Life as I lived it, more or less

I couldn’t find a single paragraph in Misshelled’s blog that does justice to what she has to say, you have to read the whole thing. She is a fantastic writer and her stories tell a tale that’s all too common in real life but never quite makes it into the big time media, at least not in an honest way. So rather than an overly long series of examples, I’ll just give you a taste:

It should probably be noted that it was during the start of this crazy period of parties that my father cheated on my mother and their marriage subsequently ended in separation, and later divorce. I feel that it is important to acknowledge this because it had a huge impact on my life then and during the seven years that followed and still does to this day.

Somewhere in my exploration of coming to terms with myself, my parents, and my love for all night raves, I was introduced to cocaine. Ironically scared to death by it, I refused to partake in my ex-boyfriend's love affair with the drug; instead, I chose to sit on the side lines and watch in a strange mixture of amazement and horror at how he would rail line after line after line with his Siberian friend...and it never phased them! After enough times of watching them snort huge lines of cocaine with no adverse reaction, my mind tricked me into believing that doing "one line just to see what it was like" was a rational thing to do. Moreover, I was terribly curious and I believe that my curiosity finally had its way with me. After that one line, it was all over. I don't mean "all over" in the sense that my life was screwed up from that moment forward (because it definitely wasn't); I mean "all over" in the sense of the power cocaine had on me, even if it took years for it's mayhem to unleash it’s destructiveness.

No, I was never into Cocaine, but it was just dumb luck, a matter of genetics, nothing more. One of my childhood friends wasn’t so lucky and did the stereotypical downward spiral: lost his job, his wife, his home, all of his possessions. And he even went much farther than that. He cleaned himself up, zoomed through the corporate hierarchy to a mid six figure salary, married a wonderful woman and had a beautiful kid. But then he slipped back, started smoking crack again, and ended up with the proverbial shotgun in the mouth in the three car garage.
And Misshelled story is not that particular friend’s story, although it has a few things in common with it, as it does with my story, and the stories of most of my friends. The big difference is that she writes it so well.
And now we find that she’s married. Well, congrats and best wishes. It worked for me.