Cry Purple by Christine McDonald

Author:Christine McDonald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: addiction, cocaine, prison, recovery, prostitution, adoption, homelessness, motherhood, blindness, stem cells
Publisher: Christine McDonald

Before I had entered prison pregnant, I had gained weight during those 13 months on the outside. Eventually, I got up to 191 pounds. However, the day I left the county hospital in order to return to the prison infirmary/hospital to continue to recover, I weighed in at 153 pounds. My legs trembled when I walked during the weeks after her birth, as I was waiting to be okay to leave prison. They would walk me arm–in–arm up and down the hallway, just a few steps every couple of hours, helping me to rebuild my strength. For weeks, I longed for my little girl, and blind or not, I felt the need to fill the emptiness.

Upon leaving the prison hospital, I still had a long road ahead. I moved in with Matt, and he cared for me. I continued to need eye drops every hour on the hour, 24 hours a day. Given that I was blind and couldn’t yet care for myself, he did what needed to be done, taking on cooking for me, helping me eat without making a mess, sometimes even assisting me in bathing, as I was so weak and still had a long road ahead as I tried to regain my strength from the ordeal I had just experienced. I will always be grateful for all he did for me as I transitioned to life as a newly blind person.

Yet I found myself unable to fill the void. I would often cry for hours when Matt was away at work. I was unable to simply grasp the moment. I was unable to move on from mourning the loss of giving our daughter up for adoption. I was frightened of all the sounds around me in the darkness, feeling like a prisoner in my own mind. I was obsessing, now, about how to make my heart stop hurting, how to distract myself, how to bear being in the dark, blind. The only rational thought I could muster was that of having another child to fill the void. So I decided to have another child. I told Matt what I wanted. Later, we would have a little boy and name him Ricky.

Both of our hearts were in pain, with both of us carrying blame. No one knows just what to do in situations like these. I was blind. We would attempt to save my eyesight if we possibly could, but meanwhile, we were going to have a child. We were going to parent this child, and we were going to begin our family.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.