that I've gone away. It's nothing that anyone has said. It's just my bloody monster again, ruining my life as it always has, at the most unfortunate moment.

Concidentally, I see the pain clinic on Wednesday. I've been praying for this help for months and yet hoping that this day would never come. I swore that no surgeon would ever lay hands on me again, ever hurt me again. I expect to be hurt, boys and girls, badly. Nothing can save me from it, not Doug, not Father Lindsay, not my psychiatrist, not my anti-depressants. I doubt that even God could save me at this point.

It's gotten so bad that I don't want my attendants near me because when they help me to get dressed or get into the shower, they hurt me. I don't want them giving me Peri-care either. I don't want the nurses near me with a cathetar either. The vast majority of the time, when another human being touches me, pain is the result.

I was talking to Jesus in church today and telling him how I couldn't go on. And Father Lindsay tracked me down in the back of the church, where I was pretending to sleep, so no one would disturb me. He squatted down next to me, asked me if I were OK. I nearly lost it right there, nearly cried and I told him just how bad things were.

He still thinks emotional healing can take place. Tried to be encouraging about the pain clinic.

He touched me at the end of the conversation and I must have froze or jumped or something because he asked if he had hurt me as I was leaving. He wasn't touching a painful part of my body and yet I reacted as if he were. Father Lindsay is the least threatning man I know. I've had him in my home. He has a wonderful sense of humor.

Yet I flinched when he touched me...why? He's not even medical personnel and I flinched. What's going on?

It all seems pretty hopeless right now. If I were to have nightmares about anything, it would be about what I'm living through now.

I don't know whether to stay or leave here any more. Just wanted to let you know it's none of your faults if I do. It's mine. I'm not strong enough to deal with this alone. I feel horribly alone. All my friends and family are hundreds of miles away and I'm going through a medical nightmare...just like Montreal, only worse. Montreal all over again.

Not again. Nuts. Peanut butter and jelly nuts. Not again.

(Nuts...my new four-letter word)

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