Jaime Mathis and The Words

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and confess that none of my immediate family relationships have been easy. If you're a normal person, you can probably relate on some level. Of course on some level, we've all seen or dreamed of families where everyone gets along beautifully and actually like each other on top of it, but that is rarely reality. Living around the same people day after day gives you insight into their best and least desirable behaviors. It gives you access to their routines, habits and idiosyncrasies. It teaches you where their hot spots are and how to get them riled up in under three sentences. If you pay attention, it reveals the dark corners of their psyches that they'd rather not visit. Interestingly, it is always easier to identify the issues and secrets of people you live with than it is to articulate your own. Case in point: As a kid growing up in a tempestuous family, I adopted the role of counselor and coach. I would move from one agitated

When I was 23 years old I thought I was dying for the third time in my life. Some people face death once, at the end of a long and healthy life. Some of us get a face to face glimpse of our mortality in an accident and choose to come back. And some of us slow dance with death without realizing what we've swayed with until it removes its mask at song's end. I breathed death in as a child and then backed away. After graduating college in England, I had death jump into bed with me in Bangkok, Thailand and seize me by the throat in the middle of the night. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't move. All I could think was, "I am dying. Right here in a place where no one knows me and I can't yell for help." Not even my friend knew what was happening as she lay in the bed next to me, sleeping peacefully as I struggled to inhale. Somehow the panic subsided and I felt my chest begin to rise and fall, but the fear was embedded in each heartbeat. This is what it feels