Sunday, September 29, 2013

How Not to Die

How Not to Die 
http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/05/how-not-to-die/309277/?single_page=true


Angelo Volandes's low-tech, high-empathy plan to revolutionize end-of-life care


Eric Ogden

Dr. Angelo Volandes is making a film that he believes will change the way you die. The studio is his living room in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston; the control panel is his laptop; the camera crew is a 24-year-old guy named Jake; the star is his wife, Aretha Delight Davis. Volandes, a thickening mesomorph with straight brown hair that is graying at his temples, is wearing a T-shirt and shorts and looks like he belongs at a football game. Davis, a beautiful woman of Guyanese extraction with richly braided hair, is dressed in a white lab coat over a black shirt and stands before a plain gray backdrop.

"Remember: always slow," Volandes says.

"Sure, hon," Davis says, annoyed. She has done this many times.

Volandes claps to sync the sound. "Take one: Goals of Care, Dementia."

You are seeing this video because you are making medical decisions for a person with advanced dementia. Davis intones the words in a calm, uninflected voice. I'll show you a video of a person with advanced dementia. Then you will see images to help you understand the three options for their medical care.

Her narration will be woven into a 10-minute film. The words I'm hearing will accompany footage of an elderly woman in a wheelchair. The woman is coiffed and dressed in her Sunday finest, wearing pearls and makeup for her film appearance, but her face is vacant and her mouth is frozen in the rictus of a permanent O.

This woman lives in a nursing home and has advanced dementia. She's seen here with her daughters. She has the typical features of advanced dementia …

Young in affect and appearance, Volandes, 41, is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School; Davis, also an M.D., is doing her residency in internal medicine, also at Harvard. When I heard about Volandes's work, I suspected he would be different from other doctors. I was not disappointed. He refuses to let me call him "Dr. Volandes," for example. Formality impedes communication, he tells me, and "there's nothing more essential to being a good doctor than your ability to communicate." More important, he believes that his videos can disrupt the way the medical system handles late-life care, and that the system urgently needs disrupting.

"I think we're probably the most subversive two doctors to the health system that you will meet today," he says, a few hours before his shoot begins. "That has been told to me by other people."

"You sound proud of that," I say.

"I'm proud of that because it's being an agent of change, and the more I see poor health care, or health care being delivered that puts patients and families through—"

"We torture people before they die," Davis interjects, quietly.

Volandes chuckles at my surprise. "Remember, Jon is a reporter," he tells her, not at all unhappy with her comment.

"My father, if he were sitting here, would be saying 'Right on,' " I tell him.

Volandes nods. "Here's the sad reality," he says. "Physicians are good people. They want to do the right things. And yet all of us, behind closed doors, in the cafeteria, say, 'Do you believe what we did to that patient? Do you believe what we put that patient through?' Every single physician has stories. Not one. Lots of stories.

"In the health-care debate, we've heard a lot about useless care, wasteful care, futile care. What we"—Volandes indicates himself and Davis—"have been struggling with is unwanted care. That's far more concerning. That's not avoidable care. That's wrongful care. I think that's the most urgent issue facing America today, is people getting medical interventions that, if they were more informed, they would not want. It happens all the time."

Unwanted treatment is American medicine's dark continent. No one knows its extent, and few people want to talk about it. The U.S. medical system was built to treat anything that might be treatable, at any stage of life—even near the end, when there is no hope of a cure, and when the patient, if fully informed, might prefer quality time and relative normalcy to all-out intervention.

In 2009, my father was suffering from an advanced and untreatable neurological condition that would soon kill him. (I wrote about his decline in an article for this magazine in April 2010.) Eating, drinking, and walking were all difficult and dangerous for him. He ate, drank, and walked anyway, because doing his best to lead a normal life sustained his morale and slowed his decline. "Use it or lose it," he often said. His strategy broke down calamitously when he agreed to be hospitalized for an MRI test. I can only liken his experience to an alien abduction. He was bundled into a bed, tied to tubes, and banned from walking without help or taking anything by mouth. No one asked him about what he wanted. After a few days, and a test that turned up nothing, he left the hospital no longer able to walk. Some weeks later, he managed to get back on his feet; unfortunately, by then he was only a few weeks from death. The episode had only one positive result. Disgusted and angry after his discharge from the hospital, my father turned to me and said, "I am never going back there." (He never did.)

What should have taken place was what is known in the medical profession as The Conversation. The momentum of medical maximalism should have slowed long enough for a doctor or a social worker to sit down with him and me to explain, patiently and in plain English, his condition and his treatment options, to learn what his goals were for the time he had left, and to establish how much and what kind of treatment he really desired. Alas, evidence shows that The Conversation happens much less regularly than it should, and that, when it does happen, information is typically presented in a brisk, jargony way that patients and families don't really understand. Many doctors don't make time for The Conversation, or aren't good at conducting it (they're not trained or rewarded for doing so), or worry their patients can't handle it.

This is a problem, because the assumption that doctors know what their patients want turns out to be wrong: when doctors try to predict the goals and preferences of their patients, they are "highly inaccurate," according to one summary of the research, published by Benjamin Moulton and Jaime S. King in The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics. Patients are "routinely asked to make decisions about treatment choices in the face of what can only be described as avoidable ignorance," Moulton and King write. "In the absence of complete information, individuals frequently opt for procedures they would not otherwise choose."

Though no one knows for sure, unwanted treatment seems especially common near the end of life. A few years ago, at age 94, a friend of mine's father was hospitalized with internal bleeding and kidney failure. Instead of facing reality (he died within days), the hospital tried to get authorization to remove his colon and put him on dialysis. Even physicians tell me they have difficulty holding back the kind of mindlessly aggressive treatment that one doctor I spoke with calls "the war on death." Matt Handley, a doctor and an executive with Group Health Cooperative, a big health system in Washington state, described his father-in-law's experience as a "classic example of overmedicalization." There was no Conversation. "He went to the ICU for no medical reason," Handley says. "No one talked to him about the fact that he was going to die, even though outside the room, clinicians, when asked, would say 'Oh, yes, he's dying.' "

"Sometimes you block the near exits, and all you've got left is a far exit, which is not a dignified and comfortable death," Albert Mulley, a physician and the director of the Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science, told me recently. As we talked, it emerged that he, too, had had to fend off the medical system when his father died at age 93. "Even though I spent my whole career doing this," he said, "when I was trying to assure as good a death as I could for my dad, I found it wasn't easy."

