Cansu
@takemetochurch
Life was all about choices. You chose what to make out of what you had. And I wasn't going to let it make me its bitch. I could be a mature adult who knew her limits. I could be a good person. Maybe not all the time, but enough.
What no one tells you is that the road to accomplishing your goals isn't a straight line; it looks more like a corn maze. You stopped, you went, you backed up, and took a few wrong turns along the way, but the important thing you had to remember was that there was an exit. Somewhere.
You just couldn't give up looking for it, even when you really wanted to. And especially not when it was easier and less scary to go with the flow than actually strike out on your own and make your path.
My little brother didn't drink at all, and I knew it was because of our mom's drinking problem. While he was four years younger than me and had spent less time in that household than I had, he remembered enough. How could he not? But I didn't want to avoid alcohol because I was scared of what it could do to me. I didn't want to demonize it. I wanted to prove to myself that it wasn't a monster that destroyed lives unless you let it.
I wanted to be better. I wanted to be a good person. I wanted to be someone -not necessarily someone great or someone important- but someone I could live with.
"You can't live your life bottling everything up. You need people, even if it's only one or two, to believe in you, and as smart as that boy is, he doesn't understand that."