No one needs to comment on this. It is only feelings and oppinion....As time goes by many feelings change and the ones portrayed here aren't necessarily the ones that are now held.
Love to you all.
T.
"The Arm"
Once there was a baby, not yet born. He was warm and comfortable and perfect. He loved to swim and do flips. When he got thirsty he would just drink in the water that surrounded him. He got too big to do flips anymore and slept innocently awaiting the day he would be too big for the warm cocoon he was wrapped in.
His birth happened on a rainy summer day in June. A pressing feeling on his body awakened him. He was starting to think maybe he didn’t want to leave. He was being pushed so hard. In the confusion he fought back in anger expelling the contents of his yet unused bowels. His head exploded into the blinding light. The pain was immense; someone was pulling his head off of his body! He was free at last but he was no longer as free as he once was.
Something had changed, something was missing and something was added at the same time. For the first few months everything was so strange. Everything in the new place was loud and bright and busy. There were many others here. They were big. They all seem to be touching him and rubbing him. He was feeling pain but he wasn’t sure what the source of his pain was. Many people came and went and he still couldn’t understand what was the heavy weight attached to him that followed him wherever he moved?
When he was 3 months old the heavy object started to move, very slightly, almost imperceptibly at first but then with a vengeance. He wants to move it because it is so heavy. Only parts moved and it was cumbersome. There is a horrible tension pulling inside this object and still people come. He sees people who only seem to care about the object. He soon learns it has a name. It’s called, “The Arm”, he notices he has another arm but this one is different. It seems to pull away in an unnatural way as if it has a mind of it’s own. The doctors try to make it mind by putting it in braces to stop the pulling. It’s as if someone has attached a foreign entity to his body.
As he grows he tried to understand what is happening, he comes to learn that the people around him are parents and brothers and doctors and therapists. He learns he was injured by ignorance while being born, that’s why he had to carry the heavy object. It was his arm all along! That is why he has so much pain. It hurt him everyday. The people in his life tell him to exercise and work it and it will get better. Do they mean better like the other one or do they mean better than it is? No one really explains that to the now growing boy. Why did this have to happen? Why can’t “The Arm” just go away?
When the pain becomes unbearable the doctors decide to relieve the pain they will remove a bone in the elbow of the arm. It seems because “The Arm” has a will of it’s own it is rearranging the bone structure al by itself. The muscles pull and pull on the bones until they give in and move how the muscles say. The doctors don’t want “The Arm” to have this much control so they cut out the offending bone and put the arm in a cast for a time it is still heavy but it isn’t controlling the boy.
He goes to school soon after the elbow surgery and is happy and excited to learn. Upon entering the school all the other kids can say is, “What’s wrong with your arm”? How he wished people could see him and not see his arm. It was pretty good at home except when he needed help dressing or tying his shoes. Sometimes he would trip and not be able to catch himself and fall on his face or slam “The Arm” in the car door on accident because it didn’t get out of the way quick enough.
At school kids can be mean, one even told him, “I’m going to rip that thing off and beat you to death with it”. That hurt a lot because what that kid didn’t know is “The Arm” beats him every day all day but in a different way.
When he was ten his mom finds out through the Internet that there were specialists that could have done nerve repair surgery if he’d had it before he was 7 months old or so. It’s too late now. The muscles have atrophied anyway and they can’t ever come back..
He goes to the special clinic in Houston Texas and he has a surgery that is supposed to help him get more movement through controlling what he does have. It was the most painful thing he has ever done. The doctors put him to sleep and make an L shaped incision under his armpit. They try to fix the bones that have grown wrong and they try stopping it from happening again. Unfortunately the doctors told the boy he would need more surgery as he grows more.
After the surgery he has to wear a full upper body brace that holds his arm in the air. It is called the “Statue of Liberty” brace because that’s what one looks like while wearing it. The boy has to wear it to school. It’s a pain and it’s hot. He can’t do P.E. so his teacher has him sit on the bench in the sun in September. That is until the boy’s mom found out. He got to sit alone in the air-conditioned office in the same seats those who are in trouble with the principle sit in. The brace did have a few good points it was a great accidental weapon. If he turned too fast he could just knock that kid off his chair that was saying, “ Whoever is a fag raise your hand”
When the brace comes off the boy does have more control over “The Arm”. He can raise it more and he can give hugs easier but it is weaker now and needs more work. It hurts more now too and the Tylenol and Ibuprophen are making him sick. It’s a lot of responsibility to have to learn all the new exercises. Why should he do it? What has “The Arm” done for him?
School becomes not a good place to be. It is much nicer to be home. They are nicer there and remember there is a boy attached to “The Arm”. The boy refuses to go to a place that is mean to him and is home schooled for a season. He returned to school in the seventh grade to find new humiliations awaiting him. Why couldn’t they understand that some things were harder for him? One teacher asked him to sweep the floor and he said no. Did the teacher ever question himself why or try to put himself in the boy’s position? The broom always seemed to smack him in the face or head while trying to use it. Another teacher gave him F’s on all his notes because he had hard times writing and getting things down as quickly as she needed, he’d get discouraged and just give up. All his exams showed good grades but the notes factored in to cause a failing grade. These problems caused him to dislike school.
When he was a teen he started liking girls and wondered if “The Arm” would drive away the girls he wanted to date. Could they see past it? If they could feel the palm of his hand against their cheek they would have felt how smooth and gentle it was. “The Arm was actually good but had a hard time getting what it needed so it acted bad. It was very meek and gentle.
The boy often wondered what he would do when he grew into a man. Could he support a family? He was strong and talented and could do many things but fear of the unknown was a bad thing. There were many things he could do and a few he couldn’t but it was the embarrassment of asking for help with the little things he had to get past. He eventually learned that everyone needs help every now and then and not just him.