I was born caught between two worlds as most Gen X people might say. A child of baby boomers and the “me” generation, when music was free flowing, gas cost 25 cents a gallon and Donald Trump was not a thing. There was no internet and my brother and I left on our bikes every weekend and summer morning, never to be seen again until night time. Life was different, not better, just different.

As a girl who hung out with the boys, other girls looked at me funny, said things, and they wonder now why I won’t be friends on facebook and go to their silly reunions.  I have no desire to return to those times, they are ingrained in my mind forever.

I grew up in a one salary house, a two story house, with a pool, two cars and a mother with an extreme shopping habit. All was well though, there was always money for wine and cigarettes.

I spent summer days at the beach against my will and as many will say, sometimes I wish to be so carefree again. My feet barely get to touch that beloved sand now, maybe once a season. It’s sad. I need to make more time for that but how?

That is the question I have been asking myself since age 15. How? How do I do all of these things that my mother and other women of her generation never had to do?

People like me, girls like me grew up confused about what they were supposed to be. Do I follow along in this pattern, and what do I tell my own children? Do I get married, do I have a career, can I have both, must I?

The answer was always yes you must. You are not free, you never were.

Today we work ourselves into a grave trying to give our children a roof over their head, something went wrong along the way. Today an illness will take everything you have and people choose to die instead of gettin expensive treatments and medical care.

I was born in the middle of the century and forever fell stuck between what was and what is. The child of baby boomers and the me generation. If it was about them, then it was never about me, was it. When I did have children of my own I realized, it still wasn’t about me and it never would be, and that’s the way it is supposed to be.

Now it was about them, it was never going to be about me. But going back before they came, because that’s the real story here. When for a short time it was about me and what a disaster it became.

But there is always music, and there always will be. There will always be Lisbeth Salander and Harley Quinn to look up to. There are always reasons. We just need to find the right ones; a skill it took longer for me to learn than others.

Reasons are what keep us going, it’s what feeds our souls, and we all have reasons, even if we don’t know what they are.

I have always loved rock music and I may have been born with earphones in my ears, I will certainly die with them in. Bury me with Aerosmith and Sublime playing please and any other rock and roll you can think of.

The Smiths and The Killers are always good too, when I’m in those moods. Death won’t come, no matter how much I thought I wanted it once and I have planned my funeral. But that won’t be for a while I suspect. There aint no rest for the wicked they say, and that’s true enough.

My parents casual drug use fed what would become my addiction. It wasn’t normal to roll joints at the dining room table or to be so drunk you tell your child it would have been better if she wasn’t born.

But that was normal for me and my escape before the pills was music. The lyrics floating through my brain all of the time, ‘My heart is broke but I have some glue’. ‘When your life is oh so dreary, dream’. I can still hear them now.

My love for grunge music and Doc Marten’s remains with me still and nothing can make me smile more than these two things. Except the laughter of my two daughters. But, I have fear for them, when they go out into this world that I barely survived.

When I look back on my experiences, I am lucky to be here still.

That was my fault though and I have to own that. But they are so innocent where I never was. I am guilty of seeking out an escape when music didn’t feed my empty soul anymore. I had my first drink at thirteen and was smoking pot by fifteen. When I was sixteen it was suggested by friends that I should slow down and some of them were quitting altogether.

I wasn’t ready and wouldn’t be ready for a long time.

I decided to try Heroin because why not? I had tried crank already, which is what they call meth now and didn’t like that. It gave me anxiety and I didn’t want to feel anything, I was anxious enough. No I didn’t want to feel at all, and heroin was the ticket. I did it once and knew I could never do it again, it felt too good.

For a brief time, I wasn’t me, I wasn’t anything and I wanted more. But I was smart enough to know I could never have more. I never did it again; it was the first drug I really feared.

Michael, my best using friend was quitting and I was stepping it up a notch by deciding to just try everything. He got clean and stayed clean for a long time.

Not me though, I was different you see, and it was normal to be wasted every day. Normal at my house anyway, and later I saw it.

They will copy what I do, they are always watching, like I was. There is something called free will and that is a big part of it, it was ultimately my choice and that is what I am guilty of. Free will run rampant and no one to police my actions.

Someone needs to police a child, and sometimes it is the child in you that will keep you clean to be the mother you never had.