Leaderboard

Chapter 36 Mama Angela carried Danny out of the conference room with Ashley behind them. Danny noticed the employees were watching them, but none said anything. Uncle Carl was not there, however. Danny wondered what he was up to. “Now you said a couple days ago that you wanted shoes,” Mama Angela said. “So why don’t we start with socks and shoes to cover your cute little footsies.” Danny went along with it because he did want shoes. He just hoped that he got shoes that were not too babyish. Ashley left to get a car for the clothes and Danny to ride in. She knew Angela was going to go overboard on the shopping trip for Danny and Danny was not going to like the clothes she picked. Mama Angela carried Danny to the socks. “Do you see any you like?” Mama Angela asked. “They are socks,” Danny said. “They are not a big deal. Danny never took any pleasure in shopping for clothes and usually tried to make it quick. He knew this shopping trip would not be that way though. She looked around for a bit before picking out a pack of ankle socks with many different colors. “What do you think of these Danny?” Mama Angela asked. “They look fine,” Danny said. He was glad she did not try to pick any of the socks with cartoon characters on them. Ashley returned with the cart and Mama Angela sat Danny in the seat and place the socks in the cart. “Now let’s get some shoes.” Mama Angela pushed the cart to the shoes section and began looking at croc like shoes eventually picking a dark green pair. “What do you think of these Danny?” “I like those,” Danny answered. “Then into the cart they go,” Mama Angela said smiling as she placed them into the cart. She was trying to pick shoes and later on clothes that Danny would prefer even though cuter options were available. She went to sandals next, and she instantly found a pair she thought would look super cute on Danny. They were blue with smiling fishes all over the shoe. She knew they would not be Danny’s favorite but decided to see if Danny would accept them. If he said no, she would put them back for now but come back before they checked out and get them. “What do you think of these?” Mama Angela asked Danny. “I think they look adorable. Don’t you agree Ashley?” “Sure,” Ashley said with no enthusiasm. She just hoped Danny would not complain too much so this trip could finish up quicker. Danny thought the shoes looked way too babyish. He did not want to wear them but realized that Mama Angela was going to pick out a lot of outfits Danny did not like. He had a feeling these shoes were not going to be the worst thing she picked out. He decided to pick his battles for something more insulting. “I guess they are okay,” Danny said. He saw Mama Angela quickly put them in the cart. Then she pushed the cart to the sneakers section. “Okay Danny which ones do you like?” Mama Angela said. Danny looked around and on the top shelf he saw a pair that looked like a normal pair of sneakers from his dimension. Danny could not read the information on the shoe and did not realize from his angle that the bottoms light up and the ties were just for show and could be removed, they were actually Velcro shoes. Danny pointed towards them. “The blue and white pair on the top shelf.” “Good choice,” Mama Angela said as she found his size. She had calculated his sizes before the trip with the measurements the hospital did, so she did not need him to try everything on. They were not the pair that she would have chosen for Danny but wanted him to get to pick out some of his clothes. They went to the next section which was shorts and pants. “Tell me which ones you like,” Mama Angela said as she pushed Danny through the selection. Danny picked out basic clothing like jeans that looked normal enough despite the elastic waist band and a few pairs of shorts that were solid print. Mama Angela took all his choices and put them in the cart while also noting where she thought some cuter items were so she could come back for them before they checked out. The next section they walked into was the diaper section. “See anything you like Danny?” Mama Angela asked. “I am not doing this,” Danny quickly responded. “I do not need diapers once I am off the medication. I will not participate in picking any out.” “Here, I have a suggestion,” Mommy Ashley intervened hoping to prevent anything more from happening in the store. She did not like the idea of taking care of Danny by herself but him losing it in a store would be a worse