If a travel consultant were to take a marker and follow my life adventures up to now it definitely would not be in a straight line . My walk has lead me through different area's of society from living on the streets to owning a business and a home . To all this would appear as I had achieved a lot and that I had changed my life around but this was not the case . I was a functioning addict alcoholic who had not hit her bottom yet and I did not do that until I was forty -three years of age .However when I walked through the door of the treatment center I grateful to say I have not picked up another drink nor have I used illicit drugs but it is not because it just stopped at that moment or the cravings went away . It has taken a lot of hard work by going to many , many meetings , to therapy , sharing my experience , strength , and hope with others that have been down that same path . I found that I learn to trust , to be honest and a reason to want to stay clean and sober . The recovery community became my family but I became the child who would not leave home . I did not know how to interact with people outside of my community so for fifteen years my only activities were within that realm and I limited my interaction with the community outside of it .
I would attend meetings rallies and share about my addictions but that is all I ever spoke about I had grown up in a household where the children were to be seen but not heard and it was this same code that I carried through my life . Sure I could do the social niceties but to express my own opinions , ideas or thoughts I used music and poetry to do that for me . The volume of my voice I allowed to come through the musicians voices and the poets by choosing songs or poems that expressed what I wanted to say or what I was feeling . This leads to a very lonely life after a while and it took me to the point of where I was at last August .
In the program I learned to accept that things happen for a reason so when a friend I had not seen in two years crossed my path on the day I had decided to come to a conclusion about what I was going to do, I knew I had to at least take in consideration another choice for my life . That choice was going back to school and because of my disabilities I fit the criteria to be accept into the program . At first I was very skeptical because most of my life I had run into barriers because of my choices in life or there was always an agenda on why the organization wanted to help . I had also learned that nothing was for free and there had to be a catch some where . My friend put the application up on my computer and left with the words " it will change your life if you take the chance " . I sat at the looking at that screen for about four hours before I started filled out the application. At one part it wanted to know if there was some one they could get in touch with so that they would be sure I was able to stay committed to attending the program all the way through and it hit me I had no body's name to put there but mine . My mind went there's the catch they will never accept me but my finger went to the send button and the application was on it's way .
A few weeks later much to my surprise and apprehension an email arrived stating I had been accepted in Uni 101 at the university of Victoria . My life has not been the same since ..