If it is this hard for doctors to navigate their parents' final days, imagine what many ordinary patients and their families face. "It's almost impossible for patients really to be in charge," says Joanne Lynn, a physician and the director of the nonprofit Altarum Center for Elder Care and Advanced Illness in Washington, D.C. "We enforce a kind of learned helplessness, especially in hospitals." I asked her how much unwanted treatment gets administered. She couldn't come up with a figure—no one can—but she said, "It's huge, however you measure it. Especially when people get very, very sick."

Unwanted treatment is a particularly confounding problem because it is not a product of malevolence but a by-product of two strengths of American medical culture: the system's determination to save lives, and its technological virtuosity. Change will need to be consonant with that culture. "You have to be comfortable working at the margins of the power structure within medicine, and particularly within academic medicine," Mulley told me. You need a disrupter, but one who can speak the language of medicine and meet the system on its own terms.

Angelo Volandes was born in 1971, in Brooklyn, to Greek immigrants. His father owned a diner. He and his older sister were the first in their family to go to college—Harvard, in his case. In Cambridge, he got a part-time job cooking for an elderly, childless couple, who became second parents to him. He watched as the wife got mortally sick, he listened to her labored breathing, he talked with her and her husband about pain, death, the end of life. Those conversations led him to courses in medical ethics, which he told me he found abstract and out of touch with "the clinical reality of being short of breath; of fear; of anxiety and suffering; of medications and interventions." He decided to go to medical school, not just to cure people but "to learn how people suffer and what the implications of dying and suffering and understanding that experience are like." Halfway through med school at Yale, on the recommendation of a doctor he met one day at the gym, he took a year off to study documentary filmmaking, another of his interests. At the time, it seemed a digression.

On the very first night of his postgraduate medical internship, when he was working the graveyard shift at a hospital in Philadelphia, he found himself examining a woman dying of cancer. She was a bright woman, a retired English professor, but she seemed bewildered when he asked whether she wanted cardiopulmonary resuscitation if her heart stopped beating. So, on an impulse, he invited her to visit the intensive-care unit. By coincidence, she witnessed a "code blue," an emergency administration of CPR. "When we got back to the room," Volandes remembered, "she said, 'I understood what you told me. I am a professor of English—I understood the words. I just didn't know what you meant. It's not what I had imagined. It's not what I saw on TV.' " She decided to go home on hospice. Volandes realized that he could make a stronger, clearer impression on patients by showing them treatments than by trying to describe them.

He spent the next few years punching all the tickets he could: mastering the technical arts of doctoring, credentialing himself in medical ethics, learning statistical techniques to perform peer-reviewed clinical trials, joining the Harvard faculty and the clinical and research staff of Massachusetts General Hospital. He held on to his passion, though. During a fellowship at Harvard in 2004, he visited Dr. Muriel Gillick, a Harvard Medical School professor and an authority on late-life care. Volandes "was very distressed by what he saw clinically being done to people with advanced dementia," Gillick recalls. "He was interested in writing an article about how treatment of patients with advanced dementia was a form of abuse." Gillick talked him down. Some of what's done is wrong, she agreed, but raging against it would not help. The following year, with her support, Volandes began his video project.

The first film he made featured a patient with advanced dementia. It showed her inability to converse, move about, or feed herself. When Volandes finished the film, he ran a randomized clinical trial with a group of nine other doctors. All of their patients listened to a verbal description of advanced dementia, and some of them also watched the video. All were then asked whether they preferred life-prolonging care (which does everything possible to keep patients alive), limited care (an intermediate option), or comfort care (which aims to maximize comfort and relieve pain). The results were striking: patients who had seen the video were significantly more likely to choose comfort care than those who hadn't seen it (86 percent versus 64 percent). Volandes published that study in 2009, following it a year later with an even more striking trial, this one showing a video to patients dying of cancer. Of those who saw it, more than 90 percent chose comfort care—versus 22 percent of those who received only verbal descriptions. The implications, to Volandes, were clear: "Videos communicate better than just a stand-alone conversation. And when people get good communication and understand what's involved, many, if not most, tend not to want a lot of the aggressive stuff that they're getting."

Even now, after years of refinement, Volandes's finished videos look deceptively unimpressive. They're short, and they're bland. But that, it turns out, is what is most impressive about them. Other videos describing treatment options—for, say, breast cancer or heart disease—can last upwards of 30 minutes. Volandes's films, by contrast, average six or seven minutes. They are meant to be screened on iPads or laptops, amid the bustle of a clinic or hospital room.

They are also meant to be banal, a goal that requires a meticulous, if perverse, application of the filmmaker's art. "Videos are an aesthetic medium; you can manipulate people's perspective," Volandes says. "I want to provide information without evoking visceral emotions." Any hint that he was appealing to sentiments like revulsion or fear to nudge patients toward a certain course of treatment would discredit his whole project, so Volandes does all he can to eliminate emotional cues. That is why he films advanced-dementia patients dressed and groomed to the nines. "I give them the nicest image," Volandes told me. "If with the nicest image we show a huge effect, you can imagine what it would be like if they really saw the reality."

The typical video begins with Davis explaining what the viewer is about to see, stating plainly facts that doctors are sometimes reluctant to mention. She says, for example: People with advanced dementia usually have had the disease for many years and have reached the last stage of dementia. They are nearing the end of life. The video cuts to a shot of a patient. Then Davis outlines the three levels of care, starting with the most aggressive. Over footage of CPR and mechanical ventilation, she explains that in most cases of advanced dementia, CPR does not work, and that patients on breathing machines are usually not aware of their surroundings and cannot eat or talk. Then she describes limited care and comfort care, again speaking bluntly about death. People who choose comfort care choose to avoid these procedures even though, without them, they might die. She concludes by recommending The Conversation.

It seems a minor thing, showing a short video. As, indeed, it will be, if it happens only occasionally. I didn't get my head around the scale of Volandes's ambition until I understood that he wants to make his videos ubiquitous. His intention is not only to provide clearer information but, more important, to trigger The Conversation as a matter of medical routine. "We're saying, 'You're not doing your job if you are not having these conversations in a meaningful way with patients and their families,' " he tells me. "If every patient watched a video, there's standardization in the process. That's why I call it subversive. Very few things in medicine can change the culture like that."

Routine use, however, is far, far away. According to Volandes, only a few dozen U.S. hospitals, out of more than 5,700, are using his videos. I spoke with physicians and a social worker at three health systems that are piloting them, and all were very enthusiastic about the results. Volandes is particularly hopeful about a collaboration with the Hawaii Medical Service Association, the state's dominant health-insurance provider, which is piloting the videos in hospitals, nursing homes, and doctors' offices. Officials say they hope to expand use statewide within three years. Right now, though, Volandes's videos have a limited reach.

