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About Skye Gilbert
My name is Skye Atlee Gilbert. I'm 27 and am from
Laredo, Texas. My brother Rain and I grew up in various
parts of south Texas, including our family ranch in Cotulla, Texas,
before I went to high school in LaVernia, Texas, near San Antonio. "
Growing up, my interest were pretty average. In addition to doing as
little as possible, I liked seeing what I could get away with,
watching TV, listening to Classic Rock, admiring girls, riding
horses, "partying", hanging out, and thinking. At San
Antonio College then Southwest Texas State University (now Texas
State) things were more serious, but with plenty of the same. I had
some cool jobs and was enjoying and learning from my classes. "Then I started traveling. This had much to do with
making me serious about things. Trips in my early 20's through
Europe, India and Mexico contributed much to my awareness,
development and goals in life. My major at university was
International Studies,
as learning about the world was the only thing I could see as
appropriate for my higher education.. I was fortunate enough to
study abroad for a year in Freiburg, Germany. After returning home
to finish school, I knew I wanted to do more than travel abroad,
wanted to live abroad. So three days after I graduated in August
2003, I went to Taiwan to teach English. After short stints there,
in Mexico and back to Taiwan, I was rather idle and distant from
earlier inspirations and aspirations that led to these places to
learn about the world, its people, and myself. Despite having plans,
I had a vague feeling I was losing myself.
After a second teaching tour in Taiwan, I was traveling in India and
had the plan to go work and study in Egypt. I was set to leave in
three days when I woke up with some strange symptoms. Plans
scrapped, I rushed home to high profile doctors in Houston, and into
a shocking diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis. My life was seemingly
turned upside down and shaken up, and despite all the amazing
support from my family and friends, I felt so alone and lost that
all the distance, indulgences and idle time of the last years seemed
to have led up to this without making any sense to me. And the
doctors that I thought would save me, comfort me, heal me, could
only offer me no explanations, just more drugs with a side of mind-numbing debt.
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