Hmmm...

Well, Christmas was both better and worse than I expected in a lot of ways. I got some really lovely gifts, which was nice. I also had lots of lovely desserts which were also fabulous. My uncle was able to come for the dinner, which I was glad for, but he wasn't doing all that well. My nephews danced around when they received their gifts, which was probably one of my favorite moments ever. There is just something great about seeing kids so happy on Christmas, and I love my nephews to bits. I also got to see my little second cousin. She's a tiny little four-year-old doll baby that you just can't help loving.

The bad of Christmas wasn't necessarily bad, per se, but it did end up making me feel about three inches tall.

I've mentioned before from time to time that I don't drive because of a physical birth defect called Cerebral Palsy. I had a driving evaluation one time when I was 19. I was advised against learning to drive because of the way my eyes work (or in my case, do not work) together. According to the evaluator, I see with one eye at a time, or some such thing. It doesn't really affect my day to day life, truthfully. I never notice it, because according to what the testers told me, my brain compensates for it. Anyway, to make a long story short, I was advised not to drive because of it.

Yesterday, my brother-in-law, who has always wanted me to be more independent, brought up learning to drive again. He told me about a man he knows who has disabilities and still drives in spite of them. I likewise know people with disabilities that are worse than mine who drive. I've been told countless times that learning to drive would make a huge difference to my independence, and i know it's true. It would mean everything to me not to have to depend on people to take me places. I always feel like a huge burden on my family because I don't know how to drive.

My brother-in-law thinks I should learn to drive regardless of who advises against it. His mother never got her license, either, and they have to take her places a lot of the time. He said he doesn't want me to end up like her. He wants me to have independence. I know that he loves me and wants me to live life to the fullest.

But, that conversation with him yesterday made me feel ten times worse. I'm sick of always feeling like a burden and a duty. Of knowing deep down that the person I love most in the world doesn't believe I will ever be fully self-sufficient. She told me so yesterday when I mentioned what my brother-in-law had said. That just made me feel even worse. I may as well roll over and die. I've basically been told that the only dream I've ever had for my life is not feasible for me to achieve.

What do I do now?

I feel even more defective now than I did before, and I did not even think that was humanly possible.

I feel like giving up. I don't even know where to go for support anymore, because everywhere I try to turn only leads to more hurt. Why was I even allowed to live? I don't know anymore. I'm sick of pain and hurting and feeling defective every day of my life. Knowing that the biggest emotional support in my life doesn't truly believe I'm capable of being self-sufficient....I don't have words for how badly that hurts me. It crushes what little self-confidence I had managed to build.

AAGGHH!!!!

I think I'd feel better without my family sometimes.

Tangled...

A/N: This is completely and shamelessly autobiographical in nature, and probably more than you needed or wanted to know. It was either get some of this out or let it stay in and fester. I chose this route. I hope you forgive me for sharing this. My apologies for prolific pronoun usage, but since this is my journal and not an assignment, try to overlook that. I did the best I could with what was in my head at the time, and  I hope you don't mind. If you read, thank you. And if you don't, I wouldn't blame you. This wasn't something I even had an intention of writing, and it kind of spilled out of me, so please be kind to the verbal vomit and the person who produced it. Thank you. Hope everyone is doing well.


She's tangled in the fuzzy, purple blanket her aunt got her last Christmas. Her full bladder urges her to her feet, chasing her from the tan sofa where she makes her bed. She hates getting up. She never moves very fast, and her bladder is tight and full with liquid she had to force herself to drink. The light in the bathroom is harsh. Somehow it seems too loud. If the light were a sound, she thinks it would blare.

She sits on the toilet, curiously checking the time on her watch: 1:30AM. She thinks her deepest, most profound thoughts in the bathroom in the early hours of morning. She doesn't know why this is so, it just is. She listens for her grandmother's light snores, just as she had listened for his. Her father. He is gone now, and still she is left behind, listening. The sound is grating and reassuring all at once. The snore isn't right. Daddy's had been deeper.

She misses him with a fierceness that almost startles her, given how their relationship had degenerated over her years. She remembers being a little girl. He'd been her hero, then. Daddy had made her feel protected. Safe. Not alone in the world. Someone else to share her love of music. To give her someone to belong to.

She doesn't have that sense of belonging now that the cancer has finished what the booze and cigarettes started. She feels trapped now in a place that doesn't quite fit. The people don't quite know her. Not the way he did. Nothing is the same, and it makes her sad.

She misses him and hates it. How could he leave her alone with these people? People who only see or acknowledge what they want to know about her? All of it is only half-truth anyway. They think they know her, but they can't. She only knows half of herself at any given time. She's constantly pondering, asking questions that secretly make them whisper prayers to save her eternal soul. She waits for the day when she'll look in the mirror and no longer recognize herself.

Will she be stronger? Bolder? She doesn't know, but in the meantime, she hides herself. Her outsides never change. She always whispers - sorry- wishing she could somehow disappear and leave no holes. No broken hearts. Just fade gently into the ether from whence she was born too early.

All she's ever wanted was to take care of herself, but she's hardly been left alone enough to even try. Their care feels like the blanket she finds herself tangled in: comforting and warm, yet constricting her freedom of motion. It's a soft trap that binds her, and if she leaves it long enough, there will be a mess to clean up.

Life is reduced to a series of moments spent on the computer, talking to the only people she feels truly see her. Her day-to-day life consists of waiting. Waiting for meals, waiting for friends, waiting to sleep, and privately, she thinks, waiting to die. In a way, she craves death. It isn't that she wants to hurry it along. It's just that she feels death is the only way she will gain freedom from those keeping her safe.

The will to fight has grown dim within the girl, like a candle on the edge of being snuffed out. It is feeble, but not non-existent. She contemplates tools with sharp edges. Rolls over to lay on her hands. And dreams of places far away, praying never to wake.