My God of Second Chances (Part 2)

    I was home for college for the weekend.  I had news I had to tell my parents and it wasn't going to be fun.  A week before that I found out I was pregnant.  I was not married, by-the-way, and they had only just found out that I was dating the father.  Exactly a week before that my sister had been shot in a school shooting and spent a week in the hospital.  It was right before Christmas.  I couldn't believe that I was doing this to them.  Especially right then.

     No one expected this from me!  Everyone had fully expected me to go to college, start a super successful career, marry a handsome wealthy businessman, and then eventually have a couple of children to go with my fabulous life.  I had the same expectation for myself!  But, somewhere along the way, the expectations became too much for me.  College was a lot harder than high school.  On many levels.

     I had spent the last year in a downward spiral.  It started in November of 1998 when the love of my short life formed a drug addiction and left me to pursue it.  I had my whole world tied up in him and in an instant it fell down around me.  The next year was spent trying to erase the feelings I didn't want to feel.  And, those feelings were never validated.  When someone gets a divorce or has a loved one die, there is a great deal of ceremony and sympathy that goes with it.  When an 18 year old girl breaks up with her high school sweetheart, it gets chalked up to "part of life."  I was devastated, though.  I had given him everything.  Things I had meant to save for only one man.  We spent the next few months dating on and off, not quite able to let go.  But, I was already in self destruct mode.  No one, besides maybe those living in close contact with me at the time, knew how serious things got.

     I had discovered alcohol!  And, it was an amazing anesthetic.  The deep grief that I felt was alleviated and the strangling expectations and restraints I put on myself went away!  I was hooked.  And, at first it was fine.  But, slowly I fell deeper and deeper in to it.  I would do things, while drunk, that were completely out of my character.  I would wake up in the morning and find it hard to live with myself, thinking of how I had behaved or what I had done, and I would need to drink again to alleviate the new list of things I was trying to forget.  After a year of this, the drinking went from recreational to habitual and I was truly depressed.

     I broke things off with him for good, and two months later I found myself pregnant!  The guy I was with, I had known for years.  He was one of my best friend's ex-boyfriends, for God's sake!  Another thing I was trying to drown out.  It was convenient.  The girl he was living with was dating my cousin (and best friend).  We all hung out.  Life was one big party, with me trying to make sure I didn't feel anything at all.

   Then one day I awoke to news of a shooting in my hometown.  It was the first day of finals and I had spent the night before studying for an Algebra final.  Just me and a 6 pack.  Groggy, I tried to wrap my mind around the news on TV, talking about a girl being shot at the Middle School I had attended not so many years ago. Then, my heart sank in to my stomach.  I just knew somehow.  It was my baby sister.  Then the call came in....

(To be Cont.)