One-Dimensional

June 22, 2017

It is incomprehensible, to me, that we are here in this moment. I am sitting at this table, looking at people I thought saw me for the first time in so long. But they are looking right past me now.

This is the second in a series of conversations. The first was an introduction. In the search for a new roommate, in the process of crafting an ad for the room, my illness comes up as a potential line item. The topic is then up for discussion, should we or should we not, and if so, to what extent, include Madison’s health issues in the ad for the room. As my illness doesn’t impact the price of the room or the square footage of living space or the location of the house, I don’t think it’s relevant.

It’s here where three women who stepped in to help carry the weight of life tell me it’s been too heavy. 

I was young when I moved in. I was blind to the tragedy that still lingered in my mind, that stood present in my heart. I didn’t know how to protect my emotional self, my psychological self. I didn’t know that I had a right to say no to unwanted and unneeded intervention, to prevent people from invading every part of my life when I neither needed nor wanted them to. I didn’t know. I was young.

I wasn’t aware my illnesses were chronic. I didn’t know until I was four months or so into this new house, in this new city. When symptoms started showing themselves, these women invited themselves into this experience with me, calling us all a family, saying this is just what we’re supposed to do as Christians.

Three months later, I’m being told it’s too much. That a new roommate needs to be warned about my health’s impact on the house. It could be a deal-breaker for them.

A few days later, we’re having the second installment of this conversation. We’re sitting around the dining room table, the one stained with the countless moments we’ve laughed together, cried together, eaten together, played together, the one stained with the memories that will forever be overshadowed by the realization I am having as this conversation goes on. As I am calmly explaining the sheer hurt and pain they are inflicting on me, telling me that while I’ve been seeing us as a family, they’ve been seeing me as a project to be taken on under the promise of future blessings in their faith turned into a burden of unbearable responsibility they cannot wait to put down. I’m telling them that this hurts, and they’re telling me my words aren’t enough to make them stop. 

I see in their eyes every piece of dignity and respect I might hold tear to shreds and slip through the cracks of this dining room table and fall to the floor beneath their feet. I feel less than human and things feel irrevocably changed.

Some people will never see past the illness in me.

No matter what I say, no matter what I do, for some people, I will only ever be a walking diagnosis. A collection of deficiencies, a project to be undertaken, a burden to unwillingly carry, something to be fixed. Forgetting the person that is to be loved.

I wish I could say that I was heard and we moved forward on the same page. I wasn’t. The best that I could get was a compromise. We wouldn’t include my illness as a line item, but we would include it in the second round of communication with prospective roommates.

I was disappointed in them. I was more disappointed in myself, though. For believing their view of me. For holding onto their words about me for too long. Some people won’t see past the illness in me. I tell myself I don’t have to be one of them.

To hear this entry read aloud, click here.
To watch this entry in American Sign Language, click here. (Coming Soon)