Drink nothing Blue...

"Oh the holiness of being the injured party" -M.A.

Sometimes life begins too early and we find this life unwelcoming... The choices we make and guilt we carry can become impenetrable, only leaving us with what was, instead of what could have been...

Who are we to judge? These choices that we must make… are we not responsible for them? And if two find themselves in the same position, making different choices, who’s to say who’s right?

I made a choice to keep my daughter. She will grow up with her mother. The mother that gave her a rough start, the mother who was just a child herself… Was *this* the right choice? I can think of a hundred times that I’ve judged others who chose differently, and yet, who am I to do so?

My step-daughter told my husband that her mother gave up her brother because her grandmother wouldn’t help her… I had help. My mother helped me--however; the greatest gift my mother gave me was telling me that I was an adult--informing me of this fact because I hardly knew... She let me know I could make decisions on my own, and that I needed to start doing so; *I* was this child’s mother and I needed to act like it. I was 19 at the time, ill prepared to take on the life of another. But, at that moment and right before I started to argue back, I relived an moment between my me and my mother-- the moment I was laying Kaylee down for the first time:

After 4 weeks of being hospitalized, Kaylee was allowed to come home. I was 17 and had never been so afraid. In shame I knocked on my mother’s bedroom door. I asked her to keep Kaylee, just this first night, in her room. My mother looked up at me and in a sleepy haze said, “I’ll keep her here. But you’re going to have to do this at some point.”

I was drenched with tears--so afraid of this new reality-- but I knew she was right… This was my choice. The life that *I* chose. I turned around, headed for my bedroom, and Kaylee and I went to bed; together. I was her mother and I looked after her all through the night, my hand on her chest. I should have known I could do it then...

So many times I have used my “injustices” to hold myself down. For too long, everything was *done* to me, I was never prepared to admit that I played an active role. “Oh the holiness of being the injured party”, Maya Angelou whispers … She’s right you know? So righteous… and yet where does that get us really, and at what expense?