I grew up in an everybody-knows-everybody kind of neighborhood in Honolulu. I’m part Hawaiian, part Chinese, Dutch, Indonesian, and German. My mom was 20 when she had me. I have a younger brother. We moved around a lot as kids. I changed schools every year. My parents weren’t ready to be parents, they were kids having kids. They were drinking and partying.
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There was domestic violence. When I was 5, I saw my father choking my mom against the wall. He would slap her and punch her. I would take my brother into the other room to break his attention. It’s hard to break someone’s attention when things are breaking in the other room. I turned into a caretaker.
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When I was 9 years old, my parents got into crystal meth. It became more important to pay the dealer than the electric bill. So we had to move to another town on the island. From the age of 9, I took care of my brother. I smoked my first joint with my mom. I was 10 years old. My mom said, You can drink and use, just as long as you’re doing it with me. I thought that was cool. Sometimes we stayed with our grandma and it much better. We had stability, responsibility.
My home was the closest thing to a “regular” two-parent family in our neighborhood of single parent families. In our culture, we take in strays, the term is “hanai,” to take someone under your wing, into your home. Even though my house was falling apart, everybody would come stay with us.
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I was on this roller coaster with my mom. Every time we went back to live with her, I became the responsible one, but she felt she was in charge. Like all of a sudden, she was going to tell me what to do? I was drinking alcohol with my friends. Sometimes I drank with my mother, mostly vodka. I felt cool.
My mom reached a point where she’d had enough of being broken in spirit, physically and emotionally. Drugs and drinking could no longer numb the pain. Mom left my dad and enrolled herself into a treatment center for women, and got sober. |
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As my mom starting to get clean, I started doing drugs. My friends and I would suck whipped cream bottles. I met this older guy, my knight in shining armor. He told me that he loved me. He could get drinks and drugs. I used drugs to cover my feelings of guilt, of embarrassment, of not being good enough. I turned to this rebel mode.
As the high school years approached, other girls didn’t like me. They had money, I was on and off of welfare. They could go to the mall and get what they wanted, and I had to wait. I was like a stray. I wanted the life they had. My self-esteem had dropped so low, I felt like nobody cared about my grades or if I would accomplish anything. I started to ditch school. I felt depressed. I would drink before school, smoke at school.
I felt guilt and shame. I would see how much school I had missed, and get all scared. I could never catch up. To numb those kind of feelings, I used. I dropped out. My MO was when something went wrong, I left.
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My mom put my brother and me in therapy. I didn’t want to go and I threw a big fit. But after awhile I got into it, and gave it an honest shot. I did a lot of growing and healing. It interested me; I wanted to hear how broken families got back together.
One day after school, I had this bad trip. What better person to call than my mom, with her past? I said, Mom, I need your help. |
She came, and we went to a 12-step meeting. They encouraged me to stand up and say I had a problem. I wasn’t going to fully commit, because I wasn’t sure if I really had a problem. But for the first time I felt like I belonged to something. At 16, I got clean.
As my journey of recovery started, life was good. Then I got complacent, and ended up relapsing. I met this guy, he was the man. I loved him. Then reality settled in, the true colors came out. When you shine, people are going want to take you down. He was a hard drinker. I let his influence control my life for a while, whatever he wanted I wanted.
Our relationship got real codependent. I didn't really know where I ended and he began. He wanted the material things. Eventually he started to smoke meth, other drugs, and consume a great amount of alcohol. All I wanted was him. But it wasn’t healthy. As the nightlife became a priority in his life, our relationship was put on the shelf. Then the love of my life left me for someone new.
When he had left I was 8 1/2 months pregnant. It broke my heart to see him with someone else. One of the hardest things in life I had to walk through was loving someone so great and not getting the same love in return. Not too long after he left, I gave birth to a BEAUTIFUL baby girl.
The evil rebel girl in me returned with the thought, If he can do it, why can’t I? I began drinking Smirnoff and smoking pot.
stepped back and looked at my life. I looked at my daughter, and I didn’t want her to see the kind of thing I had to go through. My boyfriend never came to the hospital. I threw this pity party for a month, then I had to change my thinking. I went cold turkey and stopping drinking and drugging. I turned all the negative things into a positive. You can be a victim of your circumstances -- or you can change.
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My parents and I did a lot of family healing. They’re both clean. My dad has another family, and a young child. It’s so easy to look at how bad life is, but if you live in how bad things are, you’re not going to move forward.
What I know now is, I don’t need anything or anybody else to feel better about me. First of all, love yourself. Second, cling to positive people and surround yourself with people who love you. |
I believe in a higher power. This has nothing to do with being religious. For me, it's more on a spiritual level. I can't do this thing called "LIFE" alone but I know we can do it together.