My Faith Was So Much Stronger Then... When I Was Young

There are few things in my life that so obviously contributed to the person I am today. I can only think of four off the top of my head:
1. My parents
2. My sister
3. My half-brother
4. My hometown

1.) My parents have stayed married my entire life, and are married to this day. I was one of only 2 people in my group of friends growing up whose parents were still together. Both of our dad's, however, had previous marriages. Though I am not from a broken home, my dad's ex-wife and their son, my half brother Jason, contributed to the chaos that is my family. My parents only grounded me twice in 18 years, and both times I deserved more than they gave me. That's not to say I got away with a lot, on the other hand I just respected their rules which I found quite reasonable. My mom was raised in a very strict religious sect (Seventh-Day-Adventist) and became the "lenient" parent when she got married to a Lutheran and abandoned her childhood religion. My dad came from a very traditional Norwegian family and has thus been the "strict" parent. What they formed with their children was the perfect balance of allowing us to have social lives and make mistakes, without allowing us to end up on the streets or like Jason, who we'll get to later. My parents are both high pressure business people that are very successful at what they do. They instilled in me a love of reading at a young age, a large vocabulary, and the ability to address large crowds of people with little fear. My sister and I have both become our parents in the sense that we thrive off of being busy.

2.) My sister, Jenna, is 4 years, 4 days, and 4 hours older than me. We are both Sagittarius', which has become apparent in the past 10 years or so. We are closer than most siblings. It breaks my heart to see that some people so clearly dislike their brothers and sisters, where Jenna and I had a ridiculously close relationship. She let me read her journals, we voluntarily shared a bedroom, traveled Japan and Europe together, and rarely fought. Jenna lived a much edgier life than me. In high school she started dating an older guy and began partying and enjoying her youth. I was a bit more of a late bloomer, but she helped me to learn from her mistakes. We also survived "the man outside the window" (MOW) together. MOW was a ghost or spirit that haunted the house we lived in for 16 years. Part of the reason we shared a room much longer than we needed to. Now, Jenna is in Seattle and we still try to get together at least every couple of weeks, (hence my extra-long weekend in Canada.) When we are reunited we tend to stay up until the wee hours of the morning talking about whatever crosses our mind. She is headed to Korea in March to teach English for a year and I am convulsing at the thought of not seeing her for so long.

3.) I touched on the subject of Jason a bit in my last post. Jason is my fathers son from a previous marriage and my half brother. He is considerably older than me (about 20 years) and has had a lot of problems in his life. Jason began using drugs at age 12, and has struggled with addiction for 28 years. Jason has done every drug you could ever think of, with lifelong struggles with alcohol, meth, and heroin. When I was about 8 or 9 I witnessed him overdosing on meth and I barely knew what was wrong with him yet. To my father's credit, I know that he will never stop loving me no matter what I do because he has put up with and fought for Jason through so many screw ups. To my mother's credit, she has supported my dad through these struggles though she has no blood ties to Jason. My sister and I have always had to walk on eggshells around our parents, because they don't want us to turn out like him. If anything, my experiences with Jason have pushed me away from drugs. I love my brother, but I have a lot of anger towards him because now he has 3 children he needs to worry about. My nephews are the shining light in this whole situation, and currently in my family's care because Jason and his wife have screwed up majorly. The realization that I have 3 children in my life that need to break the cycle of addiction has been terrifying.

4.) Chelan, WA. Home of Lake Chelan, second cleanest lake in the U.S. and popular tourist destination. It's easy for the outside world to believe that Chelan is this fantasy party place because most of those people only visit between Memorial Day and Labor Day. For the other 8 and a half months, however, it's any other small town. I have no real memories of my life before I moved to Chelan, and lived there up until I moved to Bellingham for school. Chelan is one of those stereotypical small towns where the entire population worships the basketball teams/players and nothing else really matters. (Think Friday Night Lights, but basketball). If you went to a party and the starting lineup was there, you were sure not to get in trouble with the school or the police, assuming it's before State. I was a cheerleader and though my goal was to support the team, I was not put on the same pedestal. Gossip is another daily realization in Chelan. Everyone is always in your business, you know all the cops by first name, and your last name could make or break you. People always ask so I'll just throw it out there: There were 300 kids in my high school and 80 in my graduating class. My school had little diversity, it was 60% white and 40% Hispanic.

The reason I have opened up this blog to a little bit of my history is because I feel that all of these things are important to understand the following story, and how the context of parasites led me to this memory.

(Continued in next blog)