Wishful Thinking

I was thinking this morning "I wish I had kept a journal of some kind while I was in the beginning stages of quitting booze and drugs." I wonder what it would have looked like. I guarantee it would not have looked like this one. I wasn't disciplined enough to shower everyday.....I'm pretty sure I couldn't have sat down and wrote anything (with any amount of clarity). I'm also pretty sure that anything I would have wrote back then wouldn't have helped me much, let alone anyone else. In the very beginning....in my first few months, first year or so even, I was......uggggg......I was a victim. A victim of: circumstance/bad upbringing/poor self esteem/no role models/undiagnosed ADD or ADHD or OCD or other letters I self diagnosed/emotional abuse/society/Catholicism/helicopter parents/drug addicted first husband.....I could add to the list in a sickeningly destructive way. Until anyone around me would throw up their hands and say "Holy! You are right! You DO have a reason to self-destruct. Carry on" And then.....through coincidence or something divine, Lou crossed my path. And do you know what he said to me that made me want to follow him? "Julie, you have value and worth" That's it. That simple. The amazing thing, miraculous really...... Is that some tiny part of me believed him. Some tiny part of me believed this 6ft 10" tattooed, ex biker and felon. He wanted nothing from me....he just wanted to give away the freedom that someone else had given him. Not everyone can tell you exactly what hope sounds like. I can.