Looking at Life in New Perspectives

Wednesday, October 8, 2008 -- 10:55 A.M.   Having been in the hospital recently, I find myself looking at my life in new perspectives.  Not all of them are pretty, but at least I feel they are in touch with reality.  I can now see things that happened in my past, and connect them to what is happening in my present life.   I can see that I have been in denial about some of my physical problems throughout my whole life.  Rather than come to grips with them, I have turned the other way and ignored them as much as possible.   The hospital stay certainly made a difference in how I feel.  I suspect my upcoming family conference on Monday, also has something to do with this.  It is better for me to be honest with myself and prepared for any upcoming dialogue with my brother and sister.   I have known that I had cerebral palsy for most of my life.  Admittedly, I probably did not know as much about it as I should have, but that comes into the denial aspect.  I knew only what my parents told me, and that was very little.   Some of the things that I knew little about, but which I have lived with for most of my life, have begun wreaking havoc upon my conscience.  Two things have been bothering me the most: bowel and bladder incontinence.  For the latter, I use a catheter, which is one of the reasons why I get so many UTIs.   I remember that when I was a child in elementary school, I often wet my pants because I was unable to hold my urine.  On one particular day, as my mother was changing my pants, she suddenly boiled over into a rage and shouted at me, "If you're going to act like an animal, I'm going to treat you like an animal."  Having said that, she grabbed my urine stained pants with one hand, and rubbed my face into them.  No one knew about that until the past year, when I discussed it with my sister for the first time.  She was shocked beyond belief.   When I saw my own health care nurse this Sunday, I spoke to her about some of these things, and about how much I was worrying about them.  She told me it was a medical condition over which I had no control, and that I should not be ashamed about it.  Talking with her about this was like releasing a ton of weight from my shoulders.  All of the dizziness that I had encountered recently, suddenly disappeared, immediately after our talk.   I am not sure why I have written all this.  Maybe it is because I am trying to clear my conscience, of more lingering guilt.  Alternatively, maybe it is with the hope that there are others in similar circumstances that are reading this, and will come to realize that they are not alone.   Whatever the reason may be, I wish that someone had been standing in my corner, when I was a child.  If that had been the case, maybe I would never have undergone the physical, verbal, emotional, and sexual abuse to begin with.  It looks as though I never found the right star upon which to wish.