If the desire to isolate is a classic symptom of depression, then I've had this monster since childhood.

Not surprising, there was plenty in my life to make me depressed before all those nasty operations (which I am not done documenting YET).

My friend Doug had the brilliant idea of asking me to write him every day. After all, I'm a writer and he wants me to write. (He dared me to write a novel once)

The idea was to keep the lines of communications open. But as I write, it is bringing some ugly, repressed ideas to the surface.

REAL UGLY.

TRIGGER WARNING

I was writing to him about going to Outpatient Psychiatry and all of a sudden, I wondered if dealing with Outpatient Psychiatry was punishment for something I had done wrong. (I had done something to be punished for, the River. The Church had nothing to do with this idea. The idea that I should be punished, and punished severely, came from my own head.)

Then I wrote that one went to counsellors when someone had done something bad and deserved to be punished. I went to counselling as a child and returned home to yelling by my father.

It gets even worse.

I wrote that able-bodied people were dangerous, because they could hit you and lock you up in rooms (and worse). That you went to surgeons to get hurt. (Massively hurt)
I didn't deserve to be loved and cherished. I deserved to be hit. I deserved to be locked up in small rooms and I deserved to be massively hurt by the surgeons.

Why? Because I'm flawed, my parents tried to help me and I refused to be helped. (They threw me out of the psychiatric institute.) They tried to help me surgically and I resisted them. I hated them when things went wrong (it was my fault). Whatever behavior that caused me to be confined in the first place went on and on, I just fooled a lot of people into thinking I was good and sweet and only my parents knew the truth. They tried to help me and I thanked them by walking out on them.

It was not OK for me to yell at and hit people. But I was a special case, because I was "a difficult child". My parents were (and are justified) in anything they did. And I have no right to any joy in my life when I've put them through hell.

I deserve to be yelled at. I deserve to be hit. I deserve to be locked up in small rooms. I expect these things because I'm a rotten person. In fact, I told Doug that he and Father Lindsay would get farther with me, not with gentleness and love, but if they hit me, or yelled at me for a couple of hours.

I deserve that for the River at least and haven't gotten it yet. I should.
I want to be held. I want to be loved so badly. I want to be hugged. But I can't have these things. I did something terrible when I was seven years old. Terrible enough to get locked away for almost two years and so ashamed and scared by it, I can't (or won't) remember it.

I believe all this, by the way. It's the Truth and no matter how much I want to deny it, it will remain that way.

I don't deserve to be loved...by anyone...ever. I may be starving for it, but let me suffer and let me starve.

There is a thing more crippling than cerebral palsy: the prison of your own mind.