The problem is not his product but the peculiar nature of the market he wants to push it into. His innovation is inexpensive and low-tech, and might avert misunderstanding, prevent suffering, improve doctor-patient relationships, and, incidentally, save the health-care system a lot of money. He goes out of his way not to emphasize cost savings, partly because he sees himself as a patients'-rights advocate rather than a bean counter, and partly because it is so easy to demagogue the issue, as Sarah Palin did so mendaciously (and effectively) in 2009, when she denounced end-of-life-care planning as "death panels." Anyone who questions medical maximalism risks being attacked for trying to kill grandma—all the more so if he mentions saving money. For all its talk of making the health-care system more rational and less expensive, the political system is still not ready for an honest discussion. And the medical system has its own ways of fighting back.

Volandes works on his videos ceaselessly. He has curtailed his medical practice and his teaching responsibilities, both of which he misses, and last year gave more than 70 speeches evangelizing for the video project. In an effort to batter the medical establishment into submission with the sheer weight of scientific evidence, he has conducted 13 clinical trials using videos to depict different diseases and situations, and he has seven more studies in the pipeline. He says he gets by on three or four hours of sleep a night. The project has taken over his house. Davis would like her living room back; there are floodlights and a big gray backdrop where her paintings should be.

Volandes thinks he can sustain this pace for perhaps five years—by which time he hopes to have revolutionized American medicine. Davis tries to dial back his expectations, but he resists. "Not when I have nurses and doctors use words like torture as often as they do," he says. "In order to make a change, you've got to be ambitious. If not, then just publish and get your tenure and move on."

During my visit, I realized that I had encountered Volandes's type before, but in Silicon Valley. Volandes has entrepreneurial obsessive-compulsive disorder: the gift, and curse, of unswerving faith in a potentially world-changing idea.

It is not a huge exaggeration to say that obsessive entrepreneurs, from Cornelius Vanderbilt to Steve Jobs, made America great. It is also not a huge exaggeration to say that health care, more than any other nongovernmental sector, has made itself impervious to disruptive innovation. Medical training discourages entrepreneurship, embedded practice patterns marginalize it, bureaucrats in medical organizations and insurance companies recoil from it. And would-be disrupters are generally disconnected from patients, their ultimate customers: they have to take their innovations to physicians, who are notoriously change-averse, and then they must get the government—Medicare, first and foremost—to approve and pay for them. Imagine that Jeff Bezos, when he was starting Amazon, had needed to ask permission from bookstores and libraries.

Volandes, therefore, will fail. That is to say, he will fail if success means revolutionizing the doctor-patient relationship and making The Conversation ubiquitous within five years. Meanwhile, if the American health-care system does not learn how to harness the energy and ideas of people like Volandes, it will fail. Somewhere between those failures lies a path forward. We know medical culture can change for the better; it takes the treatment of pain much more seriously than it used to, for example, and it has embraced hospice care.

The best news about U.S. health care today is that a lot of reform-minded entrepreneurship is bubbling up from within. Volandes is not alone. So many patients and doctors and family members feel marginalized and bureaucratized and overwhelmed that some health systems and insurers, in spontaneous mini-rebellions, are starting to innovate, often on their own dime. I think of Dr. Brad Stuart of Sutter Health at Home, who is building a new late-life-care system that bridges the gap between hospital and hospice, allowing the very sick to receive more care at home; I think of Dr. Derek Raghavan of Carolinas HealthCare System's Levine Cancer Institute, who is building a "cancer center without walls" that uses telemedicine and other tools to make state-of-the-art treatment available to patients, regardless of where they live. I think of Dr. Woody English of Providence Health and Services, who is 67 and wants to make a difference before he retires. At his instigation, Providence has begun using Volandes's videos. "The changes will come locally," English told me, "not nationally." When I look at him and Volandes and the others, I see not only a test of whether the health-care system's medical culture can change but also a test of whether its business culture can change—and that change may, in the end, be even more important.

The morning after the shoot, Volandes shows me some of the footage he plans to use. We watch a patient with advanced Alzheimer's being fed through a tube that has been surgically inserted into her stomach. An attendant uses a big syringe to clear the tube, then attaches a bag of thick fluid. Over the footage, Davis's voice will say, Often, people hope tube feeding will help the patient live longer. But tube feeding has not been shown to prolong or improve the quality of life in advanced dementia. Tube feeding also does not stop saliva or food from going down the wrong way.

Volandes is explaining to me that tube feeding is overused in elderly dementia patients, but my mind has floated back to 2009. My father's disease, by then, had destroyed his ability to protect his airway when he swallowed; food, drink, and saliva ended up in his lungs. He coughed violently when he ate or drank. Doctors mentioned tube feeding as an option, and well-intentioned friends nudged us in that direction. But his friends had no real idea what tube feeding entailed, and neither did I, and neither did he.

"Let me ask you this," Volandes says. "Suppose I'm having a conversation with you about whether your father would want this. And I said 'feeding tube,' and you're thinking to yourself, Food, yeah, I could give food to my mom or dad. We just want to make sure that regardless of the way the gastroenterologist is presenting the procedure, the patient's loved ones know this is what we're talking about."

Not long before my father died, I asked a hospice nurse about tube feeding. He told me, with grim clarity: "I think that would be cruel." I remember that nurse with gratitude, because he was right. But "that would be cruel" was not a substitute for The Conversation.





 edd

Thursday, September 26, 2013

The Restructuring of Metro Schools Disrupts Community Program

Reorganization or Disorganization: Metro Nashville Public Schools Undermines Teacher Autonomy and Professionalism

The Restructuring of Metro Schools Disrupts Community Program 

Elyssa D. Durant, Ed.M.



If I didn't know better, I would think that the local media is supporting the ridiculous decision to transfer MNPS principals from one failing metro school to the next after reading "State reorganization moves on to school principal assignments," (Nashville City Paper, July 9, 2008.)

