I'm transplanting this over from a thread that @Enthusi started elsewhere, because I meant to mention it here, but forgot. I think it's significant enough to warrant inclusion in this journal of my strange journey. One thing I've been working on is getting over the stigma surrounding wearing diapers as a non-baby. I was changing winter rims over to summers with a buddy of mine who knows I wear diapers, and at one point I was bent over pushing on a torque wrench and I felt a cool breeze on my lower back, and instantly had a slight feeling of panic, because he was standing right there, watching me. I shook it off - reaching back there would only draw attention to it, anyway. Then, he went off to get a tool, giving me a moment to put my hand back there while still in my original position, and sure enough, there was a strip of white plastic above my shorts and below the hem of my shirt. Which shouldn't have been surprising, since his boxers were hanging out when he was likewise bent over.  I had the urge to stand up and tuck everything in, but I stifled it - unless I went inside and put on a onesie, it was just going to happen again - we still had three more wheels to change. I went back to what I was doing, and he came walking back over with the tool we needed, and a beer for me as well, and we carried on. I chose not to be ashamed of my diaper.  Although admittedly, it was a white diaper - had it been something with pink bunnies on it I probably would have been a lot more self-conscious...

Chapter 30: Different My efforts with the pull-ups over the next two days were a complete success.  On Wednesday and Thursday nights, like I first had on Tuesday, I had gotten up after everyone else was asleep and had made my way to the bathroom toilet to safely wet the pull-up with just the right amount of pee. Even though I had been drinking less water, sitting on the toilet still made it easy for me to relax and allow my bladder to empty into the pull-up. The pull-ups Mom had purchased for me were far from perfect, but through these several days of experiments I had at least confirmed that the pull-ups consistently did what they were supposed to do under the right conditions. Three nights in a row of wet pull-ups without wet bedding or pajamas had been enough for Mom to tentatively agree to not call off the sleepover I had pre-planned with my friends for my birthday tomorrow on Saturday, though that meant I would still be needing to follow my strict regimen of not having too much to drink after dinner. That didn’t mean that the sleepover was a go for sure. I still had tonight to pass. Mom made it clear that any leaks would mean that the sleepover portion of my birthday celebration would need to be canceled. I wasn’t worried about the sleepover. There was absolutely no way I was going to be wearing the pull-up around my friends, let alone actually wet it. I would just pretend to my parents that I had been lucky enough to avoid a bedwetting incident that evening. The pull-up wouldn’t be a problem at all. The actual problem might be with following my parents’ rules about how much I could have to drink without letting Angie and Emma catch on to anything being off. Mom would be keen to make sure the pull-up didn’t leak at night when my friends were over, and since she believed that keeping me from being too hydrated was the key to that, I suspected she would be watching what I was drinking like a hawk tomorrow night. <><><>  Tonight, like nearly every Friday night, had been pizza night. Sadly, we had devoured all the pizza without leaving any leftovers for tomorrow. But that didn’t matter much, since tomorrow was my birthday, I was allowed to choose whatever I wanted to eat for dinner when my two friends were over for the party. And yes, I had chosen pizza from my favorite local pizza place. I had hung out with Emma a couple of evenings this week, and we had finalized some of our plans for the sleepover – with help from the occasional test from Angie, who wasn’t getting back home until late Friday evening. There wouldn’t be an all-nighter, but that didn’t mean we weren’t going to be up late. My friends and I usually slept in sleeping bags in the living room when they spent the night. That way we could at least be a little noisy without waking everyone else up. The sleepover was going to be such a relief after this first excruciatingly boring week of summer. I had gotten all the free time that I had coveted and had suddenly discovered how difficult it was to fill all of these hours I now had under my control. But I knew better than to complain to Mom and Dad. If I said I was bored, they would likely take it upon themselves to find other ways for me to fill my time, and it was far from certain that I would be happy with the choices they might make. Even finally succeeding in getting pull-ups for myself wasn’t making matters any better. It wasn’t like I could do anything with them in the day except look at them, and that only made the wait until bedtime feel even more excruciatingly long.  And all that waiting would culminate in spending ten, maybe fifteen seconds of peeing into the pull-ups. That experience was still as enjoyable as the first time I had done so, but it was such a small payoff for how long I had to wait and think about it every day. Like each night before, I had gone back to bed, still wearing the wet pull-up. One of the best parts about peeing in it rather than in the bed was that the warmth from the accident would stick around a lot longer. I often found myself falling asleep before the interior of the pull-up had gone cold. I had attempted to supplement that feeling by wetting myself a few more times while home alone for the day, but the satisfaction from that was always short-lived as I struggled to fight off thoughts about how weird and wrong it was to be doing it. “Maddy, Maddy.” I looked up from where I was sitting on the couch to see Mom trying to get my attention. I had again been lost in thoughts of what it was going to be like to be wearing the pull-up to bed in an hour or so. Mom sent me to the kitchen to put the bowl of ice cream that I had finished in the sink. Luckily for Grace, she had done dishes prior to dessert, so this bowl would be for Mom or Dad to get washed before they went to bed. Grace was upstairs, doing whatever it was that she liked to do on her bedroom computer. Jackson was in his room playing with Legos. He tended to sometimes avoid our parents when he knew it was getting close to bedtime, as if being out of their sight might cause them to forget that it was time to tell him to get ready for bed.  