Why and am I here ???

As I look back at my life, i can remember asking myself the question " Why am I here?". My childhood left me feeling like i was not love or even cared for. It didn't seem to matter how much i wanted attention from my parents, i never got it. School was no help either as far as making friends. as i got older, i started acting as if people owed me that attention. I can remember being mean to my class mates, and other kids in school. never the less, by the end of the day, i was so depressed, that I would ask myself, why am i even alive? I had reached a point at a very young age, where i just didn't want to be around. But as life kept going, so do i. not knowing where my life was going, I wanted to find a way out of all these feeling and thoughts. Soon i found drugs and alcohol. Suddenly, I didn't think about hiding anymore. Once i realized i didn't have to feel anymore, It didn't matter if you liked me or not. I became so self-centered and selfish, the i began hurting not only myself, but people around me. My life would soon take a 6yr spiral downhill of nothing but in and out of custody, moving from house to house, and giving my parents a lot of problems. I had reach my bottom the second time i was put into a drug detox treatment  program. I was so tired of living the way I had been. The one thing that made this battle so hard to fight in the beginning was in my head. my disease was telling me that everybody else was the problem. The other battle I was trying to overcome was believing that i had a purpose for living and that i was worth something.

After living many years. of a crazy and awful life, I had met some good friends (national and international) who at one point i thought was to good for a guy like me. As they stuck by my side, they kept telling me that they had faith in me and that they knew that I was a good man. I guess you can say that the faith they had in me was enough for me to move my mountain of hopelessness. As i begun my journey of recovery, I was face with a lot of fear of looking at a past that i had created. But again this good friends i was with kept pushing me to face my fears.  my time in the treatment center (Post Rehabilitation Center) came to an end, i was sure that I didn't want to return to my old lifestyle. I began going to a lot of recovering meetings & fellowship and paying attention to things i would hear from other people. the more i heard, the more comfortable i would feel. I began to feel like there just might be hope for me yet. Realizing that i had hit 1yr without using drugs got me so excited. I had started looking at where my life was compared to where it was before the treatment program. Clearly my life was changing. I soon made a choice that i was going to do what ever it took to not go back. Since then, i have put together 4yrs. without the use of drugs. My life is nothing like it use to be. To be perfectly honest, it is the exact opposite. Today my life is full of true friends who love me for who i am. I am happily living my life with my parents and working in a sector of HIV, Hepatitis c and drug awareness. I also have a great relationship with my father and mother. It may not have been easy to get where i am today, but it is because of my higher power and drug free life that i now know why i am here. I am here because this are people who will need me to help them to make it through the same struggles i when through without giving up. I know that i can only keep the blessings in my life, by giving it away. So if you were to ask me, why are you here today, I would tell you that i am here for the person that will come in behind me looking for the same hope that I found. That's why: my past makes me who i am today. I will share my past with other suffering addict and people so that they may received the hope that I have today.