I find it deeply disturbing that the media (and the community) have failed to recognize this for what it is: a desperate attempt to convince the community that we are actively working to improve the quality of education in our public schools. This last minute attempt to restructure neighborhood schools will most likely do more harm than good to the community at large.
The high rate of student mobility in Metro (approximately 40% per year) is compounded by the constant shifting of district-wide changes to school personnel by transferring teachers, administrators, and support staff on a regular basis. Everything we know about the sociology of education in urban schools shows us that there is a strong correlation between parental involvement and student performance.
One thing that makes magnet, lottery, charter, parochial, and private schools so good is the fact that parents, teachers, students and administrators fight to get in, and fight to stay there. The act of choosing, in effect, leads to an enhanced sense of community and builds a supportive, consistent, and structured environment. Good schools are a place where all members of the community, including school administrators, teachers, parents, and community leaders create a sub-culture with a common set of goals and expectations that are reinforced both in and out of the classroom environment.
Successful schools are an extension of the community at large, where everyone works together to create a common set of experiences; creating an environment that encourages parental involvement and community participation. If Metro continues to alienate educators by disemboweling the organizational structure within public schools, we may just lose the few experienced and dedicated teachers we still have left to surrounding districts, cities, and states.
By failing to examine the issue in further detail, the press and our community leaders are failing in their mission to provide the community with the information they need to participate in the political process that is MNPS. The media have a responsibility to examine and provide the community with the information they need to make informed policy decisions.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Top Down Policy Failure in Public Education

Top Down Policy Failure in Public Education by Elyssa D. Durant, Ed.M.

Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) does not have the answers, nor does our newly elected Mayor who recently launched an aggressive media campaign to recruit new teachers willing to work within the constraints our over-regulated, under-funded public schools. This article MNPS News glossed over the magnitude of the desperate situation in Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS).

But it does raise questions about the hiring and retention practices by the Board of Ed. The basic fact that students are not making adequate progress is a reflection of the top-down policy failure by MNPS and the Board of Ed. Students are not making adequate progress, and teachers are being shuffled around in a desperate attempt to fix a problem that they do not fully understand.
This data seems to support the need for performance based incentives such as the study on performance incentives at the National Center for Performance Incentives on the Peabody Campus at Vanderbilt University. Teachers in the experimental group receive a $15,000 bonus if their students demonstrate a pre-determined level of achievement and demonstrate proficiency. In conjunction with the RAND corporation, data will be collected twice a year: at the beginning of the academic term to establishing the baseline level of competency for each student. Data is then collecting at the end of the year to measure achievement. Several waves of data will be collected and evaluated over the next several years will be evaluated in conjunction with the RAND Corporation.
In order to fix our broken schools, we need to look at schools that work. There are in fact public schools in urban neighborhoods that are successfully educating the students despite limited budgets, supplies, and adequate funding. So what is it about these schools that allows them to successfully educate disadvantaged, at-risk students and how can we replicate their success?
As an educator employed by MNPS, I earn $10.46 / hour (without benefits) teaching at-risk students. What does this say about the fiscal priorities of our community? My graduate degree in education is from the very same university that Mayor Karl Dean attended in New York City. What does that say about our values as a society? What does that say about the value of a graduate degree from the Ivy League?
I called HR and the "Certificated Office" to inquire about obtaining a provisional teaching license and alternative certification, I was simply told that I was not eligible for alternative certification and without additional coursework, and tuition and fees, I was not deemed qualified to teach in Metro. I am not qualified to teach in Metro since, apparently, Metro "does not teach education." What a joke. To make matters worse- I had to pay them to find out that I was not even qualified to work with Head Start. I went to Head Start! Shouldn't that be enough? I find it difficult to believe that a city so desperate for teachers is not willing to bend the rules just a little or waive the application fee for anyone who is willing to work in such a hostile environment.
The state Department of Education could not offer any realistic solution to the simple fact that I cannot afford to pay the fees associated with the application fees certification requirements. If the Mayor really needs applicants, perhaps the city should comp the application fees necessary to be considered for employment. They are strangely unfamiliar with the political process, and teachers are expected to implement and carry out policies that were designed by academic professionals or educational consultants. If MNPS truly wants a better-qualified staff, then the Mayor, the Board of Education, and school administrators need to take a closer look at the methods used to recruit, retain, and reward qualified individuals willing to sacrifice their financial stability for a career in public service.
The high rate of student mobility is compounded by the constant shifting of school personnel. Many schools may just lose the few experienced, dedicated teachers they still have left have, to surrounding districts, cities, and states. Such instability in the system may even prompt the younger set to leave the profession all together and discourage future teachers from applying for jobs in Metro. Now that I realize my education was a complete waste of time and money, is it any wonder that I am ready to give up on teaching and maybe even ready to leave Nashville for good. The local hardware store has more to offer including benefits!
Everything we know about the positive outcomes in neighborhood schools is their strong reliance upon community buy-in and parental involvement. One thing that makes magnet, lottery, charter schools, parochial, and private schools so good is the fact that parents, teachers, students, and administrators fight to get in, and fight to stay there. The act of choosing, in effect, leads to an enhanced sense of community and builds a supportive, consistent, and structured environment.  Calling rezoning and teacher shuffling in Metro "Project Fresh Start" is ridiculous-- it would be more accurate.




  • The state Department of Education could not offer any realistic solution.
  • The high rate of student mobility is compounded by the constant shifting of school personnel
  • The Board need to take a closer look at the methods used to recruit, retain qualified educators.

  • Elyssa D. Durant © 2009-2017

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    Tuesday, September 24, 2013

    Is Equal Opportunity Just a Myth?

    Is Equal Opportunity Just A Myth?



    December 12th 2008

    The members of this community have been segregated into a hell plagued with sickness, violence and despair. Kozol argues that this strategic placement serves to isolate the rich from the realities they have thrust upon their fellow man. New Yorkers do not stroll through the streets of Mott Haven, and taxicabs take no short cuts through Beekman Avenue. Many taxicabs will not even venture past East 96th Street. Out of sight is out of mind.

