This is a subject I've kept silent about for decades because my mother's career was in teaching kids. It made me ill to hear about how good she was at it when I had such a different experience. It's time to get to the roots of why I am such a slob. Why am I so disorganized? At 38 years of age, it's probably too late for me to benefit much but some of you can learn from the mistakes that were made. The thing is that I've always been messy for as long as I can remember. My school teachers made distinct efforts to help me with little success but they deserve thanks for those efforts.
My parents bought me a Trapper Keeper which is a hard binder in which you insert folders the way you would papers in a regular three ring binder. I never made much use out of these devices in my school life. Why? It always seemed like there was too much else to do. I didn't mind being a slob so much except when it led to the repeated crises I suffered. Yes, my 38 year old mind can make the connections and I've made all the adaptations I can manage like making sure my monthly bills come online where I can't lose them easily. As a child, these things didn't click quite so easily for me.
All my mother and father did was buy me the tool and complain when I didn't use it. I would come home every night with a bag full of (often crumpled) papers that never got organized. As a 38 year old, here's what I might have done with my nonexistent child. I would have asked him to empty out his bookbag daily and open up the Trapper Keeper. We would have done the filing together until it clicked in his mind. When he suffered the inevitable setbacks, we would have started again. Do I believe this is something that every parent needs to do with every child? No. I had a problem and the complaints/threats did nothing to solve it.
The school actually encouraged things like this. One of my teachers initiated a policy where I would record my homework assignments each day and she would initial them. My mother was to initial them as complete. Somehow, this system broke down due to my inability to get the assigned work from my desk at school to my home. This probably had something to do with the lack of organization mentioned above. Due to the support I received at home, the system became nothing more than a method of embarrassing me. After all, I could do anything I put my mind to doing according to my father and I was failing at this so it had to be a lack of effort.
Cleaning my room would have been a joke if it hadn't been the source of so much hostility. I was told to clean my room so I did. I managed to pick up everything and vacuum under it all then put it back in place. I was told that this wasn't what was expected of me but then no further instructions followed. There were plenty of threats but never any useful measures.
Unlike the Trapper Keeper situation, I lack the ability to deal with this even today. It's a matter of degree, of course. I do understand certain concepts. On the other hand, the vast majority of my clothing is very casual these days. Nothing is harmed that I can see by having a dirty clothes pile and a clean clothes pile. The concept of doing more falls under the label of wasted effort especially now that I have so little energy to offer. On days when I am in more pain than usual, the concept of walking used (but reusable to me) dishes to the sink where they will simply mix with the truly dirty dishes and become disgusting is laughable. Once upon a time, I had the energy and the strength to wash dishes once or twice a day without undue suffering. Those days are long past. My beloved's health issues are her own to discuss or not discuss as she chooses. I'm the one who was taught to value myself so lowly that I feel obligated to "earn my oxygen" by trying to help others with problems like my own. Earning my oxygen is my own way of summing up how I try to deal with those lingering anxieties and feelings of inadequacy my parents taught me.
Things are going to get a bit scatological now so consider this fair warning. I'll try to avoid the most lurid details for the sakes of everyone's appetites but I was born with what the doctor's call limited bladder and bowel control. What this truly means is that I can go but I can't stop or prevent myself from going. This is an unpleasant facet of my life that I have learned to simply accept for the most part. Those who have chosen to be my friends and family do their best to accept me for who I am. First and foremost of these people is my beloved Melissa followed by the Allen clan, my family of choice.
I wrote that I have learned to simply accept this for the most part because there is a whole laundry list of adaptations I've learned to mitigate the symptoms. One of these is called a "bowel program." I'm going to use it to help illustrate how not to teach a disabled child to adapt. When I was younger, I suffered from what even I consider an excess of bowel accidents. I lived in terror of them throughout most of my childhood and learned to be ashamed of them because I failed to follow the "bowel program." I learned the term from my father but never a single detail except those he made up to suit his prejudices of the day.
Let's start off with the facts. Your basic bowel program is an attempt to simulate what healthy bodies do on a regular basis. The pun was unintentional but it is usually called "staying regular." I was in my mid-twenties, at least, when I got up the courage to get this information from my primary care physician. She gave me a very simple set of instructions that I'm sure most of you learned as basic toilet training. Let me put this stuff in chronological order in terms of my daily life so that it will best make sense.
At the end of each meal, go to the bathroom and see if you have to go. The end of the meal is a casual concept for those of us who like to linger over our food. Eating is another activity that promotes going. Get a bathroom stop in before you move on to your next activity.
There are no dietary restrictions related solely to a bowel program. My doctors and I have isolated stress and lack of sleep as the two main causes of irregularity. Obviously, eating foods that are exotic to you will have an unknown effect on your regularity. Some foods may have an effect on you but you should consider those effects as part of a whole. Those of us who suffer from chronic pain are more likely to suffer from chronic constipation because of our medicines. If you start to feel backed up, you might want to consider that Mexican dinner that disagrees with you.
Last but not least, please remember that I am not a doctor! If you are trying out adaptations for a better life, my ideas might work for you but run them by your doctor first. I do not know if you have a condition like my hiatal hernia or, God forbid, an ulcer. My point is not that you should listen to me. My point is that you should be careful whose advice you take. Doctors are the best choice.
Getting back to the major theme of this post, my father decided that he was an authority on bowels. My doctor and I had a laugh out loud moment when I asked her what sort of bowel consistency I should strive for. She told me peanut butter and that was my father's signal that something was wrong. Thanks to my father's good intentioned but very misguided teachings, I go through unnecessary constipation. Pardon the pun but the man taught me to shit bricks.
Why was he so misguided? I believe the main difference comes from the separate motivations of my father and a doctor. My father is ashamed of me and has been since the days when he accompanied me into men's room stalls. He saw bricks as easier to manage and hide than peanut butter. I was willing to try anything to please him. He and my mother spent my young teenage years analyzing everything I did. Thanks in part to a lack of proper guidance, I had more bowel accidents than I was wiling to accept but I never said anything like that because my father was freaking out enough for several people.
I remember trying to remind him that I had a handicap and he reminded me that others managed better control than I ever did. He informed me that I was putting my mother through undue hardship. I couldn't make the accidents stop but I could keep my mother from suffering. Thus, I did things like re-wear the same pair of underwear until I got enough time alone in the house to do my own laundry. This was foiled by my mother counting my clothes and not coming up with enough underwear. I'm sure she had nothing but good intentions but her good intentions spoiled mine. After that, I started setting aside the soiled pairs in a hiding place so that I could wash them later.
As usual, my mother and father were all too eager to examine what they saw as my extremes of behavior and question my sanity. They never looked at the root cause of the problem. Their shame at having a handicapped son drove them to increase pressure on me until I looked for what even I consider to be odd solutions. They never seemed to use any of my mother's vaunted teaching skills to help me. Their goal was to label me as something other than normal. I was someone whom they could torment because I wanted to please them.
No comments:
Post a Comment