Some background

I am 21 weeks pregnant with my third child. My daughter is 12 years old and is in middle school. My son is 7 years old and is in second grade. I have been engaged for one year to an amazing man. He has a son who is also 12 years old. I love them all and would do anything for them.

I have to admit, I have a pretty damn good life. I have a secure job, beautiful kids, a fantastic fiance who contributes to a wonderful relationship, two dogs, plenty of fish, an overall supportive family, and a happy home. This is what people get to see of me. But few really know that I suffer inside.

I cannot say that I suffer all the time because I am generally happy with how my life is, but during trying times, I am reminded that I got to this point in my life through my own series of trials and tribulations. And as much as I would like to forget certain situations and only take with me lessons learned, I find myself having nightmares, frightful thoughts, and sometimes I bring on unnecessary paranoia. I desperately try to seek the positive in any situation, but human nature causes me to seek revenge and malicious thoughts start to overcome my will to be the better person.

I have made some choices in my past that have led to consequences that not only I have to live with, but so do my children, and my fiance. I thought that getting out of toxic, unhealthy relationships provided me a new start, but that was true only to the extent of a new relationship, not a clean slate to life.

So many times I have wished I could erase some people from my past. However, after much thought, I convince myself that those people came into my life for a reason, to contribute to my life, to leave a mark, to teach me a life lesson...to show me reality.

I was sheltered as a child as my parents came to America from the Philippines in their twenties. My older brother had special disabilities, which put me in the role of the oldest child. I was the one who was responsible for exposing my parents to American culture and raising a child in a country different from what they grew up in. I also have a brother that is two years younger than me, as well as a sister that is 10 years younger. It is a surprise in the different methods my parents tried to adapt to raising an American Filipino child, versus a Filipino child in America.