Truth or Consequences

Alex

Hi my name is Alexandrea Blake or Alex for short, and this is my story or more importantly how my life that I once knew is now gone. So here I lay awake at 4am with bags hanging under my strung-out hazel eyes as the birds sing peacefully outside of my shattered glass window in this shithole I am now forced to call my home. How did I get here you might ask? For that answer you'll have to stick around to the end. But for now let's backtrack to when I entered this earth 18 years ago.

November 22, 2001.

Thanksgiving.

I've heard this story so many times that it feels like I was already there, even though I was about 4 hours from showing up. That day began like every Thanksgiving before that and after that with the whole family waking up and heading over to my Nanas house arriving promptly at 12 noon. At that point it was just my mom, my dad and my older brother who was almost 11 at the time. My brother helped set the table, my dad helped carved the turkey and my mom sat and caught up with my Nana to relax from cooking so much over the past two days. We called it Thanksgiving dinner even though it started every year at 3p.m. this was a tradition because then we would all take a family nap and wake up for dessert, it was a whole day event.

2:45p.m.

Everyone got up as a family and got in line like you would at a cafeteria, but there was a certain order. Nana first cause she did all the preparing, next would be my brother followed by my mom to control him from taking all the mashed potatoes. My dad and PaPa would always be the last to get up so whoever made it to the line last, went last. I always tried to get them to go ahead of me in later years, but they never let me win. After getting our plates we would all sit around the table while my Nana got out her blue prayer book for holidays, flipping to the Thanksgiving prayer.

Isaiah 12:4-5..And you will say in that day: "Give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the peoples, proclaim that his name is exalted. "Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously; let this be made known in all the earth. Amen.

And just like that my mom went into labor, so my whole family had to rush to the hospital and within an hour I was born, at 4:15p.m., I Alexandrea Diane Blake entered the world healthy and happy ready to take the world by storm.