from there to here
Category: Life

I started off at age twenty, a recently rehabilitated drug addict/ new mother...I knew nothing. The only thing carrying me through was the fact that my body seemed to know what to do. I went through the motions of pregnancy, doing as the doctor told me, as my grandmother told me, as my mother told me. my friends were of no help seeing as how they were as young as me and most likely still on drugs. I drifted away from them as my body changed and my mind grew distant and sad with the weight of the truth. the truth being that I was alone and suddenly very different from my peers, without even a father for my child.

on february eighteenth, 1998, I gave birth to a little life and named it lily. that was about the only decision I made beyond the one made nine months before when I let him take advantage of my body in ignorance of the repercussions. I was too far gone and under the strain of arrested development to know what to do when the police officer at the jail told me that I was pregnant(a whole other story). so there I was on february 18th, 1998 in los gatos community hospital holding my newborn baby girl, tears running down my face. tears of depair, tears of joy, my heart pounding in fear.

three days later, I took her home only to check to see if her heart was still beating and her chest still rising with the rhythm of her breath...every five minutes. over the years I spazzed out in fear over every new trauma to her little body and convulsed in joy over every new accomplishment her little ego acquired. I started off in ignorance and here I am nine and a half years later, far from home, far from that little girl who knew nothing sitting at my computer having just put my oldest and youngest(second time around has been a little better) daughters to bed after plucking a tick off my youngest without a second thought(there was once a time when I almost had a nervous breakdown over lily having come home with her first tick) and I sit here in quiet awe over my accomplishments as a mother.

There was once a time when I thought that I could do nothing right and now there are actually times when I feel there is almost nothing that I cannot do. there was once a time when I felt my children as a burden on my youth. now I feel as though they are one of the things keeping me youthful. without them I would be nothing and I am happy to sit at home, listening to their even breathing in the next room, looking forward to every new day just to see them grow and change, filling my life with their playful chatter, their bright ideas and blossoming youth.

I will say it again and again and again...I am a lucky woman. to have what I have and still find ways to appreciate it.