Hello writing world.
I'm new here. I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing writing this, let alone posting this.
I'm not a spectacular writer. I'm not spectacular at sharing my life with strangers. I'm not spectacular at anything really. I'm a 33 year old divorced mother of two newly teenage daughters. I'm also newly disabled and since my mom died 13 years ago, the only family I have left aside from my girls is my brother, whom I now live with.
Five years ago I had everything. Well, I not EVERYTHING per se, but I had a nice life... nice family, nice house, nice car, nice things, a few nice priceless possessions that belonged to my mother, and hope for the nice future that I'd been working on my whole life.
I was going to college part time working on my pre-requisites for Nursing when I wasn't busy being a single mom. I was only two credits away from getting into the program when I was diagnosed with Stage 3 malignant melanoma.
I have a hundred moles all over my 5'3" 125lb body (not bragging, just a point of reference), literally 100's. I noticed that one particular mole only because it was located on the beautiful portrait tattoo of my beautiful mother I had done for Mother's Day a few years before. And with the tattoo serving as a measurement guide for it's growth, it didn't take a genius to see it's problematic. The problem, for lack of a better word, was that it was on my mother's "face", and a biopsy would mean cutting into that beautiful homage to her. I instinctively knew it was cancer and I didn't want that portrait that meant so much to me, to be desecrated. That's why it was at Stage 3 when I finally agreed to the biopsy.
The first surgery entailed a 3 inch diameter incision surrounding the melanoma and subsequently half of the tattoo, hip to hip excision of skin for the graft, lymph node biopsy, and 5 more melanoma excisions across my back and legs.
I had 3 more surgeries for melanomas alone in the months that followed along with almost daily doctor visits.
It was hard, extremely stressful, and even more painful; physically and mentally.
The surgeries seemed to ignite my childhood epilepsy that layed dormant since I was a about 12 years old, and orchestrated a host of diseases and/or conditions that were running rampant through my 28 year old body.
Murphys Law reigned supreme in my life..."What can go wrong, will go wrong". My young body was failing me, I had to withdraw from school midway through the semester which caused a $2,000 tuition bill which I can't afford because I go to the doctors office more than I go to work. And since I can't afford the back-tuition I can't go back to school.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that I had to give up driving myself anywhere because the seizures had become a daily occurrence, and as a result of not being able to drive or work, I accumulated over $50,000 debt, but I digress.
Long story short...19 surgeries later, several new diagnosis, and a diet of at least 10 different daily prescriptions, my life isn't even a shadow of what it used to be.
I lost my home, my car, my independence, my friends, and pretty much everything else in my life but my actual life itself. And at that point, in my darkest hour, I tried that too just to round it out.
But even with all that was going on, I couldn't ignore the circumstances that put me in this situation in the first place...the death of my mom.
Bare with me. If she hadn't have died, I wouldn't have got that tattoo, I would've never noticed that mole, and according to my doctors, I wouldn't be alive right now.
I've come to two conclusions;
1. Somehow; subconsciously, spiritually, or whatever, my mom died or sacrificed herself for me. I know how crazy that sounds, I accept that I'm a little or a lot crazy.
Or 2. Making the decision to listen to my friends & doctors and cut out the cancer was one of the many, ongoing mistakes I made in my life, if not the worst.
I know what a lot of you are thinking, "your alive, that's more important than losing everything and everyone in your life". Well, is it? Is it really? I'm not entirely sure it is. I'm not entirely sure it isn't. I'm not entirely sure of anything right now except that I'm tired. I'm physically and even more so mentally tired, and alone, and apparently crazy. Is this what I fought to live for?
My life is more unbelievably complicated than what I've shared and I'm now at the actual point of my long and boring life story... something that I am spectacular at.
(Crickets)
Well, hmm, actually, I got nothing. Figuratively and literally, I got nothing. There are quite a few things I'm good at, even great at, but nothing spectacular. But even so, there's nothing I can do being a prisoner in my own body.
My income consists of a single SSI payment of $733/mo. Not enough to live on in "the great US Of A" and I say/type that loosely.
Not being able to "do anything" has given me a lot of time to observe the world going on around me. My eyes have been opened to what's really going on here in the gov't. The corruption, lies, misinformation, and injustice in not only America but many of the Super Powers around the world.
Let's just say I've had a lot of time to research the things that "spoke to me", reflect on my life and the decisions I made that got me here, and gave me an unshakable urge or a pull for me to reinvent myself overseas. To start over somewhere else where money isn't everything. A place where I can live a good life with good people in a good environment, and revel in the things that truly matter in life.
So...decisions decisions. Wait...what am I saying?! How is a disabled, single, divorced mom, with no family, and not a penny to her name, just pack up the little she has left and move to a foreign country to start a new life, and leave the heartbreaking certainty for a future of uncertainty? This is something I've thought about doing my whole life so it's not something I just pulled out of a hat. I think about it all the time and I've done a lot of research on it.
The intense gravitational push or pull to do this feels like God, a Diety, The Universe, or whatever Source is called by any number of people; same God, different name in my unwanted opinion. Someone or something is setting me on this path for reasons unbeknownst to me and that's OK, I don't have to know right now, I can wait.
I live by the philosophy that there's a reason for everything, and sometimes order out of chaos, if you will, is a necessary evil to get to the light at the end of the tunnel.
Then in my insane, out of the box thinking comes the logic that maybe it isn't so insane? Maybe it's a guide to get me where I'm supposed to be? What's a person to do when their head tells them one thing but their heart is screaming something else?
It's scary to say the least.
I guess I'm just looking for a little feedback on this daunting decision.
Sincerely,
Crazy In Michigan