Nuts (Triggering)

I have officially been living with depression for 17 years. I have had emotional problems and was isolating from others since age 5, when my parents sent me to a psych research facility for the intellectually challenged. (I am not and have never been retarded! I got sent there anyway. It has scarred me ever since, especially since my parents were regularly screaming emotional abuse at me over this and other things.)

There is a complicating factor here, several of them. I have cerebral palsy and am confined to a wheelchair. More than once, I have been told I am an inspiration to people. More than once, I have had people feel sorry for me merely by their looking at me. I have had people, including so-called friends, say offensive things to me on a regular basis. Many of them think I am totally incapable of doing anything.

One woman told me: "At least you, unlike walking people with depression, have a valid reason for suicide." (I found that comment quite offensive.)

Yesterday, someone from my church asked me out for coffee. She had depression too. Last summer, my parents asked me to give them Power of Attorney for me, then promptly tried to use it to put me in a nursing home for the rest of my life. At one point, they even tried to declare me incompetant, so they could put me away against my wishes. (I am 38 years old.) They told doctors, my friends, my helpers, just about anyone who would listen, that I needed to be put away for my own good. They never got around to telling me what they were planning.

They remarked to a case manager that "It's a lot easier to get our daughter to do things when she's in a lot of pain." I have had chronic pain for five years and when to my parents for help because the system had and is basically failing me. They insisted on showing up to sign up the Power of Attorney papers during a time when my pain was severe and I tried to get them to postpone the signing. I was in too much pain to even read what I was signing.

The case manager was alarmed by my parents' comments and phoned me. That was when their little plan started to unravel, because my friends and caregivers at least had the decency to tell me what was being done to me. I stripped my parents of Power of Attorney orally. My father phoned me and tried to pressure me into co-operating and when I refused, my parents told me they wanted nothing more to do with me for turning them away.

I have yet to see a lawyer to end the Power of Attorney officially. The woman I was having coffee with told me that my parents were just trying to be nice to me by putting me away and that nursing homes were WONDERFUL PLACES TO LIVE. When I tried to enlighten her on what my parents were like, she told me to shut up and that she would rather I sit quietly and let people admire my courage. Yes, you read that correctly.

I have been in anguish for five years precisely because I am bearing my physical and emotional pain in silence. I have been through three psychiatrists in five years because I have had horrible psychiatrists who did not know how to care for a patient who is handicapped and in severe pain. My last appointment with my current psychiatrist was 15 minutes long and that's counting the time I spent in the elevator. The most useful thing he did during that appointment was help me get a glass of water.