I really don't like to remember.

I actually did have a flaw. There really was something wrong with me. I still to this day do not know why. No one ever figured it out and I have only been left to theorize. They tried everything, and nothing worked. I was sent to doctors. I was sent to a psychiatrist. I was spanked, beat, ridiculed, and nothing fixed it. I really was a broken child.

It was just another inconvenience created by me that had to be dealt with by her and the step father. It was just one more thing that made me a major pain in their ass. When we are children we all blame ourselves for the things going on. I didn't have a choice back then but too take it personal.

I was nine or ten when I got to go to church camp for the first time. I was both excited to get to go and terrified at the same time. I was really looking forward to it, but yet with a dread in my stomach. It meant a week away from her and the step father, a week of safety. It also meant I was about to be deeply humiliated again. I knew it was going to happen and I couldn’t find a way out. She was pressuring me to go just to get rid of me for a week.

The campgrounds were deep in the woods nearer to where my grandmother lived, and it always seemed like it would take forever to get there. Some of my happiest childhood memories are from those camp grounds. At night we would all sit around a big camp fire and sing songs. In comparison to my home life that was as magical as it could get. All day all I could think about was those camp fire songs. Sometimes I could see her face from where I sat. Sometimes I would even get to sit next to a girl I loved. There were no fears there, no worries of impending violence. Just a fire, the stars, a hope that maybe god did love me.

The very first time I got to go to this camp though I could not have been more conflicted. I was downright terrified. The ensuing humiliation was going to be more than I could bear, I just knew it. It was making me sick to my stomach. My life was bad enough already; it was about to get worse. She is one of those types who will just blurt out way too much information in front of people. Doesn't she know how sensitive I am? Doesn't she know how shy I am? She did not know, and she did not care.

I wanted to crawl into a hole. I wanted to die. I stood nearby as she explained to the camp counselor my situation. The whole week before leaving for camp my grandmother was trying to soothe me about the issue, but I knew what was going to happen. She knew I was scared, but I think they thought it was for the best anyways. The camp grounds had several bunk houses. The girls were on one side of the camp, the boys were on the other. Each bunk house had seven or eight bunk beds in it with the showers, toilets and sinks in a room on one end. Everyone would come together in the chow hall for meals. The food there was always amazing.

I knew I was screwed when I saw where my bunk was. She was still tagging along furthering my embarrassment, making it seem like she was a good concerned mother, but luckily there were not any other kids around yet. I was sleeping above an older kid. You see just like public school I was always younger than the rest. I was thinking in my head I will just stay up all night. I already know nothing has ever worked. In bed that night I prayed anyways, "Please god, not tonight!"

My prayers were not answered. Not even close. When I woke up there was no way to hide it. Living in a room with eight other boys it just was not possible to hide it. One of them smelled it before I even hoped out of bed and before ten seconds had gone by and I found myself inside a real life living nightmare. At public school no one knew, but soon, at camp, everyone would know. They were laughing at me before I got to the shower. If I fought with them it would only be worse, I would be kicked out of camp forever. I had no choice; I just took it.

I still to this day do not know why I wet the bed like I did. Everything imaginable was tried. Nothing ever worked. I've no idea how much I was spanked, and beat for it. No idea how many times I was made fun and ridiculed. If I fell asleep at night; it happened. The culmination of experiences I had as a child regarding this single fact really set me back in life. When this was added upon the heap that was already piled upon me, I think you will come to understand why it ends up going the way it did. I was treated very cruelly by people who were supposed to love me for something of which I had absolutely no control. I cannot count how many times I begged god to make it stop. My step father truly believed humiliating me for it would make it stop. Nothing ever made it stop. It is possible that it stopped when my mother left him finally.

One day it did stop though. At one point I was not sure if it was ever going to end. I was still wetting the bed at 11. Children are ruthless when it comes to establishing pecking order and this flaw kept me at the bottom for quite some time.Even if people did not know; I knew.  I knew I was not like everyone else.

I choose to not remember all the suffering I incurred because of this. Most of it is something I cannot recall at all. Remembering only causes the hatred to rekindle.  Bitterness incarnate. I tell this part of the story because it was such a critical part of the definition of me. By the time I hit puberty I was convinced as could be that I was flawed and only a problem.