Memories

Two more days until my birthday. I will be forty seven years old. I am a mother, grandmother and a single woman living in today's society.  Looking out of my kitchen window I saw a little girl riding her bicycle. I remember my first bike. I was ten years old and I got it for christmas. I couldn't wait for the sun to shine warm in the month of April, so I could go out and ride my bike to freedom. As long as I could remember I wanted to run away from home. Home was a run- down shack up a hollar in eastern Kentucky. I hated my home, I hated my family and most of all  I hated myself for hating everything around me. I did not know we lived in poverty until I went to school and teachers and students were quick to point out that I was different. I looked different, I talked different and I dressed different. I tried very hard to fit in, but to no avail.
When I was thirteen years old, I started using drugs. I used drugs to escape the reality of my home life and my school life . With drugs I could be anyone I chose to be. The most popular girl. a good student, a good daughter. Anything my imagination could conjure up, I could be on drugs. Pills were my drug of choice only because I had easy assess to them. My grandmother lived beside us and she was prescribed valiums. She never missed the pills that I would steal off of her.
In High School. I became even more of a expert on drugs. By this time I had drank beer and whiskey, smoked marijuana. and snorted coke. I was a full- fledge addict. I had finally found something that I was good at and did not judge me.
I got married at 18 and had three kids by the time I was 26. I divorced at 26 and tried to better my life. Drugs were also part of my life and I escaped reality quite a few times.