THE PEOPLE BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD

It seems like I have always been one of "the people by the side of the road". 

I know when I speak of my childhood and teenage years, people tell me I wasn't poor because I had a roof over my head and food on the table, but it always seemed that way to me. Poor people seemed to be "the forgotten people", just like today at the age of 70, the elderly seem to be the forgotten people, pushed to the side of the road by some members of a society that cannot tolerate us.

I have a full life, don't get me wrong, but it was a fight from the word "go". I have often been told also that my mother was a wonderful person and I realize that now, but living among a dysfunctional family changed me, made me an outsider, always trying to be one of the "regular people". I never made it to that status.

Now, I literally live by the side of the road in a doublewide trailer up a "holler", and at first it was very hard for me, adjusting to living in a trailer, because I had always lived in a house, but the two people who stepped forward when I was on the edge of being evicted from my house, Tom and Judy Byron, saved me and my babies at the last minute and for that I was eternally grateful. I have adjusted to where I live now, creating separate "nests" that are just for me, no one else would understand.

I am not the world's best housekeeper, if you come to my place, you would see a lot of clutter and a carpet that is way past being cleaned, but I live here as do my 9 babies and we really don't want anybody coming in to see us if they go out and broadcast to the world what they have seen. If I sense they will do that, then they are not invited in.

In general, I don't trust people, never have, probably never will. It's just the way it is, just the way I think.

Being mentally ill puts me in a position of always explaining to people why I am not  "consistent" in the way I think, the way I talk, the way I do things, the way I shop, the way I drive, ad infinitum. Well, you see, I'm never sure who I will be when I get up in the morning. What seems plausible to me at night when the world is dark and my living room is illuminated by the TV, the light over the sink and the light in the bathroom is that the world is a good place. It is my way of "being Blanche" from A Streetcar Named Desire = you know, putting colored scarves over the lamps in her room, to give her the illusion that all is right with the world.

But, when daylight breaks, I still feel like one of the people by the side of the road.

The people of privilege who dispense advice to the people who are not of privilege, are a dime a dozen, giving you a scenario you should live by when they know you can't afford to get to that level. But, I don't aspire to have material things = they clutter up the house and they clutter up my mind. I'm not sentimental about the past like a lot of people, I'm emotional in the present day, but old pictures that people pass around and show me doesn't effect me one way or the other = I can't relate to those people, even though I know who they are, I don't relate to them, our lives were and are so totally different.

Just my babies and me, enjoying what gets us through a day, whether it's a long nap for all of us or a treat for them and a treat for me.

Toot who likes to drink from the tap, rather than the water bowl = Darby Doodle who talks to me all the time, trying desperately to tell me something, but it usually is just for a head rub and for me to open the door that leads to the porch = Baby-Do (Boo) who curls up in the crook of my arm and goes to sleep and talks to me before he dozes off = Emma, the social eater, who loves to get close to her siblings during meal time = Pete who greets me every morning in the bathroom at the most inconvenient time and begs for me to reach down and acknowledge her, which I do and she trots off on her little legs with the white feet and is satisfied = Lucy Belle, who curls up on my chest as I cradle her in my arms and talk to her = Linus, who loves for me to hold him, purring wildly but when he's through with it, he's through = and Charlie (Brown) who loves to be stroked but will not let you touch her head, but she has learned to trust me and loves Darby endlessly.

We are the souls by the side of the road, who sit on the screened-in porch with the huge shade tree giving us comfort from the sun and who gather around the 9 paper plates on the kitchen floor when it is time for them to eat supper. We are satisfied that we have each other, content in the knowledge that we are not just the people by the side of the road in the doublewide, we are living, breathing souls who love each other when the darkest of days threatens to take the scarves off the lamps and expose the world to us for what it is. But, when the sun goes down, the TV goes on, the light over the kitchen sink is turned on, the  bathroom light is turned on and another day has passed. 

God has given us a chance to see tomorrow, whatever it may bring.