Ill

I have not been well the last couple of days. I’ve had a two day headache, chills and aches. Still I am pushing myself and I know why. It’s the one trauma I still struggle with.

As a child, my world focused on my mother. If she was ill, she got all the attention. My grandmother would care for her while she laid in bed. I was sent to school with a high temperature, sent home and brought back the next day. The third day, the school nurse gave up and made me a bed in the back corner of her office. The next two days, I came in with 103 temperature, and she just sent me to my corner where I slept all day. She made sure I had lunch and would send me home at the end of the day. This repeated many times in my childhood. I was a hypochondriac; worthless if I was sick. If I was of no use to mother, I was scum.

And, when I finally knew she was a sociopath, I had a bladder infection in high school. I was running a high fever, the antibiotics were upsetting my tummy and she tried to send me to school. I got off the bus a few miles away and begged the school to not to report me absent. My friend drove me back to a cabin I stayed at with no phone or electricity. Friday night, my fever was so high there were dancing wolves, Saturday I couldn’t keep food down and Sunday morning my fever broke and I walked home. She was delighted she forced me to go to school (school kept my secret) because my doctor’s excuse was through Monday. She laughed at me for being a whimp. She said she loved the thought of me being ill at school. She told me how I wasn’t as useless and cowardly as she though. I had been working with vets and had a good friend who was a psychologist. I knew, without a doubt, what her behavior meant. I remember the pure pleasure in her eyes.

As a result, I have nearly died for or five times from infections, have walked on a fractured foot for two weeks and a fractured femur for three weeks. Today, I should have stayed home. But this point of abuse I can’t seem to break.