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Blog > Thoughts > Sean's Thoughts > Congenital vs. Acquired

Congenital vs. Acquired

Written by Sean on Saturday, October 28, 2006

Is BIID already within us as we are born, or is it something that grows in us as we grow up? Interesting question for which we are unlikely to know the answer to anytime soon.

I was asked why I said that I didn’t think that acquiring an SCI would "cure" me of BIID. The answer to that question made me think of the title of this post. I have a feeling that whatever made me feel that I need to be a paraplegic would not magickaly disappear with the advent of a spinal cord injury.  As a paraplegic, BIID would leave me in peace, but would not leave me entirely. I would have "asymptomatic BIID"!

From the womb, or gifted later?

Besides, I still would be apart from a "true" para: one could argue that because I chose to become paraplegic I would lack a major part of a "real" para’s experience – the lack of choice in the matter. I could see paras from accidents/physical illnesses shun me because I would have opted for the impairment. Someone I know who is a leg amputee by choice related to me that they felt they’d be lynched were it known in the amputee community that he did it to himself.

As such, I would still be transabled. A bit like a post-op transexual is still transexual after even the best surgery.

But then I think back to my earliest memories. I was 3 or 4 years old when I started longing to be paralysed. If it was acquired, it was acquired pretty darn early, before I even really understood what is paralysis. So on that basis I could say that it was borne within me at my birth, whatever "it" is, because it couldn’t possibly have sunk in and be acquired that quickly, and particularly at such a young age (well, of course young minds can assimilate a heck of a lot, but I doubt a 2 year old could process the concept of wanting/needing to be paralysed.)

But then, there’s no "paralysis gene", like one might explain Gender Identity Disorder by having mixed up chromosomes, genes or whatnots. If a transexual says I was born a woman in a man’s body, they can show that they do have something in their body chemistry that is perhaps closer to a woman than a man. And while you may be born with a disability, it’s not really a gene.

Part of me would *like* it to be congenital. Because that would imply that I never had any choice in the matter, it is part of my making. Acquired BIID is unlikely to be a matter of choice if it’s acquired at such a young age, but still, if it’s *acquired*, there is a part of me that can’t help thinking that it can be "de-acquired" (and certainly many people in society feel the same). That perception is not logically accurate, but it’s hard to fight such feelings.

I guess it’s not so dissimilar to those people who think that depression is something you can just "snap out of". If you’ve had depression, you know it’s not a matter of snapping out of it. But still, you wish it was that easy.

I’ve been fighting BIID for so long. I’ve been hoping that I could find a resolution for it. I looked for answers, thinking that if I found the cause, I could then find an answer, a solution. If I knew how I acquired it, then, I would be that much closer to understanding how to resolve the issues that caused me to acquire it. The concept that BIID is congenital is very attractive indeed. It gives me a safe haven, a reason to stop fighting. Because I’m so tired of fighting.

In the end though, for me, it makes no real difference whether it’s congenital or acquired. If it’s the later, it was acquired so young as to make no difference.

Still… I don’t believe that being paralysed would make me suddenly "un-transabled". Like putting a patch on a flat tyre doesn’t remove the hole. The hole is still there, but it doesn’t matter anymore.

[tags]Transabled, Congenital, Acquired, Surgery, GID, BIID, Paralysed, Birth, Fighting[/tags]

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