I Always Get Caught

I was one of those precocious and intelligent children that was under-challenged, my creativity not channeled in the right direction. Combine that with a fair amount of instability growing up and once puberty hit, rebellion smacked me hard! I became difficult at age 13. I started hanging out with the wrong crowd, smoking, drinking, doing all those things parents fear. I was not the pretty popular girl, the cheerleader type, so I strove to define myself in the extremes. I craved attention, always pushing my way to center stage and that was the way this Leo child obtained it! I got into "heavy metal" music (it was the late '80's after all) and wore a dog collar choke-chain around my neck, setting myself up to become the wild party girl I morphed into as my teenage years progressed. But I was always getting caught! I got caught with pot in junior high and my parents flipped out (Oh I would have beat me silly). They handled it much better than I would have had I been the parent and I was sent to live with my mom. We locked horns for a few years and I eventually moved back to middle-class suburbia with my dad and step-mom in 10th grade. Then it really got interesting... The boyfriend, the drugs...oh I put them through hell! Yet still I kept getting caught. One night I came home to my diary (that knew ALL my deep dark secrets) lying open on the dining room table and spent my 16th birthday grounded. I can only imagine the pain I put them through. I managed to keep myself out of trouble after that, graduating from high school and even moving away to college. Of course I wound up at one of the top ranked party schools in the country, and that reputation was hard-earned and well deserved! But I was responsible enough to keep my grades up, stay away from drugs and and actually graduate. I think my parents were in shock the entire graduation weekend that they had successfully deposited me into adulthood! I started dating my husband right before graduation and threw myself into girlfriend-fiance-wife mode, staying much cleaner than I would have been on my own.

Then pancreatitis hit at age 23. I was overweight and drinking a lot of alcohol and eating horribly! NOT living a good healthy lifestyle. But the real cause of my excruciating pain was not discovered and I lost my appendix during that hospitalization. It took another pancreas attack 6 months later for someone to check my triglycerides and diagnose the genetic malfunction that was causing the problem. They were up to 1200 (should be 150 or under) and the link to pancreatitis was finally diagnosed. So I cleaned up my act a bit, lost weight, got married, moved to San Francisco and became best friends with the bar LITERALLY downstairs. Then at 28 comes the big wallop that almost killed me. The 1st almost killed me. Pancreatitis so severe, my triglycerides at 7,000, the most terrifying experience I had ever been through up to that point. So then I REALLY cleaned up my act. Lost tons of weight, did not touch alcohol for nearly a year, and developed CFS & Fibromyalgia about 6 month later. Since then my life has been a never-ending headache of illness, sickness, another pancreas attack and just when I was re-building my life and getting some semblance of health back I had 2 strokes at the end of July.

Basically every time I veer off the path of goodness I was created to walk something happens to knock me back on it! I view all my health trials and tribulations in similar company with the "trouble" I kept getting into during my youth. Every one of those experiences forced me to re-evaluate and re-assess my life. I have gotten to know myself and accept myself in the deepest ways possible because of the journey I have chosen. It has been a long hard road. I wish it had been easier. I could have made better choices along the way and saved my family and myself so much heartache. But if I had I would not be me! I would be a different woman with different experiences having shaped her into someone else. Someone with different values and ideals and priorities. I watch the friends I grew up with having babies and fabulous careers and living the life we were all told to want. I am happy for them, I truly am, but I have so much faith that I am FINALLY paying attention to the true purpose of MY life and off the road of complicated choices. I am just waiting in joyful anticipation of what is going to happen to me next...

Thanks for joining,
Leah