All in Non-Fiction

National data sourced from 2016 by the Brookings Institute shows that with the exception of a sharp decline during the Great Recession, white U.S. households have seen an average steady increase to their wealth since 1989, while Black and Brown households have seen almost none. Meanwhile, according to Pew Research Center, the overall disparity in wealth between rich and poor “more than doubled” over the course of that same period.

I also live with bipolar illness. It affects every aspect of my life, including my writing. I didn’t tell my daughter this until much later as I was not then in the habit of telling people. It was not until she was in grade 12 and I was hospitalized for a week due to a particularly deep depression, that I spoke to her about the disease. She knew, of course, that her mom had periods of feeling down, but we’d never experienced this extreme level of it before.

He was always drunk by the time night came around but you’d only know that if you really loved him. I asked him, once, what it was he liked about the band and he struggled with that, blustered vaguely for a time until, finally, ‘you can really hear the pain in the singer’s voice. He ended up killing himself, y’know, and you can hear that,’ he said.

It’s the ‘just’ that matters. It makes the experience manageable for people who have no trouble laying down and sinking head-first into an undisturbed pond. Insomniacs, however, know the secret of that ‘just,’ the reversal of physics that floats our fatigue-heavy heads on the water’s surface in ways even Peter’s doubt couldn’t sink.

His voice, though. His voice. Soothing. Simple. Soft. Un-panicked. Unhurried. Reassuring. Masculine and strong, but sweet as a baby’s breath on your cheek. Ten thousand harps plucked at once. I’m sure Torrence has been trained to speak this way, but if you’re an angel, it probably comes naturally. Torrence was our voluntary angel.

It was comfortable in all the typically uncomfortable places, and uncomfortable in all the comfortable places. We weren’t much for being vulnerable. We knew a lot about the other but wouldn’t dig. At the time, my Grandpa was in the hospital and I knew his brother was going through something. We’d take the calls from family in different rooms and return to the other to make a joke.

Enclosed by those imperfect walls my mother spent her days hiding behind the rectangular, wide body of the General Electric refrigerator. She sat in silence while her crocheting needles moved effortlessly, choking the red and black yarn into tight stitches. Her misery clung to her like a cocoon, all enveloping and difficult to shed.