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Blog > Thoughts > Other's Thoughts > Tom's Thoughts > BIID Day In, Day Out

BIID Day In, Day Out

Written by Tom on Thursday, April 16, 2009

There are days in and days out. Days in when I jump head on into being one handed, feeling very happy about it. And days out, when I look back in horror and think to myself how could I do that?!? And there are days not in, not out, normal days when the thought of it doesn’t even cross my mind. These are the best days in my life. But as time goes by, days not in, not out become scarce.

In the past, days not in and not out were common. They were my usual line of conduct, and it worked more or less fine. I worked, I met friends, I did what I had to do, and if the thought of being disabled in a given situation somehow crossed my mind, it was relatively easy to push it back where it came from and to go on with living. The BIID was never entirely quiet, though, but I managed to keep it leashed. Of course, there were days in and days out as well. Days in were really hours in, and days out were a matter of minutes with a vague sense of guilt and remorse. Days in where parenthesis in normal life, a few hours, knowing that normal life was the rule and that I’d get back to it very quickly. At that time, the days in were very intense, I felt very high up, excited, even aroused, and in power. I got a kick out of those moments and they gave me energy to endure normal life successfuly.

And then, things changed, over years and decades. Gradually, normal days became more and more difficult to live through, frustration started to build up, days in became more and more of an obsession and days out became more and more painful and unbearable. In my attempts to counter the course of things, I put lots of efforts in favoring days in, for as long as I could, because I wanted to avoid the bad days out. Where days in were hours in, they turned into full days in, and into several days in. This is when I started to really live my life as a one handed. Cooking, washing the dishes, shopping, traveling, working, camping, even having sex. And this is when days out became really bad. This all started a few years ago. For some obscure reason, the seeds of the very bad days out where hidden in the new outburst of days in. Somewhere in my mind, some part of me kept saying I couldn’t go that far into it. Some inner voice shouted louder and louder I had to quit this dangerous slope. A voice that said this was sick. A voice that wouldn’t just shut up.

This is when I determined the only way out would be to move, to change job, to go to another place, to make new acquaintances, to change everything in my life. Run away, kid, run, run. No matter how far you run, nor how fast. You are what you are, and you can’t escape it. I moved, I got a new job, I got a new house, I got new acquaintances… and found myself exactly where I was before, but it had gotten worse in the meantime, and days out have taken over everything else, and it is now more difficult to get good days in.

I don’t know if there’ll ever be a way out of this, but I still have a hope that it’ll be possible to find peace, at last. I now know that I can’t run away, neither from the BIID nor towards it (by pretending or, even, by taking steps towards loosing my hand). I started to participate in this site, and this has been a very intense and difficult step, but a highly rewarding one. I found so much understanding and acceptance here, this is really great :-))) I am now trying to meet other people with BIID or similar issues IRL, in my part of the world, and I believe this is also a good step to take. I have to get down to it, this seems to be the only way forward. In the process, I need to reconsider my sense of pride and to accept that even if I think this whole BIID thing of mine is not brilliant, I can’t run away from it, hence I need to digest it, and perhaps I won’t be as stuck in the future. My move to the new town also had some positive effects, since I met a psychiatrist with whom I can do some very important work on my CSA issues, and I’m making some progress. This work is often very difficult. More often than not have I been tempted to through everything away, but I’m still in it :) In a sense, the CSA issue is a “chance”, as it gives me a handle I can use to grab the BIID thing (even if I’m not primarily addressing it in therapy) — or is it the other way around? Perhaps the BIID is the handle to grab the CSA thing… the future will tell, I’m sure. Oh, and I’m caught being optimistic here, this must be an effect of the anti-depressant ;)

Tags: BIID, Day in, dayout

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