embarrassment in her eyes. “How about me and Danny go for a little walk while you do some more shopping.” “Sounds good,” Mama Angela replied realizing with how today had gone that it all may be a little overwhelming for Danny. “Do you want to go for a walk Danny?” “Works for me,” Danny replied. He raised his arms and Mommy Ashley lifted him out of the cart seat. She carried him outside of the store and Danny could see just how massive every building in the area was, but this was the largest. Ashley was worried Danny would still be worked up about Angela taking him to the diaper aisle. That was completely ridiculous of her. She knew Danny still believed he was not staying in diapers. Ashley knew it was not true but why would Angela push the issue in public. “Sorry,” Ashley told Danny. “Angela gets way too excited when she shops and forgets that not everyone enjoys shopping as much as she does. She did not think before going to that last aisle.” “It’s fine,” Danny said. After seeing the spanking earlier today he was not in any rush to gain firsthand knowledge of how that felt so he would agree to almost anything right now after clearly upsetting his captors in the store. “Be honest with me,” Ashley said deciding to push the issues of Danny lying to Angela to hopefully use it against him later. “You said you do not hate us because of what happened did you mean that or was it just saying what Mama Angela wanted to hear.” “Honestly,” Danny admitted. “I meant what I said about not being sure of anything and being overwhelmed. At times I hate everything and everyone but other times I can think more clearly. I have seen how other littles are treated in this dimension and realize you and Angela are far from the worst.” Ashley felt torn on if she believed Danny. She wanted to believe he was lying and her assumptions about him were correct, but something deep down told her he was being sincere. She decided to ignore it for now. Ashley just walked him around the perimeter of the building hoping not to interact with anyone so Danny would have no reason to lose his cool. In the front of the building a few people waved to the two of them as they left but for the most part they were ignored. That was until they saw an older male amazon in the store uniform who looked to be part of the maintenance team. “Hello there, you two,” the maintenance employee said. “Is there anything I can do for you today?” “Hello,” Ashley said. “We are good. Danny is newer and was just getting a little overwhelmed in the store, so I am letting him catch himself while my partner continues the shopping.” “Smart,” the employee replied. “Is he your first little?” “He is,” Ashley told the man. “Wow,” the employee said shocked. “Normally new parents are not nearly in tune with how their little is feeling and when they show signs of discomfort, they go straight to either threatening punishments or worse just punishing them. Working here you see a lot of littles who are just overwhelmed or scared getting punished because of inexperienced parents. You and your partner must either have great instincts or have been very prepared.” Ashley did not know how to reply. Yes, Angela both had great instincts with littles and was very prepared, but it was Ashley who suggested the idea. Ashley was not experienced with littles at all, and she did not have instincts with littles other than to avoid them. Truth be told in Ashley’s eyes it had been just dumb luck. “Thank you, sir,” Ashley responded to the man. “You’re welcome,” the man said. “Enjoy the rest of your shopping trip and good luck with the new little.” Then he got back to work, and Ashley continued walking Danny around the building for a while longer before stopping. “Are you ready to go back inside,” Ashley asked Danny. “I am a little afraid of how much Angela could have bought for you in the amount of time we were out here.” “Afraid because of how embarrassing it will be for me or afraid for how much she spent?” Danny asked. “Both,” Ashley said emphatically. Ashley knew Angela would have a cart full of what she considered the cutest clothes for Danny, but most likely Danny would hate every outfit. “Let’s go back,” Danny said. He also had the feeling Mama Angela would have several things in the cart he did not want. While her wife and Danny were taking a break to calm down Angela went to work picking out the cutest outfits she could find for Danny. Onesies with cute cartoon animals, footie pajamas with stars and moons, t-shirts