As a child, the parents are responsible for your life, but as an adult, the individual becomes responsible. My parents were young and stupid, bless their hearts, and weren't prepared to take on the responsibility of children. Mom was only 15 and Dad was 22 when I was born,(this was the 1960's and statutory rape laws were not even thought of then), what responsibility were they prepared for at that age to raise children. But, God's grace allowed for this to happen and so it was.
I am not going to go on about how bad my childhood was because parents, even step parents were human and no one at any age is prepared to take on the responsibility of children. They made their mistakes as all humans do, they had to learn as well. What I chose to do was take the mistakes that were made and either not make them again or grow from them. But I was still a mess. I needed some sort of guidance to figure out the answers to so many questions that I had as an adult. And sure, as a young adult, I did blame a lot of things on my parents right down to why the hell did they bring me into this miserable world? I hated life.
For so many years I just trudged along doing what I wanted to do and I had many great adventures and I did discover so much about myself and how to live life. Even though I did all of these things there was still something missing. A void as it is referred. This emptiness. There were things missing from my soul that needed to be filled and made whole.
I tried counseling, I tried religion, nothing made that empty feeling go away. Self help books are a big joke to me. I even used to sex to fill that void. Remember, I was raped and as a victim of rape, one of the symptoms of a rape victim are sexual exploits.
In my search to find wholeness, I was discovering the truth about leaders of the community such as counselors and pastors and finding that many of them were suffering from the same quest that I was. They had no idea of how to help me when they had no idea of how to help them selves. They could even be cruel and had negative affects on what I was trying to accomplish for myself.
The void that I was trying to fill was the one of self LOVE. To love oneself is the greatest gift an individual can discover.
Eventually, believe it or not, I turned to the Bible. Coming from an atheist family, it was strange to me to do so. But I was determined to fill this pothole inside me.  The Bible is not a book you sit down and try to read. There are so many things in it that don't make sense. It is a tool that has to be studied intensely to get the message that it has to offer. The Old Testament can be frightening and even turn a person against a "Loving God". I discovered what is called a concordance. It is a sort of dictionary to the Bible in which became a tool to help me study the Bible. I took phrases that I wanted to read about in the Bible such as acceptance, forgiveness, love and so on, found them in the concordance which told me where to find them in the Bible. I would write them down and make them mine. After a year or so, that void was replaced with the beginnings of self love and acceptance. It was revolutionary to my existence.
Some of the scripture that I had used and kept dear to my were these ones:
ACCEPTANCE:
II Samuel 24:23 ......" The Lord your God ACCEPTS you"
Romans 14:3..........." for God has accepted and welcomed him."
FORSAKE:
Deuteronomy 31:6..."for the Lord your God will not fail you nor forsake you."
Joshua 1:5..............."as I was with Moses, so I will not fail you nor forsake you."
Psalms 27:10..........."although my Mother and Father have forsaken me, yet the Lord will not, He we will take me up and adopt me as His own."
The Bible is worth spending time in and getting to know who you are in the eyes of the Beholder. These scriptures that I give here are so few to the many that are written and I leave it up to you to discover the relationship that exists between you and God.
FORGIVENESS is a big one. It is the hardest of human virtues. It's not that we are incapable, its that we do not start with ourselves first. The more that we understand and know deeply that we are forgiven in the eyes of God through the blood of Christ, the more that we begin to forgive ourselves and then the ability to forgive others is just given. Why? Because we now have forgiveness to give to others. We cannot give what we do not have.
If you want to know the reason that Jesus came, died and took away our sin and then was resurrected and ascended into the Heavens to sit at the right hand of God, read and STUDY ROMANS.   After that read and study HEBREWS. It gives a detailed knowledge of what is to come now that Jesus had accomplished His mission here with us.
So, now you know what it was that gave me the spunk and vitality to keep going and be the individual that I am today. I know that God loves me, period!