warning: dickensian childhood interlude

My childhood was pretty extreme. There's layers upon layers of sickness that went on. None of it happened for a reason and none of it made any sense. My only job was to survive it and then get as far the fuck away from it as I could. And thats what I did. But I'm still living with a couple physical reminders of it that crop up now and then. And I resent it like hell.

Between two mentally ill chronic smokers and the stress and chaos they generated, (not to mention catholic school) by the time I was six I had asthma. I remember it's onset and I remember the doctor who told my parents that it was psychological.
First of all, they thought it was very funny to teach me to explain 'it's not catching, it's only psychological' to people. Ha! yes, thats high comedy. Taking advantage of a kid is ALWAYS high comedy.

They wasted no time spreading the word. Every teacher I had knew 'it's only psychological'. It was in my school records. Every gym class I was forced to attend I was reviled by whatever barely literate health nazi happened to be teaching at the time and made to participate, conspicuously, until I damn near passed out to the jeers of the entire class. Jeers that went on all day long.

Being an object of contempt everywhere you go, and being accused of lying when you are genuinely sick is really not a good way to grow up. I was a normal looking kid. I was smarter than average. And none of that mattered because I was already branded as a snivelling liar and hated for it. I remember having attacks in school to a chorus of the entire class singsonging 'faker! faker!' And of course the teachers did nothing. Of course.

Asthma doesnt look like anything much worse than a cold from the outside. You're just out of breath and coughing, to the outside world, and to them all that means is that you are lazy and out of shape. And the cure for that is forced activity!

There was a Doctor on television at the time named Lendon Smith, a supposed expert on child care. He is the one who really popularized the notion of the neurotic, substandard wimpy asthmatic kid who literally made himself sick to avoid stress and gain attention.
How I hate that phrase.
"You're only doing it to get attention. You're just trying to get attention"
The LAST motherfucking thing I wanted at that point in my life was attention. Attention was the enemy. If people paid attention to you, you'd get treated like shit. I most assuredly did NOT want attention. I hated having asthma. It was like I was being betrayed by my own body.

Asthma is slow suffocation. The tissue in your lungs swells and loses elasticity. Every breath you take you have to force and think about. Your lungs hurt. The breath you force in has to be forced out. Gallons of mucous form, and capillaries in your eyes and chest burst from coughing and trying to breathe. Your lungs simply will not expand and your windpipe is narrowed and full of snot. And it gets worse and worse and worse. You can't talk without gasping for air. You cannot walk across the room. The headaches are intense. Your hands and feet tingle from lack of oxygen. And it HAPPENS WITH OUT WARNING AND WITHOUT AN OBVIOUS TRIGGER.
And it commonly happens in the middle of the night when you are sound asleep.

That's what turns my parents out. I would have needed the involuntary impulse control of a buddhist monk to program an episode like that.Much less repeated episodes.

Despite what they saw and heard, my parents were more than happy, suspiciously relieved, in fact, to take the word 'psychological' to mean 'all in her head, nothing really wrong with her'. What makes it heinous is that they acted as though it was the expense...but when I moved out I found out that all my medical care had been free through CHAMPUS through my 21st year. Career military dependant.
Free.
I was denied FREE medical care.

Now that I am their age and have spent some years away from their sickness, I know, without any more conforting doubts, that the reason they did this is because they really didn't like me or being parents very much. And that as extreme and dramatic as it sounds, they hoped I'd die so they wouldn't have to do it anymore.
Thats the truth, whether anyone wants to hear it or consider it or think about it or not. I know it. I was there. I'm there now.
This is the kind of white trash, waste of skin bullshit you see on COPS or SERVE AND PROTECT. And thats what I grew up with. Those were my parents. They had a nice house and wore clean clothes, they'd spend whatever it took to make things LOOK good, but that was my parents.

I don't even want to know where they're buried.