with phrases like little stinker and mama’s boy on them, which Danny would not be able to read due to the different alphabet. She enjoyed her shopping but was doing it a little quicker than normal because she did not want to keep Danny here too long with everything he had already been through today and since arriving. She was not rushing by any stretch of the imagination, but she knew the sooner he was at home where he was more comfortable the better. She also made sure to get a few plainer outfits that Danny would preferably wear early on before he accepted his role as a little more. While she was shopping, she saw Carl coming towards her. “Hello Carl,” she greeted him. “Did you finish everything here.” “Yep,” he replied. “I am ready to get back home to my wife and three little ones. Speaking of little ones where is Danny?” “He and Ashley went for a walk,” she explained “He is still a little overwhelmed and the diaper section was a little but much for him.” “Still in the phase where they do not believe they need diapers,” Carl guessed. “He believes once all the medicines are out of his system that he will be fine without them,” Angela stated. “He might gain a little bit more control,” Carl said. “But not enough for him to be trusted in anything but a diaper. Angela felt like that comment was more reassurance for her that keeping him in diapers was the right thing to do than anything else. “True,” Angela replied. “But at least we can give him thinner ones than he has had right now. The crawlers were good for when he was injured but he is going to need less bulk to walk.” “Do you think he will be walking tomorrow?” Carl asked. “I do not know,” Angela admitted. “The doctor said he should be able to, but I want to make sure he does not push himself too far and suffer more setbacks.” “That is understandable,” Carl replied. “You want to baby him through the process. He is your baby after all.” “Yeah, but I have the feeling he won’t like going for the patience approach. He seems to want it to be going a mile a minute.” “You are the parent,” Carl reminded Angela. “If you think something is a bad idea then you can veto it. I know you want him happy, but you also have a more important responsibility to his safety.” “I know,” Angela said. “But the doctor sad he is all set to try to start walking and told me and Ashley in a private meeting if we wait too long the muscles will weaken and it will be harder for him to walk again.” “I get it,” Carl responded. “How mad is Vivian at you for working another weekend,” Angela asked changing the subject. “She was pissed,” Carl admitted. “But as soon as she heard about what was going on with you and Danny here, she did not care and became more concerned about him. She even was considering rounding up the kids and coming here to help you herself. I had to convince her that it was over and by the time they got here you would be gone. Angela just smirked at her sister’s reaction. Mom to everyone, she thought. “Me and Ashley can handle it.” “I know you two can,” Carl agreed. “She is really looking forward to meeting Danny tomorrow. So are the little ones.” “I’m sure Danny will love meeting them,” Angela said not knowing how Danny felt about meeting his new family currently. “Do you need anything before I head out,” Carl asked. “Nope,” Angela said confidently. “Everything is all set here.” “Okay,” Carl said. “Have a great rest of your day. See you tomorrow.” “See you tomorrow,” Angela said and with that Carl left and Angela went back to shopping.

Another day, ANOTHER Diaper!??♥️???♥️?????

No doubt about it. Thanks to @DailyDiand all of you for making this a thoughtful and kind site for ABDLs. In my case it has been instrumental for helping me accept myself. Hugs and love to you all! ?❤️

Do you have a link to that site?

My wife got a subtle shot in; she was talking about house-training a puppy, except she said "potty-training" the dog, and she said "We'll all have to work together and be consistent so that we get this done quickly, and then we're back to only having one person in the house who's not potty-trained...." Although I maintain that I'm not "not potty-trained", I'm just neglecting it, kind of like not using a language for a while, or not picking up an instrument you used to play for a while. It never completely goes away, it just gets rusty.

Daily Diapers the place to be for AB/DL and all the rest to have a fun and enjoyable place to make friends and take our adult life away!!!

