Sunday May 31 2015

1110am

200.4

I'll take it, didn't do anything special yesterday, even had Costco pizza and a bag of goldfish, but did drink all my water and fasted, keep it up

120pm transcription

How to Fail continued

I also have some craziness in my genes.  My mother's father spent some time in the loony bin, or whatever it was called at the time.  If I recall, he was the recipient of electroshock treatments.  Apparently they didn't work, because my mother and grandmother later left him forever, taking nothing but the clothes on their backs, as he chased them down the road with a blunt object in his hands and, apparently, homicide on his mind.  I couldn't rule out the possibility that In inherited whatever caused Grandpa to flip out.

Living as a presumptive crazy person was hard work.  When I tried speaking to humans, my vocal cords clenched involuntarily on certain consonants, giving the impression of a very bad cell-phone call that drops every third syllable.  Asking for a Diet Coke at a restaurant turned into "..iet oke."  I usually ended up with a sympathetic look and regular Coke.  Or worse, the server would say, "I'm fine.  Thanks for asking."  And I would get no beverage at all.

It was a confounding, maddening problem.  I could sing fluently, albeit hideously, which was entirely normal for me.  And I could recite memorized pieces without much of a hitch.  But I couldn't produce a normal, intelligible sentence in the context of a conversation.

Losing your ability to speak is obviously a social nightmare.  It's so surreal that you feel like a ghost in a crowded room.  And I mean that literally; it feels like an actual ghost experience, or at least how you imagine that might be.  The loneliness was debilitating.  Research shows that loneliness damages the body in much the same was as aging.  It sure felt that way.  Every day felt like losing a fight.