I won the lottery once

I've been though some unbelievable events in life so what do you want to hear about first?

At 14 I lost my grandfather to lung cancer. He was my best friend and the loss sent me into a downward spiral. A few months later, I was drinking and hanging out with older teens. I became kind of popular due to my party girl reputation.

When I was 15, I had my first physically abusive boyfriend. Then at 17, I had my second.

In my late teens, I had a huge crush on a future murderer. Fortunately, he didn't like me as more than a friend, which turned out to be a lifesaver for me.

I found the love of my life at 19, and then he died while we were broken up. I was dating a real loser at the time that dealt drugs, went to jail for theft so many times I lost count, and was overall just not somebody I would even consider being with today.

When I was 25, I moved back home to help my mom take care of my grandmother, who had Alzheimer's Disease. In 2002, 7 months after she passed, I won the 2nd prize in the Mega Millions lottery.

By 2004 I had broken up with the theiving loser and started dating another type of loser. I call him Mama's Boy.

By 2005, I was broke, back to working a low paying retail job, and struggling to pay my rent. My mom moved in with me a short time later.

In 2006 I finally landed a good job. I made new friends, and I was really enjoying my life, however, I was drinking way too much.

Everything changed in October 2009 when my mom had a major heart attack. She needed 2 stents, a defibrillator, and was diagnosed with heart disease. Every 6 months for the next 9 years she would go into congestive heart failure, and she would end up intubated on a ventilator about 90% of the time. My heart breaks for the families of Covid patients curently going though this. I have to say though, it's hard to watch your loved one on a vent. I cried all the time. I know everyone wants to be with their families but I look at it with this perspective...I rather not have my final memories of my loved one with visuals of him/her laying in bed with a tube down their throat. Every time my mom was intubated, I always had that thought: Is this the last image I'm going to have of her in my head for the rest of my life?

During the last year of her life, I joined AA because I felt like I was drinking way too much to forget my problems, which I had been doing since I was 14. I would drink to have fun and forget my problems. AA and the new friends I made there helped me stay sober for over 8 months.

Then I lost her in January 2019, 6 days after my 43rd birthday, and within 4 months, I was again drinking. I was also smoking a TON of marijuana. This went on for several months until I finally couldn't ignore my pain any longer. I was tired of medicating it. I took some steps to recover my life, and now I am 10 months sober. I've never felt better, except for this damn hiatal hernia. I was diagnosed with it in the fall of 2020, along with GERD and gastritis. The chest pains alone sent me to the ER four times between July-December 2020. It has not been a fun experience. I always thought I was about to have a heart attack, and I became riddled with anxiety & paranoia that I was about to suffer the same fate as my mother.

The hardest part for me is that I have no family support. My entire family has passed so I have no immediate relatives left. I have come to hate going to my doctor's appointments because the receptionists always have to remind me that I don't have an emergency contact listed. I used to tell them all my family is dead so I don't have anybody. Now I just shake my head and tell them no.

I'm 45 now, childless and unmarried by choice, and I live alone with my 3 cats. It was 4 but my oldest passed away in September at the ripe old age of 17. A couple of months ago, one of my childhood friends died of an accidental drug overdose.

I am high risk for Covid-19 since I have asthma so I have spent most of the past year at home, with the exception of occasional trips to the grocery store, and other stores, for household needs. I've only had one friend over to my house since this virus came into the world. At first I was happy to have alone time. I was able to think and write, make plans for he future, and work on my sobriety and flaws. Now I'm once again feeling depressed, and completely alone. That could be a recipe for a relapse but now that I have a hiatal hernia, I can only imagine the additional health issues I would have if I started to drink again so that isn't even an option for me. Instead, I've decided to write about my life and disect it.

I wanted to start writing 2 books. The first one I planned to title: The First 20, for the first 20 years of my life. The second book was going to be The Next 20. Then I realized that my whole life changed in October 2009, when my mom was diagnosed with heart disease. It was so unexpected for the both of us, and every day was a constant worry about when I wouldn't have her in my life anymore. I was her only child. My father, who I call sperm donor, has 4 other kids. I met two of them, and after a few years I cut ties because they are toxic individuals. My mom used to tell me to stop calling my father sperm donor because she was taking it literally whenever I said it, so I had to explain to her how I felt and why I gave him that title. Finally she understood my point.

I have always wanted to be a writer, I just never knew where to start. I wanted to write articles but I didn't know which part of my life I should write about first, and then today I had this idea to just write out the most significant moments (to me) and go from there. So here I am now, unsure which direction to go in. Do I talk about surviving abusive boyfriends when you are a teenager? Do I talk about recovery from self medicating and mental health? Do I talk about caring for a loved one with Alzheimers and/or heart disease? Do I talk about my decsion to not have children or ever get married? Do I talk about what it's like to be middle aged without any immediate family members? Do I talk about how winning the lottery was both a blessing and a curse? I don't know where to start, there's just too much material. All I know is that by sharing my stories, I might make a difference in someone's life. Maybe hearing my story, any story, will give them hope, or inspiration, or motivation. Anything to make somebody feel better because the whole point of this journey we call life is to help others. I had to help myself first before I could do that. I'm still helping myself by writing this but now I'm hoping I can help others too.

Just some other things about me that I didn't mention:

I dropped out of high school at 16 in 1992 for several reasons...because I was bullied and I hated being there, and I was still grieving my grandfather. I did earn my GED in 1993, enrolled in community college but dropped out after a month. Worked a series of part time low paying jobs because I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.

I lost my favorite (and longest) job I ever had in 2009 during the recession, and that prompted me to go back to college. I graduated in 2011 with an AAS degree in Business Administration. Then in 2013 I decided to get my Bachelor's degree in Business Management and Economics. I graduated in 2015 at 39 years old. Now I wish I hadn't because I have been unsuccessful finding a job where I make enough money to pay back $93k in student loans. I should have gone to a two year trade school instead but I always had the belief that a degree meant more earning power. That's all I ever heard, that if you want to make more money, you need a degree. That is a great big lie!

I started my own small jewelry business in 2013 because I always wanted my own business. I sell strictly online but I do attend holiday craft fairs sometimes, just to get my name out there. I currently have a six foot long table in my office with new projects piled up that I have lost the motivation to complete. Lately I've been overeating and binge watching Dr. Phil. I often wonder what he would tell me if he knew my story. Or maybe I should say "stories". I sure do have lots of them.

Lastly, talking about my experiences has always come pretty easy to me, so I became a Certified Peer Support Specialist. I am not employed doing that work as positions for it around here are hard to come by. I'm hoping one day I can do the work independently, and hopfully pay off my massive student loans before I die.