    As I was reading Amazing Grace, I remember thinking back to my days living in Manhattan, coincidentally around the same time Kozol conducted his interviews in the South Bronx. I lived in what Kozol refers to as Manhattan’s “Liberal West Side,” an area that was undergoing rapid transformation and gentrification at the time Mayor Rudolph Giuliani took office.
    There is no excuse for the conditions in which these people must live. No person should be forced into an apartment that has a higher ratio of cockroaches and rats than human beings.
    In 1995, the American Sociological Association (ASA) held its annual conference in New York City. Prior to that meeting, they sent out a fact sheet that may be of interest to ASA members. In this sheet, they too described the same social conditions and asked their members to take note of the changes that occur at 96th Street. I can assure you that the conditions Kozol describes in his book were not exaggerated.
    These children are desperately in need of the best schools, yet we give them the worst. They have few libraries, few safe havens, few doctors, and few role models. They have every reason to believe that they are throwaway children and we have certainly not shown them anything else. The social services we have provided are a bureaucratic nightmare. People in need are treated as sub-human, and made to feel ashamed of being poor.
    These are among the sickest children in the world. Americans claim to be dedicated to the children and fool ourselves into believing that we are doing them a favor by providing them with medical care, public education, and public housing. Yet, the quality of their neighborhoods speaks volumes of our sentiment and intentions.
    Shortly after Amazing Grace was published, managed care rapidly moved onto the New York scene. Around the same time, the Mayor announced he would be closing some of the hospitals that served the poorest of the poor because of financial problems associated with payment and large trauma departments.
    Kozol makes the point that people could attempt to gain admissions at a better hospital than Bronx-Lebanon; yet, the privatization of Medicaid has now made this completely impossible. Further restrictions on medical care are inevitable as the result of Medicaid managed care. The law is not designed to protect these people, and this was made obvious in a recent conversation I had with a friend who practices medicine in New York.
    My friend John works as a board certified trauma physician at a private hospital on the Upper East Side. The last black patient he treated at Beth Israel was famed rock singer Michael Jackson. I asked him if he ever gets any asthma patients in his ER. He knew immediately of whom I was speaking. “You mean the kids from the South Bronx?” he asked. He told me that they know better than to show up at Beth Israel. “But if they do?” I asked, and he replied, “We ship them back.”
    This is the reality. The best doctors treat the wealthiest patients rather than the sickest. Schools educate the best students rather than the neediest. It is no wonder that these children perform poorly in school. By every measure, these children are destined for failure. Their home life is less than enchanting, and they do not benefit from enriched environments and educated parents.
    Certainly, there are many dedicated parents who care about their children, but is that enough? When I was in school, children frequently asked the teacher, how will this help later in life. In my class, there was an unequivocal reply, but it could be argued that what children in the South Bronx need to learn couldn’t be taught in the classroom.
    There is no doubt that the prevalence of violence in urban neighborhoods affects the ability of children to perform well in school. There is a large body of empirical evidence that demonstrates the effects of chronic stress on memory and the learning process. Rather than taking the children out of these communities, we have constructed prison like buildings for them to attend school. They routinely have gunfire drills reminding them that danger is never far behind.
    Children cannot learn in this environment. This constant stress triggers “hot-memory.” Hot memory can be thought of as learning with your heart and not your mind. It is no wonder children perform inadequately in this environment.
    It is bad enough that children live in such conditions, must we educate in them too? If we want underprivileged children to learn and grow spiritually, we must create an environment that allows their cool memory systems to take over.
    It is only under these conditions that children will permit themselves to learn and develop their intellectual strengths. We have failed to create a safe home environment for urban children, but we can give serious thought to creating a school environment outside of the community so they have fewer fear-driven hours each day.
    Studies consistently report lower academic achievement in urban neighborhoods like Mott Haven in the South Bronx. Children growing up in urban neighborhoods have a much higher incidence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Most researchers believe this to be the direct result of living in stressed communities plagued with street crime and violence. The potential impact of chronic stress on academic performance and achievement is not known, but reading scores in neighborhoods like Mott Haven certainly seem to indicate some type of causal relationship. 
    There is virtually no research on looking at the long-term effects of this inflated incidence of PTSD among urban populations. It is important to develop an understanding of the effects of fear on the academic performance of urban adolescents so we can begin to dismantle the myths regarding school performance and minority children.
    Under these conditions, it is not surprising to learn that students also report pervasive feelings of fear and do not feel secure despite the added presence of security personnel on school grounds. For these students, school is a mere extension of the violent communities in which they live.
    Since urban communities have many different sources of stress, it is important to examine how school policies contribute to the learning environment in public schools. The quick response has been to install weapons detectors and hire school security for urban schools. The presence of school security certainly affects the climate of American public schools by establishing school environments that focus more on student behavior than student achievement. Together, the urban public school and the community it serves are a constant reminder of the poor living conditions and social reality of urban America.
    The secured environment is an indication of the roles students are expected to play later in life. This is a lesson they will not soon forget.
    Kozol makes it quite clear that there are several exceptional children in this community. There are probably as many exceptional children here as every other community around the country, yet, so few of them will make it out of the South Bronx. Kozol is careful not to dwell on the exceptional cases of children who successfully navigate their way into the main stream of society. Kozol does this so we do not develop a false sense of hope. If we cling to a few exceptional cases, we may come to believe that what we are giving enough to children like Anthony or Anabelle. 
    Clearly, we can do more. 
    Failure should be the exception—not the rule. Success should be the norm, and until it is, we should not give up hope for these children.
    America claims to be dedicated to equal opportunity, yet equality is not sufficient in a community like Mott Haven. These kids need more. We need to think about equity, not equality. It is not enough to hide them away. These are visions we should never forget.
    Welcome to America. The Wealthiest Nation in the World.
    Reference: Amazing Grace: The lives of children and the conscience of a nation. (by Jonathan Kozol)
    Elyssa D. Durant © 1995-2013

    Monday, September 23, 2013

    What the Fuck is an EFF-bot?

    What the Fuck is an EFF-bot?

    I have to say that I think there have been several Twitterbots created just for me.  Such as the @effbot or the @Swear_Bot and let is not forget the cute and lovable #twensored duck.  

    I could swear the effbot was so hot on my trail, that within 15 minutes of sneaking in a different hashtag to outsmart the effbot; it added that code as well (#EFF) and started hijacking those tweets as well.  

    Yes, I do believe I am being followed by a bot.  Does that make me grandiose or paranoid?

    So much so, that I in a couple of friends to test the Bot – to see just how much human supervision a Bot needs in order to function and evolve. 

    We learned very quickly that the effbot had somehow singled me out. I wrote the effbot a letter and asked him to give me the “F” word back, but the effbot did not reply.  

    I took it upon myself to say #EFF the #EFF'n effbot!   

    I don't know when the effbot was created (of course I am writing while the Twitter is down so I have no way of checking) but about three weeks ago I woke to find a whole bunch of tweets with the hashtag #EFF.  

    At first I assumed that it was just a polite way of sneaking in the word "fuck" into a tweet.  So I used it everywhere. I would say #EFF you, or #EFF that.  And before long people started asking what the #EFF does #EFF mean?  

    I got replies listing everything from “Early Follow Friday” to the “Electronic Foundation Frontier”  So I spent about 48-72 hours trying to figure out what the #EFF is #EFF.  

