throw some chicken nuggets in the oven and feed your picky children one of the only things they will ingest.  Congratulations!  The preservatives in that food will make sure your child will someday be preserved long after they have passed away.  You feed your child healthy food for dinner you say?  Chicken or pork?  Really?  How many growth hormones have been added to that meat?  What about the glass of milk they are drinking?  Again full of growth hormones.  It's why our daughters are physically maturing faster than we were at their ages.  After dinner how many families still have dessert?  Donuts, cakes, cookies and drinks all filled with sugar.  Again.  Do you know there have been studies done that say our bodies are just as addicted to sugar as they could be to cocaine?  You have some of the same side effects coming off of sugar as you would cocaine.  Don't believe me?  Quit cold turkey and see what happens.  Shakes, massive headache and body aches are some of the first things you will feel.  Along with massive mood swings!  I know I've done it before and it was not pretty.  

So I've now made sugar the new enemy, but I"m not done.  We haven't even started looking at what adults ingest.  You think you are eating healthy?  Did you have a cup of coffee this morning?  What about a soda?  How many sodas do you ingest in a day?  Maybe it's not a soda, we've evolved, now it's energy drinks.  Have you looked up the ingredients in an energy drink?  Between caffeine and all the crap you will find in the energy drinks we have all become slaves to the feeling we get and continue to ingest this stuff.  So, caffeine is a drug now.  As is sugar and anything that contains either of those should now be illegal.  Here's the thing.  I am on the fence on legal versus illegal drugs.  In the end there is such a thin line between the two that things begin to become extremely hazy.  Thus no one talks about it and we all continue to sweep it under the rug.

With all this rambling you probably notice that I haven't stated my view on alcohol.  That's because alcohol is a very easy topic for me.  Moderation.  That's it.  I don't believe in getting drunk.  I do believe in a glass of wine with or after dinner.  I do go to Texas Roadhouse and occasionally have a margarita, and I drink it in front of my kids.  They are shocked when I do order a drink because it doesn't happen very often.  However, I am teaching my children the right way to drink.  Moderately.  I may have DHS at my door here any second, but for a few years now I have offered a sip of my wine when to my children.  They are inquisitive and I don't have a problem allowing them a taste.  What have I discovered by doing this?  They don't like it.  It's something they've been around for years and they don't feel the need to sneak and try it.  My daughter is very adamant she will never drink.  She's 15.  She just doesn't like the taste of it.  My son doesn't either.  He tries to act like an adult and try whatever I'm drinking, but as soon as it hits his tongue he immediately makes a face.  A few times he's even had to spit it out.  Again, he knows it's not good and he doesn't like it.  I did the same thing with my step-daughter when she was younger.  She went to parties when she got older and drank a couple of times and got very drunk.  She did the normal teenage thing.  Does she drink now?  Nope.  She doesn't feel the need to, she doesn't like the taste of it.  Occasionally she will have a drink just like I do.  She is 22 and very responsible.  I'm proud of her, but I can't help but think it's because there was never a taboo on alcohol in our house.  

They say you must know yourself to make it in life.  Know who you truly are and it will give you the confidence to face the day.  Tell me though, how does someone that is adopted ever truly know themselves.  You walk day to day knowing where you stand, but are forever lost.  Filling a hole deep inside of you with whatever will make the pain go away.  Searching a strangers face for any similarity and wondering if they are the one that gave you life.  You notice your friends faces and how they resemble that of their parents and wish that you knew where the color of your eyes came from.  You smile in the mirror and wonder if the curve of your smile is that of your mother or your father.  You hate them because you feel abandoned and you pity them for how they must have felt to lose a child.  When you’re an adult you hold your child a little tighter than other new parents, because for the first time in your life you are holding your blood.  Something that others will never understand.  Some spend their whole lives searching for answers while others go to their graves never wanting to know.

I searched.  For years I was the one looking into others eyes.  Ultimately I would surrender to my fears and back away.  I was scared that they would have nothing to do with me and send me away again.  That they would have new lives and no one in their new life would know about me.  The search would end for six months, a year., but the hunger was too strong and again I would begin.  It wasn’t because I hated my parents.  Quite the opposite.  I love them for doing something many cannot.  They raised me.  Knowing I was not their blood.  A piece of paper is what made me their child, but they loved me like I was born of them.  I knew that my search would hurt them, maybe even break their hearts, but this was something that I had to do.  I was tired of feeling lost.  I needed to know the real answers and longed to know if I looked like them.  I was put down by many people saying that a true Christian wouldn’t feel this way.  All I needed was Jesus and he would fill that hole.  Easy for someone to say that isn’t adopted.  I prayed so many times, but things never worked out to my advantage.  Then in January of last year I said my final prayer.  I asked God to give me a way to find my parents if it be His will.  I was tired of fighting and just wanted it to end.  I literally gave up.  I walked away and left it in Gods hands and gave up the search.  

So today's writing is about where I'd like to be in 10 years....  This will take some thought.

I haven't really give the future much thought as I'm so busy with the present. I think I worry more about the future of my children and their success in life than I do about my own.  However, this is what I do see...

I will have my own business that I run out of my home by then.  We will be living in Colorado Springs in a 4 bedroom 2 bath house with a huge backyard. I will have my degree and will be working at an elementary school as a teacher by then.  When I go home at night I will be greeted by my husband and our German Shepherd.  Our kids will all be grown so I'm hoping they will have homes of their own as Aliyah will be 26 and Xavier will be almost 24.  Shaunta will be 32 so I'm guessing she will obviously have her own home.  

Today I start the 30 day challenge of writing and the first one is to discuss my relationship so here it goes...

I met David when I was almost 20 years old.  I was working at the Air Force Academy and he came in to the kitchen with his BDU's on.  He looked so handsome with his lonely one stripe on his arm.  Senior Airman Smith is how he answered the phone, but I knew from the moment I met him I would call him my husband.  We dated for a couple of weeks until he went back to Denver and since I was living in Colorado Springs we didn't see each other much.  Then I made the bold move to go see him.  From that day on I spent every weekend I could in Denver with him.  We met in June and in November he deployed for the first time in our relationship.  He was gone for 4 months and my life drastically changed in that time.  I went from living like an episode of "Friends" to living like Phoebe from "Friends"...  Homeless.  When he came back I moved in with him for what was to be a couple of weeks.  Within a couple of days I had a job and was ready to move.  Only then I found out I was pregnant and although my husband jokes that he's still waiting for me to move out, the truth is the first couple of months I tried, but no place I chose ever seemed safe enough for him.  So, in May we moved in to our own place and by December we had a daughter and were married.