Thirty Three Years of Freedom (and some change)

I started writing this one quite awhile back and then I forgot about it.  I don't know if I ever published it or not.  So here it is.  Or here it is again.  If it is a repeat, mea culpa y soy listo.

It was the summer. I was on the beach in Lavallette reading the book "Go Ask Alice" written by "Anonymous." It was an anti-get high book. [My mother took this book away from me!!! She forbid me to read it.  I managed to finish reading it anyway.] This was in my pre-druggie era -- the time when I was waiting to get high and the local head shop-- The Last Straw-- was one of my fave hang-outs. Hippies were in.

Fast-forward: It is several decades later. Day after Thanksgiving 2005. I'm bemoaning the facts that not enough provocative material, comments on the news, or recovery stuff is in my blog. I drift around the internet, finally landing at http://www.snopes.com. Drifting through the categories, I discover the truth about "Go Ask Alice" under language sub literary. Oh woe is me.

It wasn't written by a teenager at all.

Worse than that, the book featured characters from divorced families who dropped out and turned on to street drugs. An anti-divorce diatribe. Something I missed in my initial reading of the book. Oh me. Oh my.
***


I have to forgive myself. I was a child after all. A precocious child but a child nonetheless. A child being brought up in a household not famed for its' knowledge of the difference between the truth and a lie.

I don't blame my mother and step-father today. They had their own sicknesses to deal with.
My parents divorced when I was very young.
***


Those days were the days when drug addiction was equated with divorce. Can I gain comfort in seeing "Go Ask Alice" as a product of its' times?
***


Are we a product of our times? The old nature versus nurture trap. Maybe, just maybe, things are not as clear-cut as they seem. What to do?
***


One of my ex-helping professionals said to me once, "But don't you think everyone is in recovery from something?"

This was after I had categorically rejected the idea of 'teaching [her] how to work the twelve steps'.

Short answer: NO. to both.
***


Now I am grown. Scarred people exist. I used to be one of those people scarred by years of addiction. I hope I never forget that scars can B L O O M. Something twisted and binding has become the touchstone of healing, strength, and freedom in my life.


~sapphoq