Conspiracy theories are easy to believe because they give one the sense of explanation in a situation where there seems like no logical reason for what has occurred. Most are not sounds arguments but they give the believer meaning. I for one am easily susceptible to such wild takes and in knowing that, when I hear such wild reasonings, I tread with caution and asks lots of questions. However if they’re concocted in my own head is another thing entirely.

In the span of a year a slough of neurological disorders have befallen my family. My mother with her Alzheimer’s and my husband with his ALS. My father, prior to his passing, was showing signs of a similar diagnosis to my husband’s, however we never got any concrete tests. He had difficulty getting his legs to move and it was because of that that he fell and hit his head, killing him. His walking had been problematic prior to this though, which we had discovered it was built up fluid on his brain. That had been remedied by a shunt that drained the water into his stomach.

Seeing as how all this happened in such a short time makes me wonder if we had all come into contact with something poisonous enough to initiate all of this. If not, then this is all some highly coincidental shit.

My husband tries to quell the crazy by offering me reason. He wants to know if they’re all affected, why not me? Good question. Maybe it just hasn’t become readily apparent.

I keep searching for answers of when we were all together for this to happen. For a year we had lived with my parents in 2010, while the hubs and I built up enough cash to buy a house. After that the only other time was when we took a trip to Lake Tahoe. It is there that my mind makes a connection, but where we would have been “exposed” is unknown.

Logically I understand that I am just searching for reason in all this chaos. Deep down I know that life is cruel and there is no meaning to what happens. Sometimes things just work like that. I jokingly opine that “life shops at Costco” and we’re going through a jar of pickled herring. (I say that cause that sounds disgusting to me.)

That’s the alluring factor of conspiracy theories, they’re such easy answers for odd questions. And they’re hardly ever reasoned down, especially when the believer believes so strongly because it’s the only explanation for such depressing circumstances.

It’s amazing the things we believe, the stories we tell ourselves to justify our own shortcomings. As a writer (and I am being generous here) I hold this deeply held belief that where I sit to pound out some prose, dictates the quality of my writing. In the end it’s my own ability that gets me through what I’m writing. However if I have this perceived belief that it sucks or it didn’t come as easy it was all because I was sitting in the wrong place, or listening to the wrong music, or I didn’t have the correct amount of silence… It’s all nonsense. They’re just the mental gymnastics of my insecurity.

I’m sitting now in the very room and position where I previously typed countless on-line blogs and where I composed and compiled a “book” in my high school days. In this spot was where I had drafted some of my most memorable work. Even as I type this now, I know that this sentiment is bullshit. Since then I have written many other pieces that (in the moment) I had loved or perceived as brilliant, only to later deem it garbage at a later reading. And I also can’t help but notice, as I type this, that the words do also seem to flow a little more easily than previous. Coincidence, I’m sure.

My passion for writing has been rekindled this Christmas by two very “writer specific” gifts. My mother in law gave me a blank check to copyright my near-finished novel and my husband gave me a typewriter that’s almost 100 years old, and still works. Well, it mostly works in that I can punch the keys and produce letters on a page, as long as they don’t contain a 1 or a “space” in between the words I choose to stitch together. Granted, the husband bought it as a decorative piece and not as a functional one. Either way, I love the gifts I received.

An ember of “wanting to be published” has been growing ever since my husband’s diagnosis. For whatever reason, I want to produce something he can see and hold. And despite the story being about someone else entirely, I want to dedicate it to him. Even though he has been, simultaneously, my biggest supporter and my second loudest naysayer. I don’t think he ever doubted my ability to write, it was just my dedication to following through with my own goal. I like to pretend he was using this negativity to drive myself to “prove him wrong” and actually produce my novel. He just didn’t realize how insecure I am about my “talent” and how quickly I acquiesce to my self-doubt.

As these embers have started to catch, I wanted to see if it even mattered that I took my old spot in my mother’s living room, my back to the front door, clacking away on the keyboard. Does my talent or ability to write hinge on where I place myself, or is it all in my head.

If you were waiting for some sort of answer, you will find none. Because, as I have learned time and time again, it is all relative. It all depends on what I tell myself, and choose to believe, in that moment.

