Elizabeth

I received an unpleasant surprise the other day when looking through the Morris newspaper: a woman I barely knew, and only through an unpleasant association, died recently. I only knew that her name was Elizabeth and that she had problems that made her act and speak like a child, but her death really disturbs me. I mean, there I was at work, flipping through the paper, and I saw her face staring at me from the obituary page and a long blurb about her. She was only 31. Might as well admit that I had several encounters with her when I was in the hospital...actually, she was the one I gave all my food to while I was there. It's just really weird to think she's dead, to think that she's not too terribly much older than I am, and that we had to be in the same place. I guess it's weird because I worry so much I'll turn into her. Here I am, facing adulthood, and pretty much terrified. I'm excited to go out in the world for good but it's hard knowing I will never have a home other than one I make for myself and that it's up to me to create a family and I have to face all sorts of things I don't want to and give up relationships (in a way) that I've created and strenghtened in the last couple of years...and what if I snap? I'm already so on-the-edge as it is, so what if something happens that I can't handle and I retreat back into the "safety" of my childhood, mentally? But then, my childhood really wasn't very safe, wow, but then, isn't that the case with most people who return to it? Take all the people with multiple personality disorder and related "I'm a child" adults: isn't that what happens? Isn't it due to childhood trauma and negative experiences? But as Mom said, I'm not like her. She was on a different plane. But like I told Mom, I'm not one of THEM and I'm not one of YOU. I guess I'll be living in a borderline world forever, never able to cross over completely to either side, and sometimes it would be such a relief to be completely crazy so I could die off somehow like Elizabeth ("of natural causes"...I'm SURE) at the end of my youth, but I'm not there and I really don't want to be. I don't want to be normal, either, because I'm sure this is a gift, somehow, and I'm sure that somehow it's making me a genius, although in what, I couldn't say. Perhaps my biggest fear is that I'll end up like her, a child on the inside and a woman on the exterior, with no one to love me either way. Really. No one visited her the entire time I was there, no one called, did no one love her? Just because we may not be able to relate to people like that does not mean they don't need our love; on the contrary, they probably need it the most. I don't know what would have happened to me if I hadn't had visitors and phone calls every day. Hell, one day there was a blizzard and so Mom wasn't able to make it and I thought, surely, that the end of the world was here. And this was one afternoon. Funny how spending four hours with someone who loves you makes life worth living, makes you fight because you know all the pain and struggle is worth it to someone. I've stepped inside that world of giving up and waiting for or inviting death, and I am so lucky that people have grabbed me and pulled me out into their arms. And it's so scary to think that every day, someone I love may be in that world and I just don't know it...