If I'm being honest...

And this is the best place for honesty, I took money from him when I was 19. His father, my step-father, did well for himself financially and my then step-brother did well by proxy and had stashes of money he kept in a drawer. I found this drawer and helped myself to it on two occasions.

I had just started living with the man I would later divorce after he left me with our two children and we were struggling hard. No excuse and I'm not giving them. But this was my "rationalization" back then. I was envious that my step-brother would never go without and believed he would never miss it.

I'm disgusted with myself. I had no moral compass then, no inner voice telling me that this was wrong. If I did, I wasn't listening. And here I was face-to-face with my reckoning in the waiting area of a Honda dealership.

I had another reckoning of this sort--years and years ago while out with my husband and daughter, pregnant with child number 2. Our waiter was a man from my past--in my past he was a boy my age, my peer. I was barbarically mean to him--I had tackled him to the ground once and hit him repeatedly, teased him relentlessly and had other boys at our school intimidate him into bowing at my feet under the school bus pick-up awning one afternoon.

Who knows that I changed in that man that I came face-to-face with 12 years later...I was so upset--more than upset, I was devastated and broken to be reminded of the person I was then and quite honestly, the person I had the potential of being.

I didn't touch my dinner, I cried all the way home and upon getting home, I shut the door to my room and wrote a letter of apology--as lame as that is--to somehow take responsibility for what I had done, recognize it and own it. I drove back the restaurant and hand-delivered the letter, told him who I was and apologized to his face. He was very gracious and smiled his same sweet smile. I don't remember exactly what he said but he let me off the hook.

I should not have been let off the hook--I was a horrible person before children, as if I had no inner soul--a rambling, searching, desperate, clawing, shell of a being feeding off the pain of those around me to numb the pain I lived in everyday of my life.

No excuse and I'm not giving them but I have a hard time writing the truth without somehow buffering it's severity.