Intimacy in Front of an Audience...

I felt vulnerable as the attendant care workers arrived to perform the routine function of the morning. I was keenly aware for the first time my life, that with my slight cerebral palsy, I was too disabled to help you in any way. This severe sensation was compounded by the fact that I had hurt my knee and it was pulsating -- I experienced complete powerlessness in a manner that was entirely strange to me.

I watched you as you went through the motions of trying to depersonalize the most personal of activities. In a very surreal sense "your life is truly a stage" and we are all merely performers in your drama delineated by disability. I was regretfully receptive to the absolute lack of privacy that you tolerate.

Although we had been intimate, I became intensely aware of my nervousness that overwhelmed me, as they nonchalantly wheeled you nude from the bedroom to the bathroom. I was conscious that as I noticed your nakedness, these others who were there purely out of necessity were also observing me. Your bareness is not what intensified my bashfulness. It was, rather, the feeling of being scrutinized that was disconcerting. I struggled to maintain some degree of privacy surrounding the magical moment that we shared.

To know that there was absolutely no privacy was demoralizing. I was not used to intimacy in front of an audience. Things normally shared by two were being shared by four. The attendants observed me becoming aware of you and you gazed at me wondering what I was thinking... They looked at you looking at me and there was an awkward second of silence as we (all four) attempted to maneuver through the awkward motion of this dance that is such an integral part of your existence-this offbeat rhythm that beats throughout your life.

Could I have adjusted to this offbeat rhythm and learned to move properly within the dance? My ideas of privacy were immaterial here on this "stage" that is your existence.

I wonder how you survive in this "fish bowl". How do you maintain your sense of self and what is private when you must depend on so many people for the most personal of care? There are questions that are ever present without answers.

No wonder you felt obligated to "entertain" this steadily, changing and unwanted but indispensable audience. How do you maintain control when you are so reliant on care administered by others? No wonder you tried so hard to control others (including me) through mental manipulation. I am full of wondering but there will be no answers.

You could not comfortably bear to share the dance of attendant care and the unusual rhythm of your confined existence with me. You decided that my love did not merit the effort it would take to handle the strangeness of intimacy in front of an audience.

Secretly, I was relieved that I've never had to cope with such an audience in my life. I was grateful that my cerebral palsy is mild and I was even more thankful that I am not in your position. I felt guilty having to admit that I was relieved. I felt even guiltier because I knew that I could leave at any time, while you could not.
.
Even though part of me felt totally overwhelmed, by the offbeat rhythm of your life, I was frozen and torn. I did not wish to admit my fear and insecurity. I wanted you to know that I loved you enough to stay... And that I loved you so intensely that I was prepared to endure the incongruity intimacy in front of an audience.

Catherine MacDonald (c) July 22, 2001
Edited: April 18,2002