When Did I Start Planning For A Future?

I led a miserable life as a teenager. My parents were alcoholics and spent most of their time at the local watering hole, cheating on one another, or causing some sort of drama in our lives. Like any other mal-adjusted teenage girl, I lost myself in my friends drinking, going to parties, getting into trouble, and ditching school. I lived day to day not considering that I would live beyond the walls of high school as several of my friends had already been killed in one fashion or another. When I started college, I had buried my baby daughter and was just going through the motions, not really caring if I had a future or not. I got married in the same hapless fashion in which I did everything up until that point in my life and moved to Phoenix. For 3 1/2 years, I had come and gone from one undergrad program to another, desperately wanting to be a Doctor. Unfortunately, I had not been given the tools by my parents, my experiences, or my new husband to develop and maintain a healthy self-esteem that would carry me through such a challenging path. It is now years later (I was separated in 1997 and divorced in 1998) and I am a totally different person than I was then. I have married a man that has supported my pursuit of my own identity, my own stability, and to find a way to end the cycle of dysfunction. I have gained everything I need to know that I deserve anything and everything I am willing to work for and have what it takes to grab the bull by the horns. To that end, I am so close to the completion of my undergraduate degree and went to an Open House providing information for an MBA with Health care Management. I am so very excited and nervous, but confident that I have what it takes to obtain a Masters degree. When I say that G has loved me back to health, I truly mean this man has dedicated the last several years to giving me all the time, space, and support in finding my own legs to stand on. I love you and am so grateful for the way you love me. If I was supposed to climb these hills to get to this place, then it was worth it.