Predestined To Be.

You there! Beautiful eyes, first off. They are scrolling so flawlessly across this page. Now, if you're looking for more compliments, click away now. If you're looking for humor, click away. But I promise, it will be worth it to read until the end. 

Let me start out by stating the obvious- You have a past. 

I have a past. My family has a past.

Sometimes, I feel like I have a predestined future. I was born into a life that I will eventually become (fill in the blank.) 

When my father struggled with alcoholism, I was told that I was "born with a shot of whiskey in my hand, so it's best to just stay away." It made me feel as though I had no choice in the matter. I will become an alcoholic, at some point in life, because those that came before me were. I strayed from alcohol for as long as possible. Partly because it doesn't make me feel great (whoever feels great please let me in on your secret) and partly because I felt predestined to become an alcoholic if I even took one shot. I have many nights wanted, "the forbidden fruit" and lay awake craving something I had never even had before. Which then led me to believe that maybe he was right, maybe vodka or whiskey or pick your poison, really WAS coursing through my veins. It would only be a matter of time before I took my first hard kick with alcohol and that would do it for me. Downward spiral of uncontrollable atrocities from there. 

Then one day I got up the courage to drink a glass of wine. Woah... Nothing happened. I wasn't pouring down shots of vodka and ruining relationships. I just.... Had a glass of wine. And then I stopped. I then had some fruity concoction (I don't drink often people, I don't know names of ANY.THING) at a party a few months later, and again. That was it. This BEING, this monster in my closet of drinking that I was led to be so fearful of, was really just this warm, cuddly, sometimes fuzzy monster. Why? Because I made it that way. I didn't take it where others have. It wasn't going to be my crutch in life. 

Maybe you too, come from a long line of alcoholics or pill poppers or mental disorders. (Speaking from experience here people, I have a little of all of that in my family. Whom I love each and every one of so fiercely and dearly it is unexplainable) 

I've been afraid of my own mind, my own body. I've feared WHAT COULD BE. I naturally have an extremely overactive mind, and I have felt like with just one wrong move, it could start working against me. 

I want to bring awareness to alcoholism though, because everyone seems to think that it is a bunch of lazy people with no dreams or aspirations in life that don't have anything better to do than scratch their belly and drink a six pack, but oh, how it is exactly the opposite. 

I will tell you one thing I know to be true in life, nobody can become truly addicted to something without having a powerful mind. Whether or not they ever break that addiction, this is true. 

I believe this wholeheartedly. I don't mean you have to be a rocket scientist, but I think your brain capacity has to have a special and unique SOMETHING. Maybe it's one thing. You can memorize numbers. Whatever it is, it's special. You have to possess some depth, some demon in the closet or an inkling of a dream.... 

You can't struggle with something so fierce without first possessing the ability to be consumed. I'm talking body, mind and soul here people. And I honestly and wholly believe that if you have no depth to you, it wouldn't be hard to get out of addictions. 

That's why I believe alcoholism and addictions swallow up the purest of our people. Maybe before they even had the chance to show anybody on Earth what their true spirit reflects, and that's why we think of drunks as lazy and incompetent people. 

But these people are strong. Often times they have been places in life and then they have fallen. 

We have disease in this world that will swallow you whole; they won't discriminate on color or gender or wealth or education. They will throw you against the wall until you've committed suicide twenty times over and then wake up every morning, they will resuscitate your deepest fears and suffocate your ability to think clearly. 

Our minds are our biggest assets here.

I know this because at one point I was scared of my own space between my ears. I was predestined to become an alcoholic. I was predestined to have a mental illness. I was predestined to struggle with suicide. 

But how I was very horribly wrong. (well, thus far... Keep tabs on me people, I'm only 23 years young) 

I am just me. With a line of people who were just them. 

I am not to become anyone or anything else. My genetics do not define my struggles. My blood does not dictate my present or my future. 

And I've been GIFTED with the power of an active mind, not cursed. 

I've been gifted with the knowledge of knowing when is too much. When to try harder and when to walk away. 

I've been gifted with the struggles surrounding me so I could overcome them and be a light to those around me. 

My destiny, your destiny, is not written in the past. It is not written in your blood line. It is not written by your genetic composure. It is not written by a shot glass in your hand at birth or a needle in your arm in your teens. 

It is written by you, and only you, today and every day going forward.

Make it count. Who do YOU want to be destined to become? That is only YOURS to determine. 

The chains of the past are meant to be broken, not hanging wearily for generations.