September 11, 2013

• Liv's Time ©2013 Amanda Norman, All Rights Reserved

  Liv’s Time

  My name is Olivia Elyse Moore. Liv Moore. My name is live more, which is funny, because the only thing certain about my life is that it’s going to be over before I’m forty. I was born with a genetic condition called Huntington’s chorea. In somewhere around fifteen years, my nerves will start to deteriorate. I’ll become irritable, anxious, depressed, and eventually psychotic. I won’t be able to take care of myself. My muscles will weaken, so much so that I’ll no longer have the ability to swallow or wipe my own ass. Then, somewhere in my mid-thirties, hungry, in a diaper – I’ll die.

  I’ve got some time before then. I’ve got some time to be normal. I’ll finish high school like everyone else. You know – before the symptoms become… problematic. I’m sure I’ll go to college. I have to. I know it’s expensive, and student debt is a bitch. But hey, at least I won’t be paying it off all that long. I’ll get a job. Probably in accounting somewhere. I’m good with numbers. But no office romances for me. I mean, who wants some crazy, extremity flailing, dying wife? And I can’t really have children. I mean, it’s like a 50% chance that a child will inherit the disease, and the average family has 2.5 children. That means one of my kids is dead, and the other 1½ get to watch him go.

  I know this is a writing assignment, and I know you probably don’t care about any of this. I guess I’m just saying all this, because I need it to be in black and white. I know I’m going to die before I have grandchildren. I know I’m going to die before I can enjoy any form of retirement. And I know I’m probably going to die before you. I know I don’t have a lot of time. I’m okay with it.

  My death is going to be gruesome. It’s going to be nasty, and hard to look at. Nobody’s going to talk about it for a really long time, because they’re gonna want to remember how I was before the disease took me. I was fun. I was cool. I was smart. – And I want to think that I was important.

  I’m sure this stupid piece of paper really doesn’t mean anything. In twenty years, when I’m dead, the essays I wrote when I was a kid aren’t going to matter all that much. Nobody’s going to remember the tests I took, or the books I read, or the kind of cell phone I had.  Maybe I rambled on a bit. Oh well. I just needed to get it out. I guess I really wrote this, because in twenty years, when I’m dead – I want people to know that I was a real person with air in my lungs and blood in my veins. I guess I wrote this because, more than anything, I just want to be immortal.

  • 12:10 pm
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