Subscribe to continue reading
Become a paid subscriber to get access to the rest of this post and other exclusive content.
The Goldfish in a Jar
You also might be interested in
Once I got home from my third hospital stay in October, I was looking forward to Halloween. I had a Minnie Mouse costume and was planning on going trick or treating with her kids. It seemed like things were going according to plans. There were no thoughts of grand mal seizures in my head the morning of October 31st, 2016.
My mom has been my safety net for my whole life. She just sometimes doesn't hold my safety net in the right places. When I first got sick she didn't know where to hold my safety net because the professionals were all insisting that there was nothing physically wrong with me. They insisted that I had an eating disorder. Because she was holding my safety net in the wrong spot, I fell. Hard. And whacked my head on the floor of an elevator when I passed out after a routine blood test. My dad had to rush me to the ER. At the ER a doctor with a monkey fingerling named Mr. Bananas clinging to his stethoscope examined me.
I have a strange relationship with my dad. He loves me unconditionally but can’t handle the fact that I’m physically ill. Even though I am sick, my dad is very proud of my intelligence. When I was homeschooling, he got me started reading books on mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh. Maybe it was his way of telling me that he understood I had to make the most of each moment because my moments on earth were limited, or maybe he was just being a good dad and trying to make sure I had a happy life. Whatever my dad’s motives were for introducing me to mindfulness, I had learned that the only thing that mattered was the present moment. If there was something I was thinking about doing that I knew would make me happy, I had to make sure to do it as soon as possible. My dad and the mindfulness books both always told me not to put anything off.