The smoking journey continues…

Last week Leticia invited us into her life’s story in her guest blog, “Peek into a Smoker’s Journey Part I”, to hear how she began smoking at the age of 12.  Smoking cigarettes progressed into smoking other things.  This blog is very different from our usual chatter about recipes, safe food and life with food allergies or asthma and offers a sobering reality of how things can easily spiral out of control.  My 13 year old son was surprised to hear how easy it was to start smoking other things after her first cigarette.  She continues here story here…
special note: the content of this story is NOT age appropriate for young children.  My 13 year old son is reading this story to learn from Leticia’s life, but things are not pretty and very devastating…I know there is a happy ending since Leticia is on her second month of not-smoking and enjoying life, so don’t give up hope right?
My Journey in a Life of Smoking…part 2
…well I thought it would be best if I took this man on his offer.  The reason I took this man on his offer, was because, one day I was coming home from school and as I approached the house.  I reached close to the front door of the house , and I noticed the front door was cracked opened a little.  I heard yelling and screaming and my father telling my mother “I can’t afford to feed these kids, it is a lot of mouths to feed, I am not rich!”  There were six of us kids!   My mother was crying a lot and I just walked away.   So at this point of knowing this guy in my life, his offer was to marry me .  I told this guy named “Antonio” I would marry him under one condition; that he would accept me knowing I did not love him and for the reasons why I was doing this for my mother .  See, I thought if I did this, it would spare my mother hardship.  I was honest with him and told him the truth, I also told him I would be faithful to my wifely duties as a married woman if he would accept me for these reasons.  So he did!  My family never knew the reason why I did this.  When I told my parents I wanted to marry, they thought I was crazy!  My father of course contested it, I was only fourteen at the time, of course he would.  But I told my father he might as well, cause I was going to do it anyway when I got old enough against his consent, so he agreed.  He knew I would, I was the rebellious one in the family.  So now… I had a wedding and got married at fifteen.   I  had to save money first!  I was in the ninth grade I had left a boy I was in love with named Carlos at the time when I took Antonio’s offer.  Then I dropped out of school.  I told Carlos what was happening and he was broken in to pieces . A love I will never forget to this day!  So now begins the deeper spiral of my life!  Going down… going down further down !

My new life as Mrs. Antonio F.
I was married to a man who made good money working in a chemical plant.  Yes a chemical plant that’s all I needed!  Well for the first part of the first year I did not quite understand what exactly my husband did at his job.  I remember he was having a lot of special visits from a certain man from his job, I thought, but it later turned out this was not the case.  So back in this time was what I liked to call the “Berkeley Hippy Era” when drugs were everywhere.  It was like you could go to any corner of Berkeley and just ask for drugs, and you could find them.  So because I was at that time now into smoking weed that’s where I would go, me ,my husband and friends, to buy a lot of weed and have smoke parties. At my home, my lovely home my husband provided for me … right ?  Well the more we partied the more I would discover things about my husband and discover I did!  I soon discovered that he and some of my friends were doing meth…yes meth!  Now this is where my life now takes a heavy turn for the worst!  As I get to the next part of my story it will now start to hurt me to recall this part of my life this is where it gets hard for me to tell.   My life was a hard journey, I wish this life for no one!  Now this is where my smoking stayed with me for many, many years!  It became my security blanket for me. You will see why … in the next part of my journey.