Listening
I am a quiet person. In fact, just yesterday a friend told me that I am the quietest person she knows. I’m not shy or nervous. I can talk in front of large crowds without sweating and love to chat with people who will listen. But right there, that is the problem. When life gets hard, no one listens. I have become quieter as I’ve grown older. As a sassy teenager, I learned to keep my mouth shut or dad might be in just the wrong mood and shut it for me, as he did to my mother. I became bulimic. It was only the first life-changing illness that I have experienced and recovered from but it set the tone for the secrecy required to maintain a stoic reputation in the face of adversity. The mouth shutting, the silencing of what is too hard for others to hear. I married a wonderful man. He contracted Gillaume-Barre Syndrome while we were travelling in Europe. There were no support groups and when the novelty of his illness wore off, even family members went back to their lives leaving us alone