ÃÂÃ ÃÂÃ ÃÂÃ ÃÂÃ ÃÂÃ ÃÂÃ ÃÂÃ ÃÂÃ Growing up in a small town wasn't always easy for me. I felt that I was constantly hiding and denying the person that I was and the life that I lived. I was forced to be someone that I really wasn't due to the fact that I had a "family secret" that I was withholding in order to protect the well-known, family name, Hutcherson. In highschool, no one but family members and close friends knew that I lived with an alcoholic father. As a child I was always taught to keep our family life secret and never let people know the struggles that our family faced. People always thought that I had the best of everything because of the material possessions I accumulated from my dad. They assumed that because our family had money, we were problem free - and oh, how wrong they were! It was until my senior year at Halls High School that I kept leading people on to believe a lie.
I finally got tired of feeling as though I was two different people with two different lives.
ÃÂÃ ÃÂÃ ÃÂÃ ÃÂÃ ÃÂÃ ÃÂÃ ÃÂÃ ÃÂÃ After attending counseling for several months, because of the depression that had taken a tole on me, my psychiatrist helped me to realize that it wasn't my fault that my father has this addiction. I soon figured out that there was no reason to be ashamed or embarrassed for things that I had no control over. If people liked me, they should like me for the "real me," not who I had been pretending to be. I learned to deal with my father's alcohol problem by acknowledging the stages of the grieving process. Dr. Bell taught me that in order to make peace with the hardships in my life, I had to overcome each of the five processes;...