Chapter 16: Emergency -Nia- Infernum Infantem – LittleFallenPrincess “Hello?” Victoria answered the phone call. “Yes. Shit. Well give me a minute… right… I’ll be in as soon as possible. Tell them not to move. I’ll sort this all out.” And with that very brief conversation, she put the phone down. “Umm… everything okay?” I asked, concerned about her. “Yeah. Just one of our employees screwed up. I’ve got to go in and fix it. So can I trust you to stay here and be good for me?” “I… sure… but can’t… can’t I come with you?” “I’ve not got enough time, I’ve got to get ready and head out…” “I’ll cast the glamour whilst you’re doing that…” Beatrice said, appearing in the doorway once again. It was like she waited for moments like these to appear. Witches love to be dramatic. “And I’ll hold off on dinner for now. I guess it’ll be a late night?” “Yes, and thank you, Beatrice. Fine, if you don’t mind casting the glamour spell on her… Nia, you can come.” Vic smiled at me. I squealed with excitement. I loved spending time with her, and to get to see her in action… in a crisis… I couldn’t wait for her to go into work and take control. Something about seeing her all dominant… really turns me on. So as she rushed off to get dressed for this important work crisis, Beatrice walked over and held her hand out. Grabbing it, she helped me to my feet and I followed her, not letting go of her hand the whole way, as she led me away to cast this glamour spell on me yet again. ------------------------------------------- We took Victoria’s nice car. The sporty red one. I know nothing about cars, other than this was sporty, the roof came off, and it went very… very fast. Which didn’t help my whole situation. The vibrations… Let's just say it was frustrating me more and more as we sped down the country roads towards the city. If anything, the chastity belt was making things worse, vibrating against my skin with the rumble of the engine. I wanted to say something, to speak up… but after the spanking earlier… I felt like maybe I should keep quiet. Not that I didn’t enjoy that spanking… I was just surprised that Victoria had it in her. Damn that Beatrice for putting it in her head, although I suppose I was the one who teased her into actually doing it. Part of me wanted to push her again though… just so I could experience it again. For now… I was too hungry to care. Which worried me, as I fed only the other night, and usually I could go a week, or even more, between feedings. For it to come back so soon after my last feeding… I was starting to worry they may not find a solution in time. Eventually I’m going to hump my way out of this belt, and it’ll be either Vic or Beatrice that I drain the life out of. Neither of whom I wanted to kill. At least Vic has the amulet thingy… that’ll protect her, provided it’s got its juice back. If it’s Beatrice… I just hope she has some kind of protection. It’s not like I can control it. When I get that hungry… I’m like a rabid animal. I will fuck the first person I see. I know from experience. I hated being a succubus. I hated being a minority within demonkind. There aren’t that many succubi compared to the other kinds of demons. And they don’t have to have sex to survive. Fun fact: Very few demons are succubi, but at the same time, not all succubi are demons. I’m one of the few demonic ones, but there are a lot more on Earth that are more human. Same powers, same lust for sexual energy, just… they look human. But if I’m correct in thinking, all of those succubi are descendents of my kind, one of their human ancestors got freaky with one of my sisters (or brothers… they could have had an incubi relative!) and the succubus or incubus trait was passed down. Sometimes it skips a generation, but usually it's passed down from parents to children. It’s a lot more common on Earth, in Hell we’re a minority. “You okay, sweetpea?” Vic asked as she brought the car to a gentle stop at the traffic lights. “I… what?” I replied, dumbfounded. “You zoned out there. You okay?” She asked with concern in her soft, beautiful voice. “Yeah…” I looked at her, her gorgeous body looking all official and powerful in that pantsuit of hers. Unf. “You sure?” “I… think so…” I lied. I didn’t feel okay in the slightest. I felt… weak. Hungry. But also incredibly frustrated. “If you don’t… tell me, okay hun?” “Uh huh…” “Good girl…” ‘Add squirmy and blushy to my symptoms now…’ I thought to myself as I looked away into the side view mirror, noticing my cheeks turning red. Looking at myself in the mirror, I couldn't help but appreciate how good this glamour was. I was still wearing my comfortable clothes from before, but now I had the familiar pale skin and my demonic features were gone. Beatrice was no second-rate Witch. Victoria