I don’t know where, when, or even why this notion entered my head, but for the longest time I always had this gut feeling that my husband would die young. It may have been something he shared with me at some point, some throw-away comment, where he said that he felt like he wouldn’t live a long life. And as I tend to believe everything he says, I probably adopted his premonition as fact, as if he could see the future. Considering the reality, maybe he does.

Because of this “belief,” no guilt weighs heavier than the times when, at my most angry, I would wish that he would just die. Admitting it now causes me the deepest shame. How could I ever think that? Just the thought crossing my mind should warrant my own death. These are not things one thinks of who they claim to love.

Though above all things I am human. I am terribly flawed. Because of this human affliction, I am aware that in our weaker moments we think and say the dumbest shit that most of us ultimately do not mean. The crown of “saying things I DO NOT mean at the worst possible times” truly rests on my head. This is why I make it a habit of trying to give some time and space from my rage, so I can process it without sounding like a sociopath.

I’m certain that the fuel driving my want to do anything and everything for him is the guilt of my prior admission. If I could take away those momentary feelings/words I would. In a heartbeat. Because what I fear most is that, in these moments of rage, I spoke it into existence.

I’ve made other off-hand comments. One’s that could have been fueled by anger and others that were harmless observations said in jest.  One of my more emotion fueled ones was where I wished that my dad would die before my mother. For full disclosure I said this after having picked my father up from the emergency room because he had had passed out, drunk, in his driveway.  I had felt like he would be a handful in his old age. He is the source of my hard headedness and my obsessive personality. If he was left to his own devices I imagine he would have blown whatever savings they had on cigarettes and booze, even though he had been sober for most of my life. Oddly enough, he ended up going first. Now I am left with my mother who can barely speak a word.

One of my other comments that seemed to be a spell, was a Facebook post commenting that if my mother ever got Alzheimer’s she’d be a wanderer. Spoken from the knowledge that if she and I ever went shopping she would disappear in the blink of an eye, as if she “apparated.” At the time of my comment, she wasn’t showing any signs of dementia. So, it’s odd that I would say something so specific that would eventually become my reality.

This is just me trying to understand my role in all of this. At my core, I believe every bad thing that has happened is my fault. I spoke all of it into existence, like some incompetent god. What’s humorous is that I don’t believe it works in the positive. If I had a positive effect of speaking things into existence I would be rich, have a literary agent, and multi-picture studio contract as a well-known actor.

The harsh reality of life (no matter how many times I have to remind myself, I fail to understand) is that it is cruel and meaningless. Things just happen, and there is no rhyme or reason to the events that occur. There is only coincidence, and only when we seek it out.

Losing my wedding ring broke me. Even as I was scouring the house and my car to find it I felt hopeless. I knew there was nothing I could do to find it. It was gone. And most likely forever. It either it came off my finger in a Christmas tree, that someone took home, or it wound up being swept into a pile of pine needles off the asphalt.

The next morning I went back to the lot to look, because the lot closed ten minutes before I had realized it was gone, and the stall in which we had browsed was near empty and all the needles that had littered the lot floor were piled up out of a 3x3x3 cardboard box.

It’s just a trinket and it’s not the marriage or the person, but it was symbolic. I’m already losing my husband to ALS and now the keepsake I had intended to treasure was taken from me.

My husband came up with a fix to have his ring (which he no longer wears because it’s entirely too big for his finger now) melted down and reforged into two new ones we both could wear.

I love the gesture but, like my helplessness at finding the ring, I don’t even know where to begin to look for that. I’m sure if I called up a ring shop they could tell me but, like I said, I feel broken. Hopelessness has embraced my entirety.

Then to add insult to injury I had two shirts either stolen out of my mailbox or delivered to a different house. These were purchased for me and my husband. On them was the phrase “Not today.” And what do we say to the god of death? Well, evidently you also say that to my online purchase.

Losing my wedding ring was just more proof that in life nothing is permanent. Even if you’re self aware to feel or hear when it may be taken, sometimes you’re just not paying attention. And more often than not it’s totally out of your control.