Not that there is anything wrong with it. It just really isn't me. It is what people like though. Easy answers to...pretty much everything. Saying you don't have the answers in a simple bullet format is just a sign of not being able to cut it.
Five easy ways of living with a schizophrenic mother and no father whilst living in the inner city with no money.
"I need you to write me an excuse for school," I asked my mother. I held a piece of lined notebook paper and pen in front of her.
A lit cigarette dangled from her lips as she took the paper and pen. She scrawled a message and then signed it. I took it from her. The note read:
Please excuse my daughter from school. She had to take care of me for the day. Signed, George Washington.
"I can't take this to school," I muttered.
Mid puff my mother looked at me incredulously. "Well Lincoln didn't want to sign today."
Five Easy Ways to Survive College When Living with a Parent who has a Mental Illness...
"Did you see my paper?" I asked my mother.
"What paper?" she retorted.
"The paper I spent all night typing last night for school." I was beginning to become concerned.
"I was looking at it." my mother informed me.
"Looking at it?" I asked with increasing anxiety. "If you know where it is can you just please give it to me now?"
My mother lifts up a sofa cushion and there is my paper seemingly intact. But then I see *it* on the top page. She had drawn a picture of what appeared to be an alien with big eyes and outstretched arms. I flipped through the other pages and there on every page was the same creature to greet me.
"Why?" I moaned
"They just want to see what college is like," she explained.
Five Easy Ways to Live with a Drug Addict
"I need you to do something for me today," he said over the phone with an urgency in his voice.
"What is it?" I asked feeling my anxiety rise.
"I want you to overnight me something. I forgot my weed."
My boyfriend was working a trade show in another city for five days and was asking me to mail him marijuana.
"No...that is crazy. I won't do it." I knew I would have to hang up soon or he would convince me.
He began to plead. "I need you to do this for me."
"I have to go," I began hanging up the receiver.
I could still hear his voice, demanding and desperate, as I finally put the phone down.
Five Easy Ways to numb yourself when being told that your son has autism
I sat in the speech therapist's office watching my son as he pulled her blinds up and down, up and down.
She sat at a child's table eagerly asking him to sit down and look at some pictures. My son wanted nothing to do with the pictures nor with her blocks. He showed no interest at all in the therapist. But the blinds! What rapture.
The therapist called his name. No response. Not a look. Not a backward glance. Nothing.
After some minutes of this I looked at her and ask a simple question that I already knew the answer to.
"Is what you are seeing here today...can any of this be caused by a hearing loss?"
The therapist couldn't even meet my eyes as she slowly shook her head from side to side.
It was within that moment that I felt my heart break.
Five Easy Ways to tell yourself that your life isn't just some bad dream where you will wake up and really be a butterfly
The phone rings.
It is the call I had been waiting for but wishing I would never get.
"We have the results of your MRI. You have multiple brain lesions which are indicative of Multiple Sclerosis. We need you to come in so we can talk about your treatment."
***silence*****
"Are you there?" a voice inquires.
-------------------
Maybe the five easy ways folk have the answers to fill in the spaces, the doubts, the impossibly vast void of whys. Perhaps there is a book out there of handy dandy lists neatly spaced and hopefully suggestive of what to do for all occasions.
But until then...I will be sitting in my cloud of memories wondering what in the hell has happened here.
16 comments:
Merelyme,
This piece is one of the most profound I have read in a long time. It gives/gave me that feeling in my stomach...of anxiety/sadness/hope all meshed together. And that IS my definition of "profound"...
Linda D. in Seattle
I can't explain any of it, or give you any answers. I can only tell you how impressive you are now, because of it, or in spite of it.
Damn. Powerful stuff. Keep writing. Whatever else you do, keep writing.
Hug and Kiss!!!!!
You're here that is enough to say...
as said above profound indeed
Why is it always the mother? I just had to let that out.
Ok, this is me on the other side of the "lighted screen" with pom-poms in my hands cheering and chanting:
M-E-R-E-L-Y-M-E what does that spell? WRITER!
I am patiently waiting for that writer blog of yours. I know how you feel about this and the fact that you are dedicated to this one blog and the health central one, but I think it would be so awesome for you to start one again and just give yourself 2 days a week to write or 3 days a week to write in it.
Sorry, I could be annoying sometimes -
Those were cute Five Ways....
Thanks for expressing these memories in such a profound entry. May the past make us stronger....
I agree with others. Very powrful. I don't know what else to say.
Keep writing.
Demons on the page are so much more palatable than demons in your heart.
You have amazing things to teach and share. I hope we can do the same.
Wow.
But where is the "easy" part????
I'm with you in spirit!
I'm with Jason above. Keep writing. I'm sure it helps others facing hardships to feel that they aren't alone. Life isn't fair.
Hi! Thanks for leaving a comment on my blog so that I could start reading yours. I can relate to you on so many levels (son with autism, me with ms, and more) and I look forward to getting to know you better. you are an amazingly talented writer!
Your words are still pounding at heart. How brave of you to confront your past. PAST.
It is written in past tense. The PAST. Venting and writing is all part of healing. You're a phenomenal woman!
I remember a few months ago when the book you had a part in came out. You had trouble thinking of yourself as a writer - a "real" writer. Well, Merely Me, you are a REAL writer - and a good one - and a sensitive one - one who has a lot to draw from and lots to say - all things that need to be heard.
Thank you, friend, for your words.
I will never for the day I was diagnosed with MS. I looked at my doctor's face and asked twice to make sure I heard her right. I have MS? What kind?
This is so profound, for each moment you listed of yours I have one similar. it's amazing to me how we know exactly where we were when we hear things that are life changing.
when a doctor told me my daughter was drugged for "no reason,(for 6 yrs at that point!)because she is autistic"....i will never forget how loud the clock in the room was ticking.
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