The High School years Part 1.....

I started writing about my life in hopes that it would lead someone who read my first blog to realize what being addicted to an addict was all about.  I am beginning to realize that as I write these I am finding that my first posts "are" me, but who I was is just the opposite I was clearly not only an addict but I too was addicted to an addict. 

High School.....basically the best of the worst times in any ones life.  Yes the cliche is that it was the best of times it was the worst of times but when I say it out loud I realize that we remember the best of our "worst" times in our lives.  We remember our first love, for some of us our first 2 or 3 loves, we remember that day on the Sr. lawn sitting in the sun looking up at the 60 foot pine and wondering "who actually cut the top of that tree", we remember the best.....of our worst times.

We didn't look forward to our first day of high school, not the way we said we did, we didn't like everyone we knew, the way we said we did, and I surely (note I was going to say we here but I can't speak for everyone) didn't have the home life that I said I did. 

My brother was off to be an adult after graduation.  So there I was a freshman after mill in, getting only 4 of the 7 classes I really wanted, not having a clue where any of them were. I am sure I missed every other class after home room for the first week until I could figure out the map.  The map in my freshman orientation binder that I was afraid to carry because of the consequences of being caught with a freshman packet by anyone older and in a higher grade.

My freshman year started off rough, I was a misfit in a crowd of many misfits all of us looking for new approval, hell we were all famous in Jr. High, but now we were at the bottom of the barrel in the freshman parade.  By this point in my life I had realized I could handle most anything if I was high.  Smoking pot was an out for many but my history with it was a little different.

OK this is one of those truths that have kept me from posting lately because if I am going to do this I need to be honest.  But I did things later in life that would contradict this issue and many more to come.  Things I said to people who made job decisions, who made life decision. who made relationships, will most likely contradict this fact.  I made a deal when I was 6 that I would quit smoking pot.....No its not a typo when I was 6.  I joke about this a lot with people who know me and who know my mother but the fact is back in the early 70s hippy parents didn't think of benedryl as the cure all for a hyper child, but learned early on that a puff of smoke in the face would put a grumpy kid to sleep in no time. 

(I want to justify this I really do but the fact is this, if I try justifying this and protecting her actions, I am simply showing addiction to my addict mother,  in this case I will let you draw your own conclusions.)

So as you can imagine I didn't smoke out as a habit at that age, I didn't have a dealer, I didn't have access I just seemed to always be around when the pipe was lit in our house.  I imagine there were many years that I never smoked, but I know that in my freshman year I did.  I stole small amounts of pot from the in house stash just to keep me and a select few stoned when being a freshman got a little out of control.

This was the beginning of the best of the worst years of my life.