Where am I now at 51, sitting on my dingy couch listening to late 70’s/early 80’s music? Slow throbs encircle my head, they are what’ s left of the migraine that pounded all day. My heartbeats seem to be a millisecond off, I don’t think it’s found its rhythm since the panic attack that dragged on and on today. My eyelids feel heavy and my soul is weary from the fight.

That’s just it, the fight. I have lived my life like one unending fight since the beginning. I am not sure if I was born with the fight in me or if I was born into the fight. My mother says my first words were “I fight” “I fight, Dad”. I was feisty and stubborn and full of fire.

When I ran through the Minnesota prairies on the beautiful spring days, I was like a match stick that had just been struck. I lit a path and left flames in my wake taking on the world like it was my own private war. Nothing was easy with me, my mother states that she told my dad once in the middle of the night “Terry, you get up and take care of her or I’m going to kill her”. I had a habit of ripping off all of my clothes, my diaper, my sheets, blankets and throwing them all out of my crib and then while clasped on the bare matress scream crying.

How did I come out of the womb like this? At the same time, I wonder if I hadn’t come out of the womb like this what would be left of me today. My life has been lily white priviledge and tied up in pink bows and my life has been gutteral deep agony. The contrast of the two has led me to the simple