The American Dream

It seems as if the america dream when I got out of high school was simple: Go to college and graduate, get a job, meet an amazing man, get married and travel for a couple of years, buy a house, have a couple of kids and live happily ever after.
No where in there was my mom dying and reeking havoc on my entire adult life. Gaining 150+pounds, having diabetes, and my husband being laid off 3 times in our married lives of six years.
Now it seems my entire "american dream" as I knew it has been turned on its head, with the exception meeting and marrying an amazing man. With whom I have weathered these storms of truimph and tragedy with.
I thought as a child/teenager if I could just manage the catosphy that was my life, then I could make my own decisions thus being happier. Yet, as life would have it just as I became comfortable in my own skin on the campus of EMU at 21 that same life would be turned upside down with a single 2am phone call. As mothers day ended and my nightmare began in 1999, I sobbed on the phone to my best friend that my mom has had a heartattack and 'passed on' as the result.Two days later, at her funeral luncheon, this is not the way I thought my adult life should began.
One year later, I left EMU because I could not handle the stress of working full time, dealing my own emotions of mom's death and my family's issues, along with going to school. I got my first apartment close to my sister, and together we grieved the loss of our mother. In the two years following, I met the man who would be my husband and together I thought I would finally have some sort of normallacy in this life.
We were engaged after 6 months, and planned to be married that next August. Our orginal plans to have an intimate wedding in Hawii were dashed and instead we had a large family wedding complete with an even larger family headache close to our hometowns. This should have been our clue to not come back from our amazing honeymoon, yet with stars in our eyes and a 'our love an conquer anything' attitude we settled down in our one bedroom apartment and focused on what we thought was our american dream.
Over the next days and months we would experience a gamit of highs and lows from job issues to life threatening health problems. Which leaves me asking the question now: What is the American Dream anyways??