Being Grateful For My Life

The nightmares began early this year. They happen every year around this time, close to my birthday but this year they started before Christmas.
Talking a friend of mine we brought up in the middle of our conversation about how we were grateful about our lives and our health, that kind of thing.

I started to open up about how I was adopted with my twin sister and how my parents took us to an orphanage that would have been the place we would have gone if we weren't adopted or something similar to it.

I don't remember much to the visit except for this beautiful baby girl, around a year old or so, who no one wanted to adopt because her feet were pointed out and would need major surgery to fix so she would be able. I remember myself and my two sisters begging my parents to just pick her up and take her home. No one working in the orphanage would pick her up except to change and feed her so when my father spent a great deal of time holding her and talking to her it was heart breaking to hear her cry when we were about to leave.

My father rocked her to sleep and we left. My nightmare is being in her situation having this warm and loving gentleman (my father) putting me down after I've fallen asleep and waking up wondering where he went.

That easily could have been me. Every year, the same nightmares. Every year I wake up in tears and since having my children, I've had to go into their rooms and check on them.

They happened while I was still living with my parents but I would be so embarrassed that at my age I was walking into my parents room in the middle of the night drenched with sweat and tears in my eyes, that I would make up something else than telling them what the problem really was. I was sick, I would say or I would tell them I had a dream but it would be of something completely stupid that they would shoo me away.

I know for myself, I was a complete bitch to my parents when I was a teenager and believed that I was entitled to one thing or another and then I get that reality check every year around my birthday telling me to shut up and look around you! It seemed to be a great reminder that my life has not been the Charles Dickens novel that I made myself to believe when I was a kid.

So why do I have those nightmares now? I have no idea! Is it a hint to maybe Cpl. Mayhem need to re-think our adoption conversation? Do I need to me more of service to my community? I'm not sure.

But for now I will be thankful for the life I have, my parents who raised me. The sisters who will always be there for me. My husband for loving me and our children who have become my world!
Maybe tonight I will get a good night sleep.