Changed Forever
Everyday I am reminded that life is precious and so are the people in it. At the time when rebellion was clearly taking residence in the forefront of my life, I was awakened to the fact that what seemed to be untouchable can truly transpire. On a beautiful afternoon, the doctor's diagnosed my mother manic depressive giving me the slim probability of hope and a greater expectation of none, like the slamming down of the gabble. At the moment of her diagnosis I was overwhelmed with a mixture of feelings that at the time I couldn't verbalize. This silence begot a despondency that provoked an early embracing of bringing forth an extension of me. In this terrifying journey that was set before me, I had to find those words that would subsequently help establish me through their acquired meaning. As Audre Lorde expressed in her essay, The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action (1978), I had to put this fear into perspective in order to gain the understanding and the strength that I have gained as a byproduct of these experiences. As she writes, "And I began to recognize a source of power within myself that comes from the knowledge that while it is most desirable not to be afraid, learning to put fear into a perspective gave me great strength." (Lorde p.5)
Like the blinking of the eye, it seemed, my mother lost the balance in her mind. On a night that promised me routine, a maternal bond, the sense of normalcy and security had been torn from within me and I was suddenly aware of my frailties. I was left behind in a daze, suffering inner turmoil, attempting to educe answers that were just not conceivable. My heart raced and my breathing slowed as I gasped for the cold air in a failed attempt to calm the anxiety that gripped my chest. At the doctors instruction, the men in white coats forced her away. Her bare feet dragging on the cold floor; her voice slowly fading as the door tightly shut behind her. She was gone. As I stood alone, heat...
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