Pain

Part of the price of being human is, I suppose, that most of us have something in our past which causes us pain of one kind or another. The pain is partly because we cannot change the past and make it better, and partly because the hurt may have been caused by someone we loved and who loved us. Only one or two may understand the intensity of the hurt. I have never spoke about this story to my brother and sisters; to have done so would have made the pain much worse for all of us.

I can take you to the very place where it all began, in the upstairs room of a cottage in a small village in Lancashire, where as a boy of eight or nine I first wet the bed. No big deal today. It was different back then for I shared the bed with my father (my mother had died when I was one year old). I had no recollection of the fact that during my sleep this had happened. Only that I was suddenly bundled out of bed, still half asleep while the sheets were changed. I could hardly register what was happening, as if I was in some sort of strange, unreal world. It was cold. The electric light was pale and dim. Indistinguishable figures were moving around, murmuring as they performed some action as I watched standing apart, swaying on my feet. Then I was helped back into bed and was asleep almost immediately.

No great thing was made of it at that time but I couldn't understand why I hadn't woken up when the need to go to the toilet was there. It just didn't register, nor did it register whenever it happened after that. I only wish with all my heart that it had. It would have been so easy to have got up out of bed, gone to the toilet and escape all the terrible misery and pain that was still to come for me. As I grew older the bed-wetting continued to haunt me at irregular intervals and I became aware that I was a problem to my father. I gradually began to lose the little confidence I had.

In my early teens I heard or read somewhere that bed-wetting was mostly an involuntary thing, occurring without the person being aware. This confirmed what I'd already thought through for myself and gave an immediate boost to my self-confidence. It was only temporary, for having no one to share or discuss it with and with the episodes continuing, my father's response became more and more derogatory and threatening. In that kind of atmosphere the gained confidence quickly disappeared. My misery subsided during the day but returned with a vengeance in the evening. Long before it was time for bed my father would look at me and angrily exclaim, “No drink for thee. Tha knows what'll 'appen. Ya lazy bugger. Too shiftless to get thisself out of bed.” And I shrivelled with humiliation as the sarcasm bit deep and my self-esteem slipped further down the scale. I'd drastically reduced my intake of fluids, drinking hardly anything after coming home from school in the afternoon but no one noticed.

Considering the number of times it happened, I'm surprised that only two of those dreadful occasions remain particularly clear to me. The rest are there but further in the background and not as sharply defined. One was the first time it happened and the second was the last, when I was sixteen, the most distressing time of all. My brother was in the Navy by this time and I slept in his room. When he was home on leave, I'd have to go back and share with Dad again. Suddenly I was wakened from a deep sleep with him roaring at me to get out of bed. My shirt, the only thing I wore to bed, was wet and clung to my shivering body. His angry voice and cutting remarks told me what he thought of me, waking the rest of the family as well. Then I was told to get downstairs and spend the rest of the night on the couch. This hadn't happened before and each step down those cold wooden stairs in bare feet seemed to increase the awful sense of being alienated from my family in a way that had never happened before. I was aware of stumbling past my sister on her way to change the sheets feeling deeply upset that I made so much work for her but was never able to tell her.

Downstairs, the normally warm and inviting living room was now devoid of any cheer and the cold seemed to wrap itself around me. A feeling of dreadful despondency threatened to overwhelm me and hot tears streamed unchecked down my burning face. I sat down on the horse-hair couch, shaking and sobbing silently. It was so very cold, the couch hard and prickly, there was to be no comfort for me there. I lacked a pillow and blankets and my overcoat did not cover me. I could cover my feet but not my shoulders at the same time. Sleep was impossible, leaving my mind to focus keenly on the harsh reality of the moment and all the upset my problem was causing the family. I thought desperately of ways that I could do something to prevent this thing happening. Perhaps the doctor could help, but I rarely saw one and I'd never arranged such things before. Then I thought of leaving home, but my clothes were still upstairs. I'd never get past my father. That's when I thought I'd be better off dead. That was too awful to contemplate. As I thought of how my father and the rest of the family would feel if I did, I knew I could never do anything as dreadful as that.

It was during this agony of mind that the muffled noises from upstairs gradually ceased and my world fell silent. No sound, voice or footstep to end it and get me back to bed. Nothing, save the torment of my distress and the stark reality of my environment which my body forced my mind to face. So with my damp shirt clinging to my shivering body the night dragged slowly on as I sought warmth and comfort where none was to be found.

Writing about it now can in no way recapture how long and drawn out that night was. How I alternately loathed myself and reasoned with myself, thought of how I could try and explain to Dad the situation from my point of view. If Mum had been alive it would have been different. I wondered what she'd have felt and done about it. I slipped into a kind of half-sleep from time to time but the cold and the prickles from the couch would rouse me to where I was and the misery returned with increased severity.

Gradually the sounds of dawn reached my tired mind and the growing realisation that I would have to face Dad and my family again and all that that entailed. With my stomach churning and twisting, my face burning afresh with shame I turned to the wall and waited. Then Dad's footsteps on the stairs and my misery increased a hundredfold as he thundered with the utmost contempt. “Another wet bloody night. Ya bugger, too lazy to get out of bed…” and with such caustic comments I was told to get up as he left to go to work. Somehow I faced that day with the burden of all that had happened weighing heavily on my spirit. The saddest thing of all is that I couldn't think of any one that I could turn to for help.

It's taken me many years to come to terms with my past. In trying to overcome the damage that was done to my spirit at that time, I had first to learn to find myself, and then allow myself to be myself. For years some people with a little authority or a dominating attitude must have found it easy to manipulate me; using my feelings and blackmailing me to do things their way. They knew that I'd conform rather than risk an upset by speaking out and saying how I felt about things.

The one thing that kept me subdued you see, was that in the search for myself, I had a horror of becoming as dominating and unfeeling as those who'd lorded it over me in the past. There was something else. As I looked around I saw very clearly two types of people; those in charge who knew how to get things done, (they knew best. looked you in the eye, called a spade a spade); and the others, the ones who cared about how things were done and what happened to people in the process.

The practical side of me says we need both kinds, but blending the two so that when things are done people are helped, not hurt. Which is where I find myself today, trying to blend these two aspects within myself and, perhaps, encourage it in others. My father was a product of his times. I've written this in the hope that perhaps someone reading it will have the patience to help a bed-wetter over-come the problem with love and understanding.

Dennis Crompton © 1994
(first published on www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2012)