A brief Timeline

I very much wanted to do a Timeline in Pictures.  As they say "A picture says a thousand words."  I believe it is pretty clear when things started to go terribly wrong, unfortunately with my moving multiple times and the crush of boxes in this house it is impossible to find specific items.  I had pulled out a stack of photos for a talk I gave to the Young Women in my church, but it has been lost to the pile of boxes that I do not have the strength to muscle through.  I cobbled together what I could and I hope it gets my point across.

I have a very vivid memory.  I wish I could say it was a Photographic or an Eidetic memory.  I always thought that was very cool and would make school a lot easier, but I have to admit that the information I remember needs to be interesting to me.  I can't deal with straight facts.  I learned this in the everyday trial known as school.  I like learning.  The academic part of school was fine and fun for me.  I figured out that for me taking notes were useless.  I would write down the sentence as I heard it and be so intent on doing it that I would miss chunks of information that the teacher would give while I was writing.  Then the notes never made sense to me later.  If I listen intently (that is the key, if I let my mind wander it wouldn't work later.) when the test came around I could close my eyes and replay the lecture in my head until I found the right answer.  Or open the textbook in my mind look through the chapter headings find the right paragraph with the info tucked away in a certain sentence and read it for the answer.  Sounds close to an eidetic memory, but it took effort and I could only do it for a short time after the lecture.  The info would slowly dribble out and I could not recall it much later.

Oh, and dates.  I do not do well with dates.  I have pillars of time in my life.  Then I use the clues in the memory to guide me to a year.  I can pinpoint an event to almost the exact month using this method.  I do the same thing with history.  I know the civil war started 1860, Victorian age 1890's, Edwardian 1910's and so on.  I took a history of fashion class in college.  I am able to match the style of dress or style of decorations to the time period.  Each time I learn a new fact I try to slip it near a time pillar ie I just learned that the Spanish- American war happened during the US depression and was a precursor to World War II.  I will now always remember when that war took place because I have it next to two steady facts in my mind.

Now for my timeline.  I plan to take my stories from within these events.

 I was born in September of 1975.  The middle and only daughter.

My mother is very creative and made a lot of clothing for me.

1978 my balloon says "I am 3 Today"

'77-'84 This is the apartment I remember in Burbank, Ca.  Many pictures are taken in the front yard or the side walkway.  My parents were managers and had the front apartment.  Everything was perfectly normal for me.

 I consider 3 years my last flirtation with normalcy.

1980  This is when I entered school and I wish I had my school pictures so that you could see the difference between me and the rest of the class, but it thankfully did not matter to the other children.  I was one of the queen bees of the school.  The teachers trusted me and I was given special privileges like getting the daily milk for kindergarten snack.

1982  This is the age about 7 or 8 that things went kiddie wonky for me.  I didn't notice much because my mother made my clothes still, so I did not feel the difference in my size yet.

1982  This is how I think of myself.  My mother took a photography class.  She set up photo shoots and me in the green dress is frozen in time.

1982   When I look in the mirror I see her.  Not the chubby ballerina who couldn't find a tutu big enough to fit.

1982    That is a massive set of thighs, but things really went wrong when I moved to Simi Valley, Ca.  I was a true freak by then and I made sure there were very few photos of me.  This one was caught when I accepted the President's Award in 6th grade.  That makes me 11 years old.

1986  I look older than the teacher and by this time I was forced to wear whatever could be found.  Patterns were too small, so it became very hard for my mother to make anything for me.

1988 I had to be unaware of a photo.  Are you starting to understand the pure prejudice and cruelty that came my way. People can be so cruel, but children have a certain viciousness. What I see in the mirror never matches up to the pictures.

1993 This is my high school graduation photo.  I am only 17 years old.

1994 It never got any better, no matter the diet plans.  No matter what I did.  Here I am helping my mother with a doll presentation for my grandmothers doll club in Utah.

Nov of 1997  This is the beginning of my mission for 18 months in Montana and Wyoming.  The higher ups in the church took over a year to decide if I could go.

July of 1998  This is the middle of my mission after months of tracking a small town in Worland, Wy.  We are burnt to a crisp.  I ruined my feet walking everywhere and I still didn't lose any weight.

March of 1999 This is toward the end of my mission. I began to discover the eating that worked for me.

2000-2001  This was me in my last months of Fashion design college.  I made the blouse and the corset. The corset was meant to be for a size 8 model, but I knew that would be a waste, so I blew it up to fit me.  I was proud enough to take a professional picture for my portfolio. 

2003-2007  I began costuming for the local community theater.  I thought I would go far in that profession.  I believed I had a talent for it.  Here I am performing as "The Wardrobe" in Beauty & the Beast.  One of the hardest shows to costume.  And I wasn't suppose to do it, but I made plans on how to fix the mess from the very beginning and was able to step in to save the production in the final hours. 

2007- 2008  I became a Behavior Therapist.  I met the man who refereed me for the job doing "The Sound of Music".  I have a nephew diagnosed with Aspergers syndrome and if you can deal with a relative you are pretty much a shoe-in.  Loved the job, but I couldn't costume anymore.

July of 2009 I finally had health insurance.  I finally had money.  I was sick and tired of the large belly of loose skin I was carrying around.  I had managed to lose 80 pounds, not that anyone noticed, but that was it.  I platitude.  The doctors and I thought that the surgery would give me a jump start to losing again.  He took 20 pounds of stomach off of me, meanwhile California had a major financial crisis, teachers and aids were being laid off and I was one of them.  I lost my job, my money, my health insurance and my doctor retired all in the same months.  I was recovering fine until October.  I hung on, but the surgeon told me in March that I needed to go to the emergency room. 

March of 2010  My kidney's were about to fail.  I was told I was going to die in a year or less and there is nothing that can be done.

August 2010 Moved to Virginia to live with my parents and start the fight for disability.  I also went blind and a very kind Doctor saved my sight.

July 2012 Finally after 2 years, going to have a hearing before a judge, struggling to find a lawyer. I received notice that I have been approved for disability.  I have failing kidney's, congestive heart failure, blindness, diabetes with all the symptoms that come with that and I am going to be 37 years old.  I keep thinking I am not going to be able to endure the normal 75 year lifespan.