What I really want to walk away from is all these horrific medical decisions. They will be taking me apart again in short order and there's nothing I can do to stop it. The next best thing I can do then, is either move to Toronto or to leave this board. Because I can't leave my body when they start hacking into it again. I wish people knew how badly scared I am by this. Even the simplest surgery would frighten me.

Dippy's boyfriend is on a respirator and she was trying to think about something else, because the boyfriend's family tried to make some medical decisions without her. She was thinking about my cats and then she thought: "Who is going to make these decisions on Shelley's behalf? She has no one." What really concerned her is that if I were unconscious, decisions about me would be made by my parents, by law. And she knows that is something that I would not like.

So she was telling me about all this, and I've been real depressed ever since. Because I'm convinced that if they put me out, I will wind up dead or severely brain damaged. Or that some doctor will hear how depressed I am and then decide not to revive me. It's been known to happen. My disability does matter. People have screamed at me and abandoned me because of it. It has kept me from employment and from an equal opportunity at an education. I could have gone to any university I wanted on the basis of my marks, but my wheelchair limited me to only one choice in the end: a place 600 km away from my family, including my brothers and sister. I'm living here now.

I want to honour my friendship with Doug. But I can only give him words and he can only give me words. I can not hold his hand or put my arms around him. He lives too far away. I can not put my arms around any of you. You all live too far away. In a way, that was a deliberate choice. But it was made because I fear being abused so much.

I have so much love in my heart to give. I want to be loved so badly. I want to be held and hugged. I'm crying half the time because I'm hurting just from that. To be alone when you are so lonely, yet so afraid of being abused.

The pain from being alone is too much to bear. Yet I must bear it, because I will be abused if I can't bear the loneliness.

I have tried to fill in the void thru the Internet, but it is not working. I need to be able to hug someone in my life. The need for that is so strong that I probably won't be able to let go. You all live so far away, so there's not much you can do but give me words.

Words are wonderful, but you can only live off them for so long. At some point, you need real human contact and I don't have that.

I am withering and dying without it. In fact, I doubt I will make it through my next operation, feeling like this. This was why I wanted to move to Toronto, so I would have at least one real human in my life. But fear of my father quashed that.

In fact, part of me hopes that I don't survive my next operation, because I can't go on like this.

I guess you are having trouble expressing yourself because you want to strangle me out of frustration. I bet Doug feels like that too sometimes.

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