My Cardboard Balcony

Stricken by Belinda Roddie Fear's paralysis almost feels like pins and needles - insects crawling up and down your arms, the stabbing sensation of little legs scratching against your feeble fibers, eager to erase all sense of stability from you, as you claw at the epidermis and sob when the sores begin to form. You are sick. You are stricken. And yet the doctors find nothing wrong with you. Your head spins, but it's only the world turning. Your mouth is dry, but only because your tongue is a natural desert. Your mind is fading, but only because it is a magician, and its disappearing act is slow, and you allegedly have enough time to grab its cape before it vanishes entirely. Your mind is fading, and no one else can tell you why. Why it wants to sabotage you. Why it wants to be set free.

I would have been absolutely delighted to attend the wedding, had it not been for the fact that I hadn't even been invited. It certainly didn't help the matter that this was my best friend's wedding, and it was her father - a corncob pipe-smoking, cowboy hat-wearing, silver-bearded narcissist from the Bible Belt - who was barring me from ever sitting by the aisle, let alone being a part of the wedding party. "He's just jealous that you have a better relationship with your wife than he has with his," my other friend Jack tried to joke. And I tried to smile. But it hurt too much.