I returned to the living room to come across an unusual sight. Dad had left his recliner which he rarely did in the evening, and had instead taken a seat next to Mom on the couch. However, instead of sitting right next to each other, he had left an empty cushion right between them. “Maddy, why don’t you have a seat?” Dad asked as he patted a spot on the couch between him and Mom. “There is something we need to talk with you about.” My heart sank. This was worse than being in regular trouble. Regular trouble usually meant being referred to by my whole first name rather than Maddy, perhaps with my middle name also getting invoked if it was a little more serious. This was worse. Way worse. It was the conflict that caused the most consternation. I was never called Maddy when I was in trouble. But I was also never asked to sit down for something to talk about between my parents unless it was for a serious conversation about some misbehavior on my part. My first worry was that they had found out about how Grace had helped me cheat on the math homework, but that would have involved a double scolding, and Grace was nowhere to be found. Besides, as I tried to re-assure myself, Grace’s efforts had only gotten me a “C” on the assignment, part of her strategy to make sure the result didn’t look suspicious. No, it had to be something worse. Had they realized that something was off about the bedwetting? Had Dr. Mathorn caught on after the test results showed that nothing was wrong with my body? But surely that wouldn’t be the case. They hadn’t given the slightest inclination at all this week that they harbored any doubts about my bedwetting. “It’s OK, Maddy, you aren’t in any trouble,” Mom said. OK. That did it, then. I was so in trouble.  It didn’t take long to walk from where I was standing at the entrance of the room to the couch, but it felt like an eternity. Nothing else was said until I eased myself down between my parents.  “We got your grades back from school,” Dad said He grabbed his laptop from the table next to his side of the couch. It was already on the website where parents could check their kids’ grades. He set it down on his lap at an angle where I could see what was shown on the screen. I’d heard stories about the old days when kids would be sent home with only a paper copy of their report card to show to their parents. That was a lot better because at least you’d have a warning about what it entailed rather than being surprised by them. I’d also heard stories about kids who had attempted – some successfully, some not – to alter those report cards so the grades didn’t look quite so bad when presented to their parents. How I wished I would have been able to pull that off. I scanned through my grades for my seventh-grade year, dismay building up in me with each additional result. I had never done particularly well in school, much to my parents’ consternation. It didn’t help that I had an older sister who had always maintained pretty much perfect grades all the way through high school. Grace’s level of success wasn’t a bar that I was ever going to meet. A good grade for me was typically a “B.” I usually got one – maybe two – of those in a semester if I was lucky. The rest of my grades usually fell in the range of a “C,” though often closer to a “C-” than a “C+.”  The results this year were far worse than in years past. This second year of middle school had been tough, but I hadn’t realized how poorly it had gone on until now. I still had one “B” on my report card for PE, which didn’t come as much of a surprise. Everywhere else wasn’t looking good. I only managed one “C” in my other subjects, having earned that grade in my American History class.  “D.” That was the letter marking every other line of the report card. Well, almost every other line. There was one letter even worse than that, listed as the grade I had earned for my math class. I looked away from the laptop screen for a second before looking at it again. Nothing had changed. Those grades hadn’t been my imagination. There wasn’t anything I could say to improve the situation, so I sat between both of my parents in silence. I hadn’t really paid all that much attention to the grades I had gotten back on assignments throughout the school year. Had it really been that bad? Had I perhaps performed more poorly than expected during final exams, dragging my low grades even lower? “Maddy,” Dad said, breaking the silence. “Your mother and I are concerned about how you did at school this year. This isn’t what we were expecting to see when we got your grades back. What happened?” I started picking at the skin around my fingernails, wincing as I peeled away at my skin enough to cause it to start bleeding. How was I… how could I explain what he was seeing on the report card? “I… Um… Um…” “We got your grades back from your standardized tests as well,” Mom said. “Those didn’t turn out any better.” I stared down at my lap, unable to think of anything to say.  “And we talked with some of your teachers,” Dad said. “They said you seemed to be having a difficult time behaving and paying attention in class.” It was all too much to take in at once. “I’m not stupid,” I blurted out. “Maddy, no one is saying that you’re stupid,” Dad said. “Some kids learn differently than others, that’s all.” Different. There was one mental image that displayed more prominently than any other. A picture of Hannah popped right into my head. The stupid way she talked by prattling on and on. Her stupid watch, telling her to go potty every time she forgot. How her parents wanted her to go to a special school cause she was too stupid to attend a regular one. I wasn’t stupid like her. I wasn’t. “I’m not, though,” I muttered, almost as if to myself. Despite my best efforts at keeping a straight face, tears began forming in the corners of my eyes. I tried to blink them away, but it was no use. I wasn’t actually sad. It was just something that happened whenever I got flustered or upset or angry. I would start crying, and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it. I hated it so much. It was hard to argue with my parents or be taken seriously when tears were streaming down my face. I felt Dad’s firm hand begin to rub my back as Mom placed a gentle hand on my lap. Everything my parents were saying felt like it was going in one ear and out of the other as their conversation continued. It was a blur that I couldn’t bring myself to focus on, let alone comprehend. There was something about how they had talked with some of my teachers about how I was doing in class. Then, the dreaded phrase – summer school. What steps might need to be taken to avoid needing to repeat seventh grade. And then there was something about how they were going to have me go see a therapist next week and get tested for some attention disorder thing. This couldn’t be happening. It all felt so wrong. It was summer break. I shouldn’t have had to worry about school for another three months. The tears were getting worse now, and I was starting to sniffle, first a little and then rather loudly. Mom scooted closer to me until she was right up against me on the couch.  “It’s only middle school,” Mom said. “Grades don’t really start counting until you start high school, anyway. There’s plenty of time for you to get back on track next year.” “But…” I said before being interrupted by another loud sniffle. I couldn’t find the right words to express how I was feeling. Mom put her hand around my shoulder, and then pulled me closer to her so that my head was resting against her with my face buried in her shoulder. “Everything is going to be alright,” Mom said. Her hand was now resting on my head with her fingers sifting through my hair. “We’ll get you all the help that you need to make sure you do well in school next year.” That promise sounded more ominous than comforting at the moment. --- Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com/ 

I definitely haven't attained an "incontinent mindset", as much as I let myself go whenever I need to go. I've experienced an increase in urgency, and urgency occurs earlier, and if I ignore urgency, I can experience "incontinence by neglect", but that's not the same as true, involuntary incidents. Other than when I'm asleep - there, I have managed to break through some kind of psychological barrier, because I can wet when I sleep and not wake up nor recall having done so, although I am an unreliable bedwetter - it might happen once in three weeks or twice in three days.  One aspect that is interesting is this: I have, very infrequently, but not zero times, emitted some #2 while sleeping. I was an accomplished bedwetter as a kid but I never had that issue, ever in my life. A couple of the incidents I can trace back to, for example, an excess of chicken wings or a shawarma that might have been questionable, and I figure that somewhere deep in the gears of my brain, I had the thought that, "Hey, I'm wearing a diaper, and there's an alarm going off in Sector 2, why wake up the executives...?"  BUT, once, I passed a little golf ball that comprised neither an urgent texture nor an urgent amount, and that has me wondering... did I dream about doing that, then do it in reality, then not recall that? Or is my subconscious playing pranks on me? Why'd that happen? So maybe my subconscious has more of an incontinence mindset than I do when I'm awake? One thing I've been working on is getting over the stigma surrounding wearing diapers as a non-baby. I was changing winter rims over to summers with a buddy of mine who knows I wear diapers, and at one point I was bent over pushing on a torque wrench and I felt a cool breeze on my lower back, and instantly had a slight feeling of panic, because he was standing right there, watching me. I shook it off - reaching back there would only draw attention to it, anyway. Then, he went off to get a tool, giving me a moment to put my hand back there while still in my original position, and sure enough, there was a strip of white plastic above my shorts and below the hem of my shirt. Which shouldn't have been surprising, since his boxers were hanging out when he was likewise bent over.  I had the urge to stand up and tuck everything in, but I stifled it - unless I went inside and put on a onesie, it was just going to happen again - we still had three more wheels to change. I went back to what I was doing, and he came walking back over with the tool we needed, and a beer for me as well, and we carried on. I chose not to be ashamed of my diaper.  Although admittedly, it was a white diaper - had it been something with pink bunnies on it I probably would have been a lot more self-conscious...

Katherine cringed at the sight of the canary-yellow bib that now adorned her front. She couldn’t stand anything that messed with her elegant, classy wardrobe.

Unless this is going to be a short story, it looks like he's caving in really fast.  Telegraphing this way takes the suspense out of it.