Pre-Graduation Posting

I don't graduate for another two weeks, but I'd like to give a little bit of background about myself.
September 19, 1972 - Robert I. Murphy Jr. and Laurel L. Murphy are married. 10 years minus five days later, their first child is born. Robert I. Murphy III was almost Kevin Andrew, but wound up keeping his (grand)father's name. Two years later, the three move into a house in the middle of a small town on Long Island. Three years later, a daughter is born in April. That daughter is me.
Roughly two years after my birth, my father's parents moved into the "sister apartment" part of our house. Robert I. Murphy Sr. succumbed to cancer not long after, making my first memory an odd one.

Grandpa was sitting in his brown leather recliner, as per usual. The other 5 members of the household were gathered around him. Someone said, "Kiss Grandpa on the cheek; he's sick." For once, I did just that. Then someone said, "The ambulance is coming to take Grandpa to Heaven." I distinctly remember the odd cartoon that went through my mind: an ambulance pulled off of the moon, made an "s" around the sky, and landed in front of our house. I asked, "But how does the ambulance get off of the moon?"

Needless to say, I was always full of imagination. It helped that I was read to from birth, and constantly surrounded by artistic people. My grandmother cooked and quilted, my father played bugle, trumpet, and faked piano. My mother cooked and read to us constantly. It's no wonder that I'm and avid fan of reading, a musician, and involved in other theatre arts. But there's more to this history.

I danced for several years, beginning at age 6. At age 10, I managed to sprain my right ankle terribly. I walked on it for 2 weeks before my parents finally gave in and admitted that maybe I hadn't "just twisted it". After a trip to the hospital, my mother wanted to crawl under a rock and die; I had sprained my ankle so badly that the people at the hospital thought that I had fractured my growth plate. It's not that hard to believe: the growth plate is a bone that is "open" at an angle while you're growing. It "closes" as you age, eventually fusing to another bone when you've finished growing. When it's "open", it's "open" at a fairly minor angle - significantly less than 45°. But the sprain of the tendon had opened my growth plate to over 45°. The affected tendon never properly healed, so for that reason, I can't tap dance. This doesn't sadden my father. Several years of physical therapy and several months of using crutches, I've sprained that same ankle 9 times, most recently in the summer of 2009, once again spraining it so badly that the ER workers thought it was broken. Turns out that the screwy tendon had actually been knocked out of place - in front of the ankle bone rather than behind it - which caused it to swell and bruise violently in a matter of minutes.

Age 12 was no picnic either. My dance studio's parking lot was...treacherous. People tended to drive in at breakneck speeds, it was poorly lit, and as I discovered one night in mid May, it was full of potholes. My mother and I had picked up Italian Ices at the pizzeria next door to the dance studio. Walking back to the car, I discovered a pothole when the front half of my boot went into it. I had a 2" wedge heel on the boots, and that heel remained outside the pothole. This threw me off-balance, and I went down onto my right knee. I scraped it up, but I didn't really worry about it...until 2 weeks later, when it was becoming difficult to walk. I went to my chiropractor (which is another story entirely) and asked him to check it out. Long story short, the bottom of my kneecap was positioned where the top should have been. After some excruciating pain, he managed to reposition my knee. This went on daily for 2 weeks. I eventually performed at the dance recital all taped to hell. I crutched to the stage door (which was, coincidentally, the name of the dance studio), danced, left the stage, and crutched back to the dressing room, where I promptly iced the hell out of my knee and tried desperately not to cry. Unfortunately, though I succeeded then, I failed miserably during the finale; my dance class was kneeling the entire time. When I stood to accept my 5 year award, tears were pouring down my face and my voice was cracking. Everyone thought it was because I was receiving the award. My parents knew that it was because I was in excruciating pain. A year and a half of physical therapy and several months on crutches later, I've resprained and seriously dislocated that knee 3 times.

Around that same time, I developed bipolar disorder. It remained undiagnosed until age 16, and unregulated until age 20. This was a joint failure - my parents refused to believe that this "bipolar" deal was a real issue, as it wasn't well known. I refused to take medication to treat it. This disorder let to a whole lot of suicidal tendencies, including attempts to overdose on acetaminophen and ibuprofen, cutting, and burning. It's 11 years since I developed bipolar disorder, and 2.5 years since I gave in and began taking medication for it, and though I hate to admit it, it's a necessity. And it has helped significantly. It's been almost 2 years since I last "cut", which was my biggest vice.

I'm going to fast-forward through high school and leave the teenage angst behind. I'm even fast-forwarding through the first 1.75 years of college to save unnecessary drama. Unfortunately, another major injury occurred in my second year of college. Both of my hips developed tendinitis and bursitis, making it impossible for me to walk without excruciating pain. With 2 weeks left before finals, I was forced to take a medical withdrawal from college for the rest of the semester. I was so doped up on painkillers that I was seeing colors and rambling incoherently.

Fast forward another year. 4 days after my 21st birthday, my grandmother, the other woman who raised me, the woman I take after strongly, the woman I never thought I could live without, died suddenly. I blamed myself; I knew she was in the hospital, but when I had intended to go home to see her, I had been lured back to drinking. For months, I thought that if I hadn't been irresponsible, I would have seen Grandma, and things would have turned out differently. Somehow, my presence would have turned her around. I know now that it's simply untrue. Nothing could have saved her. I still have trouble accepting her death, and I believe that I always will. She was my saving grace, my strength, and my mentor in many ways. She told the best stories, watched the best tv shows and movies, and made sure I had done my homework and read daily. She cooked dinner almost daily until she was forced to move into a nursing home my first September in college. We visited her there daily, and there wasn't a day that went by that I didn't think of her. There still isn't, but it's very different when you remember someone rather than think, I should tell Grandma about this! My life has changed completely. My world was thrown off its axis for quite some time after her death. I doubt that I'll ever forget the telephone conversation with my father. He told me she had passed, and I could do nothing but scream into the phone that he was lying, that it wasn't funny. I can't thank my friend Alanna enough; she had decided to join me for food after class. If she hadn't been there to catch me when I collapsed several times, my head would have been split open on the sidewalk. Why are you lying to me? Why would you say that? What's wrong with you? A sidenote: my father is terrible at breaking bad news. Terrible. It's effectively a rule that he's no longer allowed to break bad news to the family. It always ends in someone in a pile on the floor.

As you might be able to imagine, discussing my grandmother's death is incredibly stressful for me. I cried for a solid four days after finding out. I was put on tranquilizers in order to be functional for the next few weeks. At this point, I'll end this post and promise to take up my history again in a later post.