Atypical Life an intro part one....



So what is a typical life? I really want to know, cause I think mine has left typical somewhere in the past. I used to think it was normal, you know wife, mom of three, pretty normal stuff. But then..... suddenly it hit me is what I do and go through normal?
   Lets start by introducing myself, me= Meg, a slightly distressed and over stressed 43 year old how still doesn't know what she wants to be when and if she grows up. I come from a home where my mom was trying to rival Elizabeth Taylor in marriages and affairs and a sister who, well I still don't know how we survived to adulthood. I married early like at age 18 and I am still married to my saint of a husband who has had to put up with me. I have 3 or 4 children depending on how you look at it. I am the mom of 23 year old twins, my son has hemophilia and his twin sister has bi-polar. My youngest daughter has ADHD. And now to child number 4, see she is not mine biologically she is my granddaughter and has been with us since the day she was born. So to me she is my daughter. See what I mean somewhere life went all pear shaped on me. I am never quite sure how or when that happened.
  I try to think about when it occurred that change or was it more than one change that swept my world from complacent to anything but (yeah I know not the word to end a sentence in but hey its a blog and writing in the colloquial language). I don't know if it was always atypical or if my life is what the typical American life is like. I know that TV and the Movie's would like to tell me that my life is atypical, no happy family talking over dinner at a perfectly set table, no long thoughtful talks with ones parents about the anguish of teenage years. Man if my mom even knew half of the crap I did when I was a teen she would just keel over now.  So where do I even start?
  One thing that still cracks me up about growing up and boy did I live all over the place, was that I was a latch-key kid before the term even existed. My mom was not the most stable of people. She drank, a lot, and the notion of fidelity in marriage was not something that she practiced most devotedly. We moved around alot; one year I went to 5 different schools. Mom had her own demons I suspect but in our family growing up no one and I mean no one ever talked about anything like that. Illnesses were never discussed, no one mentioned any kind of strange behaviors it was always somewhat surreal.
  Mom moved us from Denver Colorado to a little podunk town called Williston North Dakota and there in first grade I was responsible for getting myself off to school; my sister was with me. We walked ourselves to school, we came home after school to an empty house. No parents, no supervision but the knowing that if we didn't get the assigned chores done to mom's satisfaction it was most likely going to end up with someone getting hit. My sister is only two and half years older than me and well we were responsible for taking care of the house.  Maybe that should have been my first hint that life was not going to be like that of other friends. My other friends either came home to a parent or went to an after school activity. But, nope we were alone when we came home. I learned to pick locks after we had forgotten the house key more than once. I was really good at that. What six year old needs to learn how to pick locks? 
   North Dakota would turn out to be its own from of hell for me and that would lead to some highly destructive issues. 

                Nice to meet you all,
Atypical Life in AK