During this time Cancer would rear its ugly head again and this time it took your Cousin Angie. She was 21 I believe and had so much to offer the world. You drove down from Minnesota as often as you could on weekends to be with her, but it wasn’t enough time. This is when you and Rhetta, her sister, got so close and it would be one of the best things that ever happened to you. Actually it was when you got really close with all of Angie’s family; Uncle Bill, Aunt Becky, Andy, Lori…You are the ying to Rhetta’s yang. Peas in a pod…Angie knew what she was doing.
At the Rec. Center you had to answer to 15 people, the Board of Directors, which wasn’t bad except for the one lady who hated you from day one. We may never know why. But she made your life miserable. The more miserable you became the more you and Cara grew apart, eventually leading you to move out on your own. Cara begged for you to come back but you stood your ground and rather quickly she met someone, whom she would be with for several years. Thinking being on your own was the answer, you soon realized it wasn’t. You were miserable. When you started hating to go to work I knew something had to give. This was also around the time your mom was very sick and your father and sister asked you to come home and help because your dad didn’t know how to take care of her and your sister had her own family. Your brother traveled for work, so he was never home. You made some amazing friends here, some who are still your friends today, like Shelly.
Again, it seemed as if God was leading the way…Mom was sick, you were miserable, you moved home for what you thought would be six months. It has been over 9 years.
How do I possibly sum up the past 9 years for you? As you can tell, I am long winded, so not very easily.
In 2003, Cancer showed up again, in your 3 week old cousin Molly. For whatever reason you started a prayer request and it turned into a journal which you later turned into a book. Never thinking you were ever good enough, you never published it, but you have started a blog recently and people are finally getting to read it. She touched your life to the core and forever changed all of the lives in your immediate family. She truly was an Angel.
You bartended, applied for jobs, took care of your mom, got hired to become a quality control manager of which you had no experience but was a job that would last for 6 years, giving you a tremendous amount of experience in account management and bullshit. You got laid off in June, which was supposed to be just a couple weeks. You never got called back to work. In this time, a bar became available and since it had always been a dream of yours, you thought it through and were told by everyone to do it, except your father. You asked a gentleman for financial help, a guy who owns several bars and he made the mistake of telling you that you could never turn it into what it once was. So you bought it. With the help of many friends and family you got it off the ground and away it went. You knew it would do well, you didn’t know it would as well as it did. I am sure you don’t need me reminding you of how hard this was on you, but it was and tore a little more into you each day.
Prior to the bar you had had a couple serious girlfriends whom your family welcomed, but they just didn’t turn out to be “the one.” You thought you had met the one but she was going through a divorce and you ended up losing a lot of friends over it but eventually after so much drama, and a year later you two got engaged. A phenomenon you never know could happen in your lifetime. In the meantime your parents’ marriage is falling apart as well as your own and you don’t see it coming. The love of your life, or so you thought, could not handle being with a woman and wanted her kids back full time. This mostly was driven by her parents who told her to get her head on straight and realize that she was committing a sin and would go to hell. In a span of four months you lose your mothers presence in the home, your parents’ marriage, your engagement, and then you have to put the only pet you have ever had in your entire life down, because she has a collapsed trachea. Right before Christmas. Oh, and don’t forget this is also when a group of vigilante drunk men decided to beat your father up, at the gas station in broad daylight, for something he was never involved with to begin with. It was truly when you didn’t care if the bar burned down or not. It was too hard when people asked about your parents. It was too hard when your dad would bad mouth your mom in front of customers. It was too hard working a block from your ex and having to see her get on with her previous family as if the year and a half you devoted meant nothing in the world. For all intents and purposes, this was about to become your rock bottom.
We both know what happened to you during this time. Amazingly you didn’t drink every night like everyone thought you would, but when you did, you drank till you couldn’t remember, hoping that you wouldn’t wake up. The constant yelling at you from your sister, the constant judging of not doing a good job at work anymore and the constant lack of desire to even be at work, all came down on you at once. It was then that you decided you had to sell the bar or die.
Once you made that decision, after hitting the bottom, there was a peace in you that hadn’t existed in a long time. You didn’t even care if you sold it! You picked a date and decided that was that. You got very lucky however, and did get it sold. Now, what the hell were you going to do? Well, as usual you got a wild hair up your butt to work on a cruise ship…you went for an interview in Chicago, told them you wanted to be in the wine bar and, you nailed it, got offered the job right then and there. It would be a few months before you started, but on December 4th you set sail in Hawaii.
There are no words to describe how Hawaii made you feel. What little time you were able to get off the boat, you didn’t want to get back on. Your whole soul feels better near water. You truly loved this place. However, they failed to tell you that you had to start in the restaurant before you could ever get to the wine bar. Ok, it did feel like you were dropped in the middle of a jungle with very few survival tools but you love people, so you were going to be fine. Day two on your job your feet swell and they look like you are pregnant. After a week of agonizing pain, two different pair of shoes, you have to resign because you can only miss 3 shifts before you get sent home and you had to miss one. It was a horribly sad day for you and you sat at the airport in Honolulu for 10 hours alone not having a damn clue where your life was going to take you next. A couple months of being home, you learn you have a benign tumor in your foot and you have to have it and the nerve removed. In the meantime your sister, who missed you terribly, convinces her boss that they need you back at your old job and for some insane act of God, they do. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it…you still have to live with your dad so you can get your debts paid off. You would hit rock bottom once again, but this time something different happened. “Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which you rebuilt your life.”
TO BE CONTINUED...
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