Sarah Melhado-Bergeson

Sideways

For myself and others like me,
life has never been straightforward.
Meager scraps from life’s bounty is
what we are conditioned to expect, and
no more.

From the age of five, when
C-PTSD,
severe clinical depression,
severe asthma,
and fibromyalgia were visited upon me,
they chose not to be temporary squatters,
but instead
put down roots,
making themselves at home,
snatching my childhood
away.

Do not mistake illness for weakness;
I have fought,
red in tooth and nail
for my right to breathe,
equally both physically and emotionally.

I fight to this day. I identify as a social justice warrior.

“But you don’t look sick” is an all-too-often
repeated refrain, spoken by both
the kind, and those with
maliciously cruel intent.

Abusive marriages are rarely visible.
The terror from knowing
your abuser is armed, and most likely to
use lethal force when you make your
break for freedom...visually undetectable
to the bystander’s eyes.

Disability and abuse already isolated the sufferers.
Our worlds were already
greatly diminished in scope, in the
Before Times.

This lethal virus, further locking
disabled and terrorized victim(s)
in with their tormentor, are now
living an enhanced, grave reality of isolation,
of loneliness,
of abject fear.

The walls that bricked us in
have been fortified,
our gasps for help growing ever more
inaudible.

Deliberate ignorance by society at large
can be even more devastating.
This is a tacit encouragement
to victims that keeping
their inconvenient truths
to themselves is in their own
best interests, lest we become
shunned, shamed,
and ridiculed for our audacity
to self-advocate, to
survive.

I can speak to the soul-crushing existence of living within
a facade to be maintained
by all means necessary. Our culture demands a “performance”,
no hint of weakness, nor vulnerability,
no baldly, earnestly delivered truths permitted.

It is a life of preparing you for when everything goes sideways,
again,
and again,
and again.

I say to you this: I have been training for 2020 my entire life.
Sideways is in my wheelhouse