I am so very, very lucky ....

I will start with that I have three fantastic children.
This was inspired by me looking over from my desk at their cute little sleeping faces.
I love them more than anything in my life.
They don't, and hopefully will never know why they mean so much to me.
The reason I say that:

I had a ruff upbringing.
I am Bipolar and wasn't diagnosed until I was around 33.
I still had all the symptoms and struggles, we just weren't aware of why.
So I couldn't do well in school beings as some of the bipolar stuff is like ADHD.
I was beat for bad grades. I was humiliated in front of anyone who would listen. I was grounded constantly and oh, did I mention beat??
I ended up failing out of high school.
Not drop out. I went all the way through 12th grade I just didn't have any where near the credits to graduate.
I was a PMR in the military. That's Permanent Military Reject.
So you can just about imagine my early adult life was a mess as well.
I drank a lot. All the time. It was the only time I wasn't being crushed by anxiety. I started that around 17.
I lucked out and got a job with a family friend in Florida that was a good trade. Didn't need a diploma for that.
Later I would come back home and pick up another trade.
Where I am going is I wasted a good many years doing stupid stuff that I thought meant something.
I had trouble keeping jobs and often had tangles with the law but I always felt I was being wronged by society because they just didn't understand.

Then 10-10-05 @ 10:10 pm something amazing happened. My daughter was born.
The first moment I saw her laying in her mothers arms in the delivery room and how happy my wife was and that sweet little innocent face, my life took meaning. I had a purpose.

At that moment I realized that everything I suffered in my life, from every side,the misery I had endured was so that my children would never know that pain.
They would never know humiliation from someone who was supposed to love them and be protecting them.
They would never know what a leather belt on the small of their back felt like.
They would never know lack of empathy or understanding.
They would never know what it feels like to never have validation for anything.
They would never know what it would be like to never have anyone to talk to about anything.

So when I looked back at my life, at that moment in the delivery room with that flash of clarity, I realized that all that crap I lived with for so many years was all worth it. I would gladly do it all over again and not change a thing.
I went through it so they would never have to feel anything like it in their lives.