    All this for an eff’n Bot? 

    You see at first the effbot only picked up tweets that used "eff" in sequence.  For example, "I am so eff'n late for work" or, "Twitter really needs to fix the eff'n problem with @replies."

    So my initial response was to hit retweet and I typed into my mini QWERTY keys on the TwackBerry and wrote, #EFF=FUCK.

    Well this confused some people why was I saying the f-word in response to an innocent tweet.    Well I don't remember anything about that tweet except that someone had asked "what is #EFF?" 

    Well of course, being barely awake and reading the miniature font on the screen of my BlackBerry, I was eager to jump in to the conversation and screen there some confusion over the meaning of what I now know to be a is called a hashtag) of the "hashtag" #EFF.

    Realizing that people were confused that I was assigning a "superlative" to a hashtag, I decided to go on a mission to uncover the significance of #EFF.  

    So I took it a step further, and responded with some = from the Spanish Inquisition: Forbidden Use of Carnal Knowledge.

    Alternatively, from England where one (well, I suppose two) people had to get permission to engage in sexual relations; warranting a notice that read, "Fornication Under Consent of the King."

    So I woke up one morning and saw one of my favorite twitterbuds latest tweet #EFF.  Now bear in mind that I was brand new to twitter, had never heard the word hashtag and was determined to figure out what the damn EFFbot was. 

    Turns out it was used by one of two groups of people: pussies who are too PC to use the F word and those who support internet freedom and the Electronic Freedom Foundation or eff.org

    It took me a while to figure it out, but I'll never forget the flood of eff'n tweets that got me through one of the darkest times of my entire life. 

    Bring on the EFF-bot. How I loved thee. 


    Elyssa D'Educrat © 2009-2013



    Sunday, September 1, 2013

    Unwritten:: A letter to my first Editor


    Unwritten: A letter to my first Editor, Ned Vizzini 2008


    -------------- Original message ---------

    From: "Ned V"
    I'm not good, Elyssa. Very depressed.  I was such a different person when I knew you.  But maybe I will be different soon. 

    -------------------------

    From "Elyssa D:

    god ned-- I wish we could talk—based upon what I've read (what you've posted on line and through your interviews) it seems as though you are going through all the emotions and emotional chaos that I was experiencing the first year we met back in new York.

    Another friend of mine just checked himself into a psych ward after a suicide attempt and I feel so helpless because I care and respect you both so much.

    it is funny because I always thought that if I could just finish that damn book I was working on ten years ago—or just finished law school, my PhD. or any number of things—everything would be okay.

    It confuses me because you finished your book—rob finished law school- I finished nothing.

    A few weeks ago, I "lost my shit" so to speak, came across your interview, and was completely blown away—I used to be the crazy one—now I have my sanity back but nothing else.
    having been through several crises myself, I came to believe that when you see someone in crisis, they become so overwhelmed and confused that they do not know what to do first—and how to dig out of the hole they have dug for themselves.  I decided that rather than asking, I just try to figure it out and give it to them, no questions asked, no thank you necessary.

    How many people have told you, "Call if you there is anything I can do" and when you do call—nothing!  Nothing but disappointment and regret.  So I have decide never to ask somebody what they need—

    Mostly because they don't even know themselves— hen I came to the realization a few weeks ago that my transient existence is so tangential that no one would notice if I never took another breath—I tried to figure out what I needed so that I could give it to myself.

    so I started going back through my old journals to see if I could identify the missing element of my life—you know that "thing" that would both make it all go away and make all come together so I could be a whole person again.

    That thing is a figment of my imagination.  I used to think it was being loved by a man—I had that.  Wasn't it.

    Then I thought it was having money.  I had that.  But that wasn't it either.

    Then I thought it was health insurance—but no, that was not it either.

    Then I thought it would be having that oh-so-critical Ivy League degree.  I have that.  That still wasn'

    So obviously, none of those things could have been "it."

    The thing I need most, I lost long ago, and that was hope. Perhaps I never really had it at all.

    So I guess some things just can't be bought, learned, earned, or acquired. 

    I think of the long twisted road, and I remember one of my favorite childhood movies, where a girl named Dorothy was so determined to find her way home after a great storm.  Disillusioned and distracted, Dorothy would not yield to the many obstacles that had been placed in her way.  Determined to meet the great Wizard, she stayed one path. 

    Yes, there were detours, obstacles, and the Wicked Witch of the West.  Each of these obstacles may have taken her of course, yet she never once lost sight of the road home.   She believed in one thing, the Wizard, and his ability to bring her home.  

    Having great faith and determination, she never strayed far off the path to righteousness.  Dorothy had a clearly defined goal, a means to get there, and a bright yellow brick road to guide her.  Through her determination and unyielding faith, Dorothy never once doubted that she was on the right path. 

    In the Wizard of Oz, the yellow brick road may have been the path she was taking, but through her determination and blind faith, she was able to bring others onto the road t enlightenment.

    The lion found his courage; the tin man got a heart.  The scarecrow got some brains—and even Dorothy got what she needed most. 

    Dorothy began her journey looking for one thing.  She needed to get back to place she began, and find her way home. Dorothy teaches us a valuable lesson, but she was lucky enough to know what it was she so desperately longed for... home.

    If all I had to do was click my heals three times and find my way home, well, sadly I would not even know where home is.  Yes, they say home is where the heart is, and perhaps that is part of the problem.  But for some of us, out childhood homes were not places of happiness and nostalgia.  They are places from which we run, searching endlessly for that magical place and can only hope that we have come across a road that is clearly marked to guide us in our destination. 

    Of course, we know there will be that take us off course, and it will up to us to find our way back.  Unfortunately, there is a certain point when we lose our direction and we lose our faith.  As I grew older, I came to realize recognize that my feeling of detachment went far beyond having a dysfunctional childhood a broken family life that even my sister and I never lived in the same house for more than a year or so in the summertime.

    So no matter how long I have been in Nashville, in many ways I am, in fact still a stranger.  I am a stranger because homeless is a state of mind. 

    In my mind, I like to think a home is a place of acceptance, shelter, and a place you can find forgiveness, comfort and recognition.  For most, going home means to reconnect in a way so that you are reminded that you have something, someone, who will always have your back. 

    Homer represents more than a structure; it represents a strong foundation that will always be there whenever you need to feel safety and comfort.  For me safety is marked by the boundaries that are supposed to keep me safe and protected. 

