I wanted to update my saga with my precious daughter. I
thank my lucky stars (I don’t believe in God, so let’s get that straight right
now) and whatever other energy is out there, that my daughter is alive and very
well. She’s had the same full-time job for more than a year, where they love
her and have promoted her three times already. She get excellent job reviews
and customer reviews, and is learning a lot about what she's interested in.
Unfortunately, it’s not what she went to school for. But that’s OK, most of us
do something different at some point; I know I trained as a teacher and haven’t
been in front of a group of students in 17 years.
Anyway, she’s doing well at work, and she’s also clean. I
think she drinks on weekends, but she’s now 23 and is allowed to. While she
used drugs for a time, and hard ones at that, and got in trouble, big trouble—she
was never an addict. She chose that lifestyle (who the hell knows why), but she
apparently has chosen to not be in it anymore. I’m sure she’s tempted—she tends to be
depressed or easily stressed, and doesn’t share her feelings easily. But so far
she’s stayed out of that type of trouble for several years, and reaches out to me if she’s
in a jam. And by “jam,” I mean her car got dinged or she needs gas money. In
the past, she’d lie, keep secrets, steal, sell something I gave her, or for all
I know (and I have no proof), sell drugs or possibly herself for money. That was a very different person at a very
different time.