I was sitting here in the library, realizing that Sunday is way past when this last blog was due, riddled with fear and insecurities. To be perfectly honest, that is how I have felt this entire semester sitting in class. Tangled in fear, feeling incredibly inadequate and extremely confused as to why someone like me was sitting in a class full of incredibly complex thinkers… Maybe I should explain why…

I transferred to UMBC this semester after spending two years at community college. I was twenty-three when I enrolled at CCBC and pathetically nervous and anxious about returning to college and surrounding myself with new people. I had tried a semester of school when I was 18 and to be quite honest, drank nearly twenty thousand dollars away. That’s kind of where it all began.

You see, I am a recovering heroin addict and alcoholic. I spent five years of my life battling demons that I truly believed would rip my soul right out of me. When I was twenty-one,  that’s when things really turned into a nightmare. My last post on here (apologies for the spelling and grammar errors,  I refused to proof-read because I was sure I would delete it and not post it) spoke about the night that heroin took the life of my friend, Ryan. Any hopes that I would recover from my addiction left my heart and mind that day. I spent two years living in motels, dodging my parents frantic phone calls, avoiding people who knew my “potential” and unequivocally destroying my life, one phone call to the dope man at a time.

I won’t terrify you with the details. What I will tell you is that in the January of 2011, for whatever reason, this small ounce of hope creeped into my mind. I don’t really know what happened, but I ended up in a treatment facility (credit to my family on that one) and I began to put in some work to  change my life.

Long story short, there were some hiccups, but since 2011 I have not had a drink or a drug, and have been a participating, honest and decent member of society. I made the decision to go back to school as a result, and like I said, I walked onto that community campus with a fear that touched me to my bone.The thoughts were so loud… I was nothing like the people around me, I wasn’t good enough, if they knew the things that I had done… the things I had seen, they surely would’t want anything to do with me. What happened for me was incredible. I spent two years there, achieving four semesters worth of 4.0’s and even spent a semester tutoring Biology. I was safe, and comfortable and the fear left.

Then I started at UMBC… The same fears, the same thoughts, the same insecurities came tumbling back in. I sat in class, looking around, listening to your thoughts and passions and again, felt supremely inferior.  I don’t usually open up and share my story like this to people but I kind of felt inclined to, and there’s a certain degree of anonymity and safety in this blog.

I guess, all I’m really trying to say is that y’all are smart and even through the fear,  I feel super blessed (cheesy, I know) to be able to share a class with you guys. Thank you, that is all!