My life before my life actually started...

I wish I could make my life sound exciting. But it is what it is and I will do the best I can. I've tried to write these stories multiple times and somehow, I always fail. Anyone who knows me knows that I hate to fail. It's not to say that I'm a perfectionist, rather that I expect a lot from myself and I don't, I don't want to let anyone down. If I had a therapist (which I don't, and I have never been to a shrink) he or she would say that it all stems from my pre-adoption years, that all my insecurities and feelings about people all come from the first five weeks of my life. I would probably tell them to suck it, because the truth is that everyone thinks they know everything about me and they don't. So I will write this and then they really will....right? Well, okay, probably not. I was born in Dallas, Texas in the late '80s, in a time when the country had not yet recovered from Reagan's economic disasters and we were not quite yet fighting the Persian Gulf war. Things were, by all accounts, more or less okay, unless you were a seventeen-year-old unwed teenage named Latonya, who lived in Lousiana and like other students, went to school, got good grades, was on the cheerleading squad, had a cute boyfriend, and went shopping with friends. But, unlike other teens, Latonya was hiding a big secret from her parents; she was 8 months pregnant without a plan. Like nearly all secrets, her parents eventually found out, sent her away to Texas to stay with a cousin and eventually she gave birth to me. I was placed for adoption soon after, and I never saw her again. After floating among four foster homes in five weeks, I was placed with a family from Maine. Surprising enough, I am still with that family.