The Things I Carry

I walk everywhere I go. I carry my planner, my wallet full of pictures, cards and, I carry an old hospital band for good luck. My planner has pages of written information that I need throughout my day or week. When I walk everywhere, I try to stay strong. If I am not over prepared and overly planned in everything I do, I will not be strong. I’m strong because I am held up by face cards in a deck with some super glue to keep myself held up tall and some polish for my teeth to keep myself smiling with my sense of humor. My planner can never plan on seeing my house of face cards down. My whole life has been about my family. I have a family that isn’t a typical everyday plan or schedule. I am living four lives, (including my own) and even the closest people who I know, that know my family, don’t even know the half of it. Even if they had an idea, they still will not know because they couldn’t keep up. I didn’t just grow up with confidence, I had to earn it. I grew up in a family that is disabled. My father can’t walk and is legally blind with M.S. (multiple sclerosis), my half-sister who is 23 years old, has a rare profound disease called Trisomy 11 Q (it’s a nervous system disease, where, in this case, my sister is missing the center part of her brain), she can’t walk, talk in full sentences, or show any emotion but a natural grin. The third disabled person in my family is I. I too have M.S. just like my father. I have had it for 5 years but, since I’m so used to the side effects and the symptoms of this disease, I feel like I had it for my whole life. My confidence in myself has reflected on my family’s health. So I knew what my life was going to be like, but then as I was on my first treatment, I lost partial vision in my left eye. This is when my house of cards went tumbling down to the ground. The only way to help me was for me to stay at the hospital for five days and get steroid treatment. I was scared. I thought I could never do the things I used to do any more. My cards went down even harder and faster than they did before. All of this is just the start of it all. My houses of cards are burned down to the ground. Recently last summer I lost everything that I had to own. My comfort, my confidence, my feeling of being a normal member of society. My father had a silent heart attack, two surgeries, and three elbow surgeries. My grandfather died, and I became a teenaged vegetable where I couldn’t even lift up my own head. I had to spend my whole summer in four hospital beds with the feeling of emptiness because I felt my whole socialization with my friends were gone. I was alone in my wheelchair. My cards were now dust that were being stepped on and forgotten about. Then came a day where a broom swept my dust off of the ground and put it in a dusting pan. The tears of pain made the dust wet and started sticking together little by little. I started to walk tall with two crutches everywhere I went. The cards are coming together more, without any help from glue. I had one crutch to help myself walk around. My cards were almost together, I see the faces of the people who were there for me since day one. Finally I see a full card. It has been burnt, ripped, stabbed, and much more damage has been done. My family is now my concrete walls of protection so that my house of cards is not blown down or damaged anymore. My planner cannot plan this every day.