Maybe It Was Always Like This.
It's just worse now.
It was the night before my friend’s wedding.
My mom fell, again.
She lost control of her bowels. My brother and I cleaned up the mess while my dad slept upstairs, exhausted from work.
The next day, I showed up with a date and smiled through the ceremony. My friend was a disability rights attorney, and she couldn’t do anything to help me. But that day, we didn’t talk about my problems.
We almost never talked about my problems.
I was the quiet one.
My friend talked about her job a lot, and I listened.
Everyone else’s problems always sounded so much worse and more serious than what my family was going through. Besides, you know how it goes when you try to talk about anything serious with your friends.
They tune out.
Sometimes I forget that the denial, complacency, and wishful thinking that pervades society now has been there my entire life.
In some ways, it was always like this.
One time, in high school, I told a friend part of what I was going through. He told me I should run away. Th…