I couldn't have been more than four or five years old when I first realized that I had a problem. I was a bed wetter. No matter how hard I tried, I would always wet the bed. And doing that didn't rest very well with my step dad. He would often check the bed to see if I wet it. And, more so than not, I did. He would grab me by the back of the hair and rub my face in it and then throw me down the stairs like a rag doll.Not much longer after that, he would make me sleep in the barn with the cows, pigs, sheep and manure. He said I wasn't fit to sleep on a bed because I wet it all of the time.
My mother was no help for me. She didn't protect me from his abuse. And she could have cared less that he made me sleep in the darkness of the barn with the stench of manure and rats and mice everywhere. This was just one of many terrifying experiences with my early life.
I was never taken to the Dr. for my bedwetting. No one cared that it was something that I couldn't control. No. It was much easier to beat me for it or send me to the barn to sleep.
But one morning I heard a car enter the driveway. I heard the tires moving ever so slowly closer an closer toward the barn. I was afraid to look up and see who it was, but eventually I did. It was a patrol car from the sheriff's department. I never found out who told them that my step dad was making me sleep in the barn...but he was arrested that morning. And I never slept in the barn again for my bedwetting.
