Every Story Has a Beginning

I guess I could start with "First, I was born." My mother, Jennifer, is one of the ten children of Edith and Charles, however her mother died when she was 12 so I never got to meet my grandma. My grandfather remarried about a year or two later to a woman named Violet who had three children of her own. This is the woman I came to know as my grandmother. My father is a much different story. Not much is know of his origin, but from what I have gathered he is the product of a one night stand between a Cherokee woman and a Peurto Rican carnival worker. They weren't ready for a baby so they gave my father up for adoption to Joann and Jerry Hughes.

           

 Now this is something I use as a big joke around all of my friends. I tell them that technically I don't know my last name. I was born with my mother's maiden name since my mother and father weren't married (they were "high school sweethearts"). When I was about a year old they decided that my dad should have some claim on me too, so the court ordered that I be renamed Alicia Marie Hughes. Since my father is adopted I thought it was cool that technically my last name could be "Ramirez, Rodriguez, or even Taco" for all I know!

         

 Well, my father left my mother barefoot and pregnant and started dating one of her close friends in school. My mom, on the other hand, had to drop out of school and lost most of her friends. I guess baby makes a crowd. She only had the support of her parents, but that was all she needed. Even though it was hard to do, my mother raised me by herself. 

I can't remember much of my childhood until about the time that I turned eight. I get glimpses every now and then... flashbacks if you will, but I can't make much out of them. Sometimes I wonder how much of it is truly remembered and how much of it my mind made up to comfort me... but maybe none of it is made up and that's just the paranoia talking. Who knows! My brain works in mysterious ways and though I think I've learned all that I need to about myself, when I think that I have reflected enough, I often find that those that are closest to me still know me better than I know myself. 


One thing I can remember is that they tried to diagnose me Bipolar at the age of six. I remember being in and out of doctors' offices and people trying to talk to me while letting me play with toys. They started putting me on all kinds of medicines to see if they could "help" my behavioral problems but all they did was make things worse. I started sleeping too much, becoming a zombie, and one of them even caused me to start having seizures. I have gone several years on and off of my medications and only recently found some that even remotely work. I guess you could say they work... *sigh*


But yeah... that's my beginning.