has no clue what she has living under her roof, and squanders Beatrice’s talent on petty glamour spells. “Is… is it okay that I didn’t change?” I asked, pointing at my casual attire. “Oh don’t worry sweetie, it’s my company. And I don’t care.” “Why did I have to dress up the first time I went in then?” “That was a formal day and I wanted you to appear professional. This is an emergency, so they’ll understand if you’re not dressed as formally.” “Umm… okay…” “Trust me, it’s okay babygirl…” The butterflies in my tummy got extra excited at that moment. For some reason… that name… “I…” “What’s up?” Vic asked. “I’m… okay. Are we there yet?” “Nearly. When we arrive, I need you to sit out of the way and silently play your game, okay?” “What if I want to watch?” “You can do… if you want. But just stay quiet and stay out of the way, okay?” “Uh huh… okay!” “Good girl.” And there goes the butterflies again… “What’s the damage?” Victoria asked her assistant as she walked in, confidently striding through the halls, not even slowing down for her assistant on her way to the boardroom. “They’re threatening to sue. After the mess up…” Her assistant said hurriedly. “Nia?” Vic turned to me, without stopping or slowing down. “Yeah?” I replied. “I know I said you could come in… but this is worse than I thought. I need you to go with Alison. Alison? Take care of Nia. Just get her a snack and a drink and leave her to play her game.” “But… I wanted to watch…” I whined. “I know, another time, I promise. I need to sort this out. Be good for me, please?” “Fiiiine…” I groaned, before walking off, trying to catch up with Alison who had walked off without saying a word or even looking at me. “So what are you?” Alison asked as I sat there, playing my game on my handheld console. “Huh?” I asked, looking up from my game. I was getting really hungry at this point. I could feel my body cry out for nourishment. ‘Wait… Can she tell I’m glamoured? Can she see past the illusion? Is she supernaturally inclined?’ “Girlfriend? Escort? You can’t be a random hookup, I saw you yesterday all dressed up. Are you a relative?” ‘Did Victoria not even tell her assistant who I am? That actually… hurts…’ “I’m… her girlfriend.” Honestly I wasn’t sure what I was, but right now, that seemed the best term to describe me. We had had sex, she seemed interested in me, and she wanted me to stay on Earth. I was interested in her and she was part of the reason why I didn’t want to return to Hell. So girlfriend it is. I just hoped this wouldn’t come back to bite me later. “Mkay…” Alison looked at me, judging me with her eyes from the other side of her desk. The older, grey-haired woman pulled her glasses down in that “So… you play… video games?” “Yeah?” I replied. “Bit childish, aren’t they? How old are you?” “Four hun…. Four… Twenty four.” I quickly corrected myself. “Bit young for her… didn’t realise she was into women barely out of nappies…” She joked. For some reason I blushed. And I had no idea why. Plus what was this woman on about? Sure… Alison looked older than Victoria… by my estimate, Alison was probably late 50s. But Vic is actually much older than her, thanks to her amulet… and me? Barely out of nappies? I’m four hundred years old! At least… well I’m at least that. I can’t actually remember how old I am. I stopped counting after four hundred. I know my body looks younger, probably early twenties according to human ageing, but I’m not ‘barely out of nappies’! If it wouldn’t bring problems upon Victoria… I’d show Alison the real horrors of Hell. “I’m not that young…” I replied instead. “You are compared to me, dearie. You young’uns…” I rolled my eyes and went back to playing my game. A wave of pain washed over my body. I needed to feed. “So where did she meet you? Daycare?” She scoffed. I would have blushed again, I could feel it, but right now all I could feel was hunger. And I was ready to pounce on anyone right now. Even this old woman. “Are you okay, dear?” She asked. “I… hungry…” I growled, clutching at my game. “Miss Delacroix did say to get you a snack…” “No… I need… more…” “I could go see what they’ve got at the cafeteria…” “MORE!” I screamed. “You don’t look well… I… I’ll just message her…” She said, grabbing her phone in fear, fiddling with the keypad before looking back at me. I was staring at her, I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. If this was a cartoon, she’d look like a giant roast chicken right now. I was ready to fuck this woman to death. It was getting too much and I didn’t think I could hold back any longer… It was then that I heard a gasp, followed by a rush of footsteps as Victoria ran over and knelt down in front of me as I sat on the edge of the sofa. “Vic…” I gasped. “Nia, are you…” Vic asked, holