The Broken Fix (Chapter 26)- The end, and the beginning..

I moved to Kansas with Chad, and a couple years later he proposed to me, in spectacular fashion at the top of a hill where he decorated a tree in Christmas lights, kind of like the bridge where I originally fell in love with him, and where we first kissed. He spent all day getting the area ready before he took me up there, blindfolded to get down on one knee, and present me with the beautiful ring he designed himself. He lugged a large generator up to the top of the hill so there was power to turn on the Christmas lights. It was beautiful, he was beautiful, I was beautiful, and so is our life now.

If you saw me walking down the street today, you'd never know I went through all these things, or about the girl I used to be. That's why I'm telling this story now, nine years later. I am a recovering opioid addict, a recovering heroin addict, but that's just one small piece of who I am and my story. My fight continues, my story continues, and addiction is neverending. The difference now is that I'm winning the fight.

My husband and I planned to have a baby, and we got pregnant with our little boy on the first try. He's perfect, and every day with him and in my life is a gift that I thank God to have received. I know how lucky I am, how many lives I used up, and that I'm living on borrowed time. I take nothing for granted, and I don't regret anything in my life in the end, because I think it all happened the way it was supposed to in the end.

When I was six months pregnant with my son, I had a breast cancer scare. My OBGYN told me I needed to contact my mother to have a blood test, and see if she had the BRACCA gene. This would have helped my doctor more quickly determine if I did have it, and the route in which to proceed before my own tests came back. My Mom was already in the hospital because she ran out of her pain meds, and all she would have had to do was tell the doctors it was OK to take her blood. She refused to do it, and that's when I confronted the truth that I knew in the hospital, but was too afraid to admit. My Mom didn't just not love me, she actually wished I was dead. It was a difficult truth to confront, especially while pregnant, but it was necessary. That's when I also knew that every ounce of who my Mother was is completely gone. She's gone forever now, and she never has met nor will ever meet my son. It's a great honor and privilege she doesn't deserve. My son and I were ok, and better than that even, he was perfect, he is perfect. He'll never know what it feels like to have a suitcase packed for the orphanage, and more than that he'll be beautiful without the breaks. I used everything my parents had done to me in my life as a template of what not to do with my own son. If I could pick two people most opposite to my own parents, it would be my husband and I, and a portrait of how we raise our son.

So maybe I am just forever broken, but that's okay, because some of the best things and people are. I've spent my whole life trying to fix that which is broken, fix myself, in more ways than one. Now I just appreciate the breaks for their beauty, and one of my all time favorite things is broken. The most beautiful one of all, and that is the cycle I broke with my son.