    So this is my home.  I don't necessarily feel safe here, but I do feel consistent.  I do not have to worry that I will be forced to switch schools, neighbors or friends every six months just because my parents could not get it right.  What they failed to realize is just how very wrong it really was.  Changing schools, changing friends, changing siblings; changing myself just enough each time so that I could fit in. But after 16 years of constant change, I never got the opportunity to find out anything real about myself.  Even my name was changed when I moved--- dad called me Liz, and my mother called herself any number of last names as she desperately tried to hold on to her youth, her beauty, and delusional fantasies of entitlement and sacrifice that I think she may actually believe. 

    I have never had plastic surgery, could not afford it anyway, but what do have is a clear memory, vivid nightmares, and a place of my own.  What I also realize, is that until I can live free from fear and dependence, I will never truly be able to know what it feels like to be at home.  If home is where the heart is, then homelessness is clearly just a state of mind.  And today I have some hope that I might someday no longer feel just as homeless at home.  So now I know more than ever, that homelessness is a far more than a concrete structure or family property. 

    I will always feel a little homeless at home.  It is knowing that you are the thing that remains constant—regardless of any dreams I may have, I will never have the constant I would need to get bring a child into this world--- as much I  would like to. 

    I envy those who feel they have so much in their lives that they can trust without any reservation that the world is a loving enough place they want to share with a child. Especially a child of their own.  No, my mother told me long, long time ago, that I can never have children.  She also told me last year, that I could not have a dog.  My own mother does not think I am capable of raising a puppy.  Maybe she's right.  She did put her fears into action when she once donated my cat of 14 years to the animal shelter under someone else name so that I truly was left without any ties to the condo I stayed in for a few short months while I tried to come up with a plan to take him and myself far from a place where we could be safe and live free. 

    I adopted him back from the animal shelter 40 miles out after learning that she had used someone else's name at the agency so I could not find him on my own.

    I will not look elsewhere to find the essentials things healthy children receive that in turn makes them healthy adults. 

    I will never be "healthy" but I do think I wish I could give more than what I have received.  I regret never being the kind of "community member", I think I could have been, and I doubt I will get over the sheer humiliation of having to love this way for so many years when I should have been doing so much more.

    in having truly been able to do the great things for society that I believe I could, but I can't regret not giving no longer need constant reassurance, recognition, or validation, but I will always question whether things could have been different if only one person had taken the time to show me I was worth it.  That I deserved more than what I could actually afford and realize that I do give so much in so many other ways.  

    The ways that people cannot calculate or see just how badly the ones who received them needed those gifts.  It was the little things.  It was Kody, it was Desiree, but above all else, it was me setting goals, the feelings of that my feeling I would never and was no longer subject to bi-annual custody disputes and shifts  and us to realize that homelessness is merely a state of mind. 

    Where would I go?  10 years "down the road" and now, more than ever, I realize I am truly and deeply, "homeless at home."  

    You see it is not so much that I doubt myself, I just don't trust that people will not do horrible things even if that means doing nothing at all. 

    I do have much love to give.  Actually too much.  So much that it often pours out of me in inappropriate sentimentality.  I know when I need to keep to myself, and I know when my anxieties starts to make others a little anxious.  I know because as I see you react to me be anxious, it only makes me that much worse. It is one of my worst, but at times sometimes, that sensitivity is also at times a wonderful attribute and god given gift.

    But should that prevent me from getting out into the world just because other people think I should be don't like me … that's not my job.

    I have spent more than half of my life in self-imposed isolation, and the other half wondering how I can be less annoying and high strung so others would want me around.  The sad truth is, yes, I am annoying, but also, I am perceptive and very aware.  Sometimes I do it purpose. 

    I should not have to live in isolation because I have nervous tics or sometimes say the wrong thing.  But regardless of what people seem to think about welfare recipients being lazy bums guess what—FUCK you right back.  Because more why or in For most s any years, I have kept chose to keep to myself just in case I really am so horrible to be around that my own parents think I would be better off dead.



    From: "Ned V" Hey, sounds like me!  I'm headed towards ruin quick.  Hope all is well
    and the rest was still unwritten... 

    Elyssa D. Durant, Ed.M. © 2008-2013


    Unwritten:: A letter to my first Editor

    Unwritten:: A letter to my first Editor, Ned Vizzini 2008


    From: "Ned V" 
    Hey, sounds like me!  I'm headed towards ruin quick.  Hope all is well

    -------------- Original message ---------

    From: "Ned V"

    I'm not good, Elyssa. Very depressed.  I was such a different person when I knew you.  But maybe I will be different soon. 

    -------------------------

    From "Elyssa D:

    god ned-- I wish we could talk—based upon what I've read (what you've posted on line and through your interviews) it seems as though you are going through all the emotions and emotional chaos that I was experiencing the first year we met back in new York.

    Another friend of mine just checked himself into a psych ward after a suicide attempt and I feel so helpless because I care and respect you both so much.

    it is funny because I always thought that if I could just finish that damn book I was working on ten years ago—or just finished law school, my PhD. or any number of things—everything would be okay.

    It confuses me because you finished your book—rob finished law school- I finished nothing.

    A few weeks ago, I "lost my shit" so to speak, came across your interview, and was completely blown away—I used to be the crazy one—now I have my sanity back but nothing else.
    having been through several crises myself, I came to believe that when you see someone in crisis, they become so overwhelmed and confused that they do not know what to do first—and how to dig out of the hole they have dug for themselves.  I decided that rather than asking, I just try to figure it out and give it to them, no questions asked, no thank you necessary.

    How many people have told you, "Call if you there is anything I can do" and when you do call—nothing!  Nothing but disappointment and regret.  So I have decide never to ask somebody what they need—

    Mostly because they don't even know themselves— hen I came to the realization a few weeks ago that my transient existence is so tangential that no one would notice if I never took another breath—I tried to figure out what I needed so that I could give it to myself.
     
    so I started going back through my old journals to see if I could identify the missing element of my life—you know that "thing" that would both make it all go away and make all come together so I could be a whole person again.
     
    That thing is a figment of my imagination.  I used to think it was being loved by a man—I had that.  Wasn't it.
     
    Then I thought it was having money.  I had that.  But that wasn't it either.
     
    Then I thought it was health insurance—but no, that was not it either.
     
    Then I thought it would be having that oh-so-critical Ivy League degree.  I have that.  That still wasn'
     
    So obviously, none of those things could have been "it."
     
    The thing I need most, I lost long ago, and that was hope. Perhaps I never really had it at all.

    So I guess some things just can't be bought, learned, earned, or acquired. 
     
    I think of the long twisted road, and I remember one of my favorite childhood movies, where a girl named Dorothy was so determined to find her way home after a great storm.  Disillusioned and distracted, Dorothy would not yield to the many obstacles that had been placed in her way.  Determined to meet the great Wizard, she stayed one path. 
     
    Yes, there were detours, obstacles, and the Wicked Witch of the West.  Each of these obstacles may have taken her of course, yet she never once lost sight of the road home.   She believed in one thing, the Wizard, and his ability to bring her home.  

    Having great faith and determination, she never strayed far off the path to righteousness.  Dorothy had a clearly defined goal, a means to get there, and a bright yellow brick road to guide her.  Through her determination and unyielding faith, Dorothy never once doubted that she was on the right path. 
     
    In the Wizard of Oz, the yellow brick road may have been the path she was taking, but through her determination and blind faith, she was able to bring others onto the road t enlightenment.
     
    The lion found his courage; the tin man got a heart.  The scarecrow got some brains—and even Dorothy got what she needed most. 
     
    Dorothy began her journey looking for one thing.  She needed to get back to place she began, and find her way home. Dorothy teaches us a valuable lesson, but she was lucky enough to know what it was she so desperately longed for... home.
     
    If all I had to do was click my heals three times and find my way home, well, sadly I would not even know where home is.  Yes, they say home is where the heart is, and perhaps that is part of the problem.  But for some of us, out childhood homes were not places of happiness and nostalgia.  They are places from which we run, searching endlessly for that magical place and can only hope that we have come across a road that is clearly marked to guide us in our destination. 
     
    Of course, we know there will be that take us off course, and it will up to us to find our way back.  Unfortunately, there is a certain point when we lose our direction and we lose our faith.  As I grew older, I came to realize recognize that my feeling of detachment went far beyond having a dysfunctional childhood a broken family life that even my sister and I never lived in the same house for more than a year or so in the summertime.

    So no matter how long I have been in Nashville, in many ways I am, in fact still a stranger.  I am a stranger because homeless is a state of mind. 
     
    In my mind, I like to think a home is a place of acceptance, shelter, and a place you can find forgiveness, comfort and recognition.  For most, going home means to reconnect in a way so that you are reminded that you have something, someone, who will always have your back. 
     
    Homer represents more than a structure; it represents a strong foundation that will always be there whenever you need to feel safety and comfort.  For me safety is marked by the boundaries that are supposed to keep me safe and protected. 
     
    So this is my home.  I don't necessarily feel safe here, but I do feel consistent.  I do not have to worry that I will be forced to switch schools, neighbors or friends every six months just because my parents could not get it right.  What they failed to realize is just how very wrong it really was.  Changing schools, changing friends, changing siblings; changing myself just enough each time so that I could fit in. But after 16 years of constant change, I never got the opportunity to find out anything real about myself.  Even my name was changed when I moved--- dad called me Liz, and my mother called herself any number of last names as she desperately tried to hold on to her youth, her beauty, and delusional fantasies of entitlement and sacrifice that I think she may actually believe. 
    I have never had plastic surgery, could not afford it anyway, but what do have is a clear memory, vivid nightmares, and a place of my own.  What I also realize, is that until I can live free from fear and dependence, I will never truly be able to know what it feels like to be at home.  If home is where the heart is, then homelessness is clearly just a state of mind.  And today I have some hope that I might someday no longer feel just as homeless at home.  So now I know more than ever, that homelessness is a far more than a concrete structure or family property. 
     
    I will always feel a little homeless at home.  It is knowing that you are the thing that remains constant—regardless of any dreams I may have, I will never have the constant I would need to get bring a child into this world--- as much I  would like to. 
    I envy those who feel they have so much in their lives that they can trust without any reservation that the world is a loving enough place they want to share with a child. Especially a child of their own.  No, my mother told me long, long time ago, that I can never have children.  She also told me last year, that I could not have a dog.  My own mother does not think I am capable of raising a puppy.  Maybe she's right.  She did put her fears into action when she once donated my cat of 14 years to the animal shelter under someone else name so that I truly was left without any ties to the condo I stayed in for a few short months while I tried to come up with a plan to take him and myself far from a place where we could be safe and live free. 

    I adopted him back from the animal shelter 40 miles out after learning that she had used someone else's name at the agency so I could not find him on my own.

    I will not look elsewhere to find the essentials things healthy children receive that in turn makes them healthy adults. 
     
    I will never be "healthy" but I do think I wish I could give more than what I have received.  I regret never being the kind of "community member", I think I could have been, and I doubt I will get over the sheer humiliation of having to love this way for so many years when I should have been doing so much more.
     
    in having truly been able to do the great things for society that I believe I could, but I can't regret not giving no longer need constant reassurance, recognition, or validation, but I will always question whether things could have been different if only one person had taken the time to show me I was worth it.  That I deserved more than what I could actually afford and realize that I do give so much in so many other ways.  

    The ways that people cannot calculate or see just how badly the ones who received them needed those gifts.  It was the little things.  It was Kody, it was Desiree, but above all else, it was me setting goals, the feelings of that my feeling I would never and was no longer subject to bi-annual custody disputes and shifts  and us to realize that homelessness is merely a state of mind. 

    Where would I go?  10 years "down the road" and now, more than ever, I realize I am truly and deeply, "homeless at home."  
     
    You see it is not so much that I doubt myself, I just don't trust that people will not do horrible things even if that means doing nothing at all. 
     
    I do have much love to give.  Actually too much.  So much that it often pours out of me in inappropriate sentimentality.  I know when I need to keep to myself, and I know when my anxieties starts to make others a little anxious.  I know because as I see you react to me be anxious, it only makes me that much worse. It is one of my worst, but at times sometimes, that sensitivity is also at times a wonderful attribute and god given gift.
    But should that prevent me from getting out into the world just because other people think I should be don't like me … that's not my job.
     
    I have spent more than half of my life in self-imposed isolation, and the other half wondering how I can be less annoying and high strung so others would want me around.  The sad truth is, yes, I am annoying, but also, I am perceptive and very aware.  Sometimes I do it purpose. 
     
    I should not have to live in isolation because I have nervous tics or sometimes say the wrong thing.  But regardless of what people seem to think about welfare recipients being lazy bums guess what—FUCK you right back.  Because more why or in For most s any years, I have kept chose to keep to myself just in case I really am so horrible to be around that my own parents think I would be better off dead.
     
    and the rest is still unwritten... 

    Elyssa D. Dursnt, Ed.M. © 2008-2013