Hello World...Let's Start at the Beginning

 Let's start at the beginning.

To understand everything that is going on in my life and to catch you up to today, I have to go all the way back. Some stuff may be hard to read so just read on with caution.

When my mom was pregnant with my sister, she got chicken pox and pneumonia, and ended up on a ventilator. While she was unconscious, my sister was born stillborn and my mom never got to say goodbye to her. She went through a very hard time after that with depression. She had two boys and wanted a girl very much so it was also very devastating that she lost her girl and didn't get to say goodbye. Her plan was to be done having children after my sister but she tried one more time and she got me! Now I also gave her a run for her money from the moment I was born. I was born a month and a half early, lost weight, and had spinal meningitis. I also happened to turn blue one day while my mom was feeding me.

Neither of us knew what the future held for the both of us and that our struggles would increase with time.

For years things seemed to be okay even though I knew that things between my mom and step-dad (although I called him dad since he raised me since I was two) were not the greatest. Not to mention we were struggling financially and I was being bullied at school because I was wearing hand me down clothes from my brother and I was a bigger girl.

Books were my escape from everything. Anytime that I was able to, I would disappear into the world of vampires and dragons and competitions that were a fight to the death. I found a group of friends that I found comfort with but the more that I hung out with them, the more that I realized of the group, I was the outsider so I went into a bit of a depressive state and started to pull away from everyone. I even went so deep that I considered taking my life.

In 2009, the end of my junior year, my mom told me that she was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was tough news to swallow, especially the fact that she knew something way before she told me. She had a lumpectomy and after that I went into protection mode. I started to take care of my mom since my dad worked swing shifts and wasn't able to be there and my brother was always gone. So it was me making sure that she would eat and drink and be there if she needed anything. It helped that it was summer during all this so that I could be there for her. I went with her to her chemo treatments and made sure that her spirits stayed up as much as I could.

Neither of us expected what would happen next.

The journey continues in the next post.