Hello.  This is your friend, Aasha Singh, writing.  I am sorry for not writing; life got in the way.  Please do forgive me.

I am still married to Manjeet, but we have been fighting a lot lately, and I'm not so sure as to whether we will remain together.  Right now we are having a trial separation, to see how that goes; I am currently staying with a friend, Paja.  Our daughter, Vida, who is now 13 and in middle school, is with me.  If things don't improve soon, we may end up getting a divorce, and that is the last thing I want to happen.  Up until recently, Manjeet has been the perfect husband and father.

I still blame The Accident for the stress he's been under.  Doesn't help that he works as a physician and often works long hours at the hospital.  That is probably wearing on him, too.

Our son, Sanjeet Raneesh, who will be nine this year, was left permanently and severely brain damaged after an accidental hanging when he was two years old.  For seven years now he's languished in a limbo-like state, unable to speak, walk, feed himself, or even go to the restroom on his own.  He wears diapers and is fed via a tube in his belly.  He is living at a home for children who are severely disabled.

He will never have a normal life.

The stress The Accident has placed upon our family has been monumental.  We are still paying for his medical care and past bills.  Manjeet and I have been fighting constantly up until the separation, and Vida has been getting into trouble at school; she is hanging around kids who smoke or get into various other kinds of trouble.  I am most concerned for her.

I look back to the life before Sanjeet got hurt, and I would give anything to have it back.  We were a happy, normal family without a care in the world; now it seems that life has kicked us to the curb and that the gods must be displeased, so this is why we keep getting punished like this.  Then people wonder why I am so stressed out a lot of the time.

Just pray to your god (or gods) and pray that things get better; life can't keep going on like this!

~Aasha.  :(