My Forever Grim Profile!

Life doesn't always reek; I can just stay in bed

I don't mean to start off by complaining, like Doug and Wendy Whiner of the old Sat. Night Live fame.... but face it, if we live to age 40 without acquiring MS, we're home free. I got MS at age 39 3/4's. I had just aced my comps for a PhD pgm at an Ivy League school, thereby setting the clock in motion for $180,000 in student loans. For a smart girl, I got my advanced degree in EDUCATION. I mean, my annual salary increase for this wealth of knowledge was $1200. ANNUALLY. My monthly payment on the student loans? $1800. MONTHLY. But hey, I got MS, and a BAD case. I was going blind, well, it began as pure double vision. The red Subaru in front of me was in both lanes; the metal indistinguishable from the illusion. My child was 3. She learned EARLY to be a backseat driver out of necessity, "Olivia, is that red car straight in front of us, or is it on the right or left?" She learned. At 13, she is now without peer in the backseat driving dept, though she does so riding shot gun these days. Oh, did I fail to mention that I am a SINGLE mom? And have been her entire life. Her father's contribution to her early years happened in the first, oh, 6 or 7 minutes of conception. To be fair, however, I DID meet him in a treatment center where he was the hottest guy in the crowd.. of course, that's like saying "you don't sweat much for a fat girl" in terms of compliments... but still. And I was in there after a 10-month addiction to cocaine that at first allowed me the time to work, teach, study, condense my notes into an amazing small document that anyone with enough brain power to pass the GRE's, LSAT's, or MCAT's could memorize and then ace the test (the trick, law and med school students, is to quote back in the essay the very professors who've been your teachers). EVERYONE loves to see his name in lights; even if it is a student's paper.... unbelievable if it's a dissertation that will be published and housed forever in the library at Michigan State, or on the internet these days. So at first, without food, sleep, or people, I could soar... then, I could ONLY soar from the sofa, method of ingestion having graduated from snorting to mainlining it as a 3rd year resident at said univ. showed me to do, as his hero, Sigmund Freud had done. Having something resembling a conscience, he did give us heart medicine prior to what I was to later learn was a speedball (I had lacked heroin to extend the high, therefore saving money in the long haul... and lacking good veins to begin with, had eroded mine and collapsed so many that I was necrotic (dead) tissue, wrist to shoulder, ankle to knee, all 4 limbs within 6 months of my first shot (like flying up and taking a bite of the moon, the ride was SO spectacular).. the burn upon return to earth was hideous. By the time some dear friends got me to Phx, my parents met the plane at Sky Harbor with a wheelchair though my father could easily have carried the 84 pounds that was left of his oldest, almost Mary Poppins daughter -- A student, Homecoming Queen at ASU, lines of boys asking me to proms, formals, and to be their wives. After 13 weeks in the hospital and 31 surgeries, including skin grafts to cover the truly naked limbs... I finally got to treatment where they were still pulling the dry packing off of my wounded arms and legs, this time without aid of Dilaudid or Morphine. This time solo so I literally screamed in pain, the tears running rivulets down my face, onto my breasts and lap... and this guy decides that I am beautiful. ME? Are you kidding me, with open wounds the size of melons rolling down my legs, large citrus down my arms. Of course, he is blind in one eye due to a childhood ski accident so he had no peripheral vision. It was not entirely his fault, as I looked pretty much the same down the center, if a bit skinny. We spent the summer together and had a blast until I ran down to my last few thousand out of a final student loan check of $18k that paid for treatment, rent, car (a used Saab, but hey? who can tell, honestly, how old an athletic shoe may be?), food, a gas card for both of us, and we needed no condoms as I hadn't had a period since I'd lost below 110 lbs. Well, he couldn't seem to stay at a construction job more than a week or so, and I knew I had to rejoin the world. So I appeared at my old school district where I'd been a student 2 decades prior, and was whispered about one English Dept. opening at the brand new high school. I got the interview and then nailed it. You know that feeling (though it happens only rarely to those of us in this club, admittedly) when you've just hit the sweet spot and sent the golf ball onto the green from the first tee? I knew I'd nailed that job. Stepping into what should have been my empty apt, save my rescued pet, Louisa May "Allcat," there lies B.C. in his boxers on my sofa, watching "Legends of the Fall" on Pay Per View for the 4th time, identifying with the character, Tristan. He looked up, surprised to see me home so quickly and said, "Hey where was you?" and I knew.... I'll never be able to introduce this guy to any of my new friends (provided anyone liked me and wanted to be my friend) in the largest English Dept in the district. I explained in plain English so he would understand that, grammar aside, we were just too different for this relationship to go any further. I ended the engagement right then and there, never to be convinced I'd made the wrong choice. Not even a month later when my other cat, Henry David "Furrough" was acting very strange around my tummy. Not even when I was ravenously hungry and so tired after a day of teaching that I could barely make it to the top of the stairs before falling on my face to nap did it cross my mind that my body was doing anything except catching up. Though I had, in my 11th hour prayed for God, if he could still hear me, to just give me a reason to live, not caring what it was.... did it cross my mind that my prayer could be a dazzlingly brilliant answer by the master of the universe. I finally took one of those EPT tests, but store brand because they are ungodly expensive... But get used to it if it's a plus or blue or some other form of YES, because next to a package of diapers, it's a candy bar by comparison. Brilliant indeed. I might in my still-not-quite-right mind have hurt ME again when those massive student loan bills rolled in, for example, or when the Saab I lent to a friend's son who was headed to Navy SEAL training school. His roommate borrowed the Saab one night while said cousin was on a date, only to come home to find officers in his room, awaiting his roommate. They thought HE was dead, of course, because the guy had also borrowed his driver's license. I guess he wanted to go out legally; what a dolt. Turns out he'd also packed Navy-issued sidearm and after leaving a good-bye note, blew his brains out inside "our" Saab. Lovely. After it was kept for testing and measurements and anti-crime lab "Abby" stuff, 3 months later, they asked if I wanted it back. I didn't. Yes, the box said it could take up to 3 minutes for the test to register its answer. Mine was SO big a YES that the second I unwrapped the little syringe-looking thing, it began to glow...It was impossible, and I was no virgin by then (hey, cocaine gets expensive)... but God answered that prayer as sure as I'm still alive, which was also just flat out impossible. I still didn't even consider recalling the sperm donor... not until she was approaching her first b-day. You know, it really should be HIM applying for this award. In our worst fight EVER I realized and told him that the underlying problem was that he loved C.C., his son from his first marriage (she lasted until the boy's 5th month before kicking BC to the curb) more than he loved Olivia. He thought it over a moment and replied, "Well, maybe I do. I've known him longer." I went ballistic. "EVERYONE'S known him longer, you idiot. He's OLDER. That is not how you measure love. If it were, how come you are your mother's favorite? It should be your oldest brother, right?" That one threw him for quite a while... until he explained that I just didn't know the inner-workings of his family. That in itself may disqualify me from winning the big prize here in your contest. He was actually right; I did not "get" them at all. Not a one of them. And as Olivia tilts the table toward teenager, I'm afraid that nature weighs more heavily than nurture than I would have ever dreamed possible. School was, for me, a breeze. One I certainly enjoyed because the other kids liked me, always. I was nice to them. I learned their names and used them while looking them in the eyes. Just like my father taught us as the congregation walked by to shake his hand and kiss our cheeks after his sermon, we smiled and looked the old ladies in the eyeballs and said, "Good morning, Mrs. Somethingorother" and then nothing more as "Children were to be seen and not heard." Now WHY did I skip that portion of the training when I myself became a parent? I thought it archaic and just wrong, as children have a great deal to say. Little did I know. Olivia started speaking at FIVE MONTHS and has not taken a full, deep breath since that morning.