The Lost Years

It's a picture perfect evening and I'm staring down the sun 

Fully loaded deaf and dumb and done 

Waiting for sedation to disconnect my head 

Or any situation where I'm better off than dead

Sweet Adeline- Elloitt Smith

My late teens and early twenties were a time that I wish I could say were filled with wonderful things, but they weren't. My parents' divorce, an abusive relationship with a guy in high school, and my just plain stupidity, rebellion and immaturity, not to mention the fact that I was later diagnosed as clincially depressed (for which I took medication for) all led to me not really giving a you know what about what happened to me. I was suicidal quite a bit of the time, not actually doing anything serious about it, but entertaining the thought nonetheless.  On the other hand though I really, really wanted to live, but not the way things were.



Looking back, I feel a bit embarrassed about how melodramatic I was about everything. I guess that just comes with the territory for young people trying to figure out life. I felt like I couldn't escape my own mind and thoughts of hopelessness and death.



Oh but I tried.




Let's just put it delicately and say I discovered the party scene and I'll leave it at that.


There is much during this period of my life that I would never want to see the light of day, so I won't go into many specifics. I wouldn't want to damage anyone else's character and a lot of this I just plain don't wish to relive, but I feel like I have to at least mention it since it is part of my story and part of the reason I came to believe in Jesus. The things that happened during this time of my life would go on to shape the woman I became, but also caused me a great amount of guilt and shame and fear.  I am very grateful that I didn't end up in jail or dead.


I went to college for three semesters. My dad was insistent that an education was of utmost importance and looking back, I did want to make him proud, but I knew deep down that I didn't want to go. I don't know what the heck I wanted, but I had just finished twelve bleepin' years of school and I wanted to go out and live real life. I was a good student in high school, and I got a partial scholarship to a small private liberal arts college. I was going to major in English/Lit. I figured I would be a teacher, preferably a college professor, and of course a writer on the side.



To my educational detriment, the combination of the depression and the partying led me to find that my studies were not as important trying to feel good.  And college was so hard. I breezed through high school, but man, this was not high school. I was also trying to take more classes than I probably should have and work at the same time. I hated it, I hated life, and I wanted out.



So I quit and set off to live my own life my own way.




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