Childhood Never Ends

When I was a little girl, I lived just down the block from the high school.  Every now and then, I would see a student’s homework assignment blowing in the wind and I would pick it up.  If it was a female student’s paper, sometimes the writing would be very pretty and flowery.  Sometimes they would dot their i’s with little hearts or circles.  I thought it was very pretty.   I tried dotting my i’s with hearts and circles, but my teacher quickly put a stop to that, I had to write “properly.”  No matter, if it wasn’t homework, no one could tell me how to dot my letters.    

I practiced and practiced to make my writing pretty.  Sometimes it is so flowery it is difficult to read.  One person described my handwriting as “fluffy.”  People compliment me on my hand writing all the time.  Sometimes I think it is pretty, but most of the times I see the flaws.  Would it be so terrible if I felt in my heart I was good at just one thing?  I would practice making certain letters many different ways until I found a style that satisfied me.  Without knowing it, I was designing my own script. 

I taught myself calligraphy, and became so good at it I could do it free hand and still write in straight lines.  Every year I sent out my Christmas cards carefully written in calligraphy.  People looked forward to receiving my Christmas cards not for the card and the stories I often tucked inside, but for the envelope.  One year, I didn’t have the money to send out Christmas cards and I received a number of phone calls about it.  People missed them. 

I have always handwritten a great deal.  I journal a lot, I write a lot of stories and poetry.  In nursing I am always writing notes.  My hand is in constant use and I am so grateful for computers!  Ever since I was little and started writing so much, my hand would cramp up and spasm.  Sometimes what I was writing was so intense I held the pen in a death grip!  I also played the clarinet, and since I was dyslexic I wasn’t very good at reading sheet music.  I had to practice a lot.  My right hand often cramped or froze on me, but I never thought anything about it.  I just kept on doing whatever I was doing.

A couple of years back, I hurt my right shoulder pretty badly at work transferring a patient.  I was off work for three months.  At first, everything was so badly damaged I did not have any fine motor control.  Gradually it started to come back, but I have had problems with my right hand ever since.  Every now and then, my forearm and right hand would spasm violently, suddenly and painfully.  At first, the spasms did not last so long, and I could work out the contracted muscles.  I thought it was a residual effect from the shoulder injury.  The disks in my neck are damaged at C7 and C8.  Over the past few months, the strength in my right hand has been declining and the spasms are occurring more frequently, lasting longer and are more intense.  The contractions are so forceful at times that I can’t even show someone the contortions which result.  My hands and fingers assume bizarre shapes and angles.  The muscle relaxers initially helped, but were becoming less effective.

I discussed this with my pain management doctor on Tuesday.  At first, she was puzzled.  My hand is losing strength a little at a time, and she is seeing muscles that are not responsive to her pin picks.  She said what is happening with my arm and the spasms I am describing are usually the result of a brain stem trauma occurring in childhood.  I should have been having these spasms all of my life, not just since the accident.  Since I have written profusely all of my life, I had no information to give her.  I have always suffered from “writer’s cramp.”  That is until she mentioned how people had trouble playing musical instruments.  Now we were starting to see a pattern.  She asked me if I ever had any head trauma severe enough to knock me unconscious.  I said I could remember five times.  Two were the result of major automobile collisions, and the other three were from my family.  I had to give the Reader’s Digest version of my childhood once again.  I had to see the look of shock in her eyes when I told her my father knocked me out cold, and my brothers were permitted to harm me numerous ways.  The three I told her about were just the ones I specifically remember, there might have been more.  I have no idea how long the episodes of unconsciousness lasted. 

What I have in my arm is called dystonia.  It is likely to continue to decline; how far is anyone’s guess.  I already have trouble grasping things at times, I have a hard time opening soda bottles or anything else, and I thought when I dropped things I was just clumsy.   Handwriting is becoming increasingly difficult and any fine motor use of my hand is likely to result in an increase in pain and spasms.  My handwriting is still pretty if I try hard enough, but I can see in my writing where my hand did not want to do what I told it to.  The mystery of the brain stem trauma is solved and my doctor is no longer puzzled.   My childhood continues to haunt me.  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised anymore when I find out something I have been struggling with originated in some form from the abuse I suffered as a child.  I can’t even say it is surprise that I feel.  I don’t know what I feel.  Resigned, I guess.  There’s nothing to be done about it, no one to hold accountable, and no point in bemoaning what my life is.

 I felt the same way a couple years or so back when I was diagnosed with ADHD and years of suffering with it were coming to an end when I was prescribed Ritalin.  The doctor had performed a test on my brain that showed certain images.  I have a skull fracture from one of the times I was unconscious.  He showed me where the trauma from my childhood has left parts of my brain not functioning correctly.  At the same time I was thrilled to finally have a correct and concrete answer to my struggles; I was thinking “When does it end?”  It seems like no matter how hard I try to put my childhood behind me, I am faced with another consequence as the result of it.  I just want it to end.

There are things I suffer from as a result from my childhood I have accepted as my life.  I have learned to manage the constant anxiety.  I have learned to interact with other people.  I won’t go into crowded stores and I won’t go down an aisle with more than one or two people in it.  I skip it and come back.  I have often left stores without everything I needed because there were too many people there.  I sit in the parking lot of stores sometimes for a long time, trying to get up the courage to go in.  Sometimes I leave the parking lot without ever going in.  I always sit in the aisle seats in theaters or shows so I can make a quick exit if I need to.  I know I’ll have fun going different places, but getting me out of my home is a challenge.  I will stay up for days at a time to avoid going to bed.  I can’t sleep even when I am tired.  I suffer from violent night terrors that leave my body bruised and sore in the morning.  If I hear a voice that resembles my parent’s voice, chills cover my body and I have to remind myself I am an adult.  I have learned to stop and reduce the number of panic attacks I have.  I have repaired what I could, and made great strides to become who I am.  I accept the things I cannot change, and am grateful for the things I have. 

I don’t want to find out one more thing that is a direct result of events from my childhood.  I want it to end.