Drama Queen

I AM one of those people who have lived under the assumption that only "big" and unusual events define one's life. One might say that I have a flair for the dramatic. Others have simply called me a "drama queen." And, truth be told, I have had a number of those unusual or profound life-changing experiences, such as growing up adjacent to one of the largest slums in the Philippines, witnessing as friends of my parents were arrested for questioning the justice of a dictatorship, hitchhiking through war-torn Guatemala the summer I graduated from college, getting married after a whirlwind romance, giving birth, getting divorced, being present at the death of my beloved grandmother, descending into the hell of addiction, and miraculously living through it to enter recovery.