Choices

I have no patience for martyrs.  I need to make that abundantly clear before moving on with posts about dad.  I do not pity my life.  I am not angry at my life.  On the contrary, I feel amazingly blessed everyday and my goal is to help others feel that way about their own lives. 
My dad was an alcoholic. That's it.  He loved me and like every parent in the world he did the best he could with what he had.  (Well, that is a sweeping generalization, why don't we go with: like most parents in the world.) 
Picture my life as a big beach and each post is just taking one shell or sometimes even one grain of sand from the entire beach and bringing it to life for you.  When I magnify it that way for you it looks really big and all consuming.  But, its not.  When I go through rough times the tide is coming in and changing the scenery a bit and when things calm down again I can walk ankle deep through the warm water and pick through the new shells and sand.  And sure it took me some therapy to get here and get strong, but that was years ago and now I can sit with memories and just let them happen.  With no judgment. I am not claiming I don't get angry again, but it is a dull anger without all the sharp edges that used to be there. 
It is great to me because my blog says I have nine followers, but according to the emails I received after Friday's post, that is an incorrect number.  And people actually were thanking me for what I have written.  This tells me I can't stop.
However, I want you to know my intentions are to help people who may find a grain of sand that is also on their beach but they have never looked at it the way I am looking it, and when they do, they find it isn't so all consuming after all.  If people feel sorry for me, please stop.  There is nothing to be sorry about.  Every moment of my life up to this point has brought me to this person I am today and I love this person!!!!  I would not change one thing.  Sometimes you look at someone and say, "I want to do that or be that to make my life richer."  And sometimes you look at someone and say, "I never want to do that or be that because that will not make my life richer."  Each one is a lesson and we can't close ourselves off to the lessons.
I've been sifting through my dad memories for one that could show you the good times with dad and how big the love was.  Picture a Sunday after church with his homemade sauce smells filling the kitchen and warming us up.  Think of his eager kids waiting ever so patiently (not!) for the moment when we get to help test the sauce by having sauce on bread.  Oh, that sauce on bread!  Dad put his love into his cooking and especially into his spaghetti sauce.  He was also a man who was not afraid to hug his children and to say, "I love you" with abandon.  Hugging him was similar to being surrounded by a 6 foot giant teddy bear and it was safe, secure and pure happiness.