When I look back over the desolation my journey to survival and then to recovery has wrought. From my unregulated emotions to paranoid thinking and beyond. I had no tools to cope in any grown-up way and my children and all who tried to be close to me suffered. I could no more form close bonds with my children than I could fly no matter how I craved that closeness.

Alone-ness engulfed me. And I sought safety from every hint of pain or abandonment. Florida became my “safe-space” where the traumas of childhood, failure. and loss could recede to a comfort level I could survive. Still, I fell apart over and over again. I sought refuge in relationships, all abusive to one degree or another. I sought comfort in alcohol but it too failed me.

I am responsible for so much pain and sober and aware, I face it every day, often more than once a day.

No matter my childhood, no matter my journey through my adult years, there is only one person I can be, my baggage is mine and mine alone.

I am sorry for the pain I caused being me. This is who I am, who I have always been for better or worse, and whom I will be for the rest of my life, a woman still learning how to live, cope, deal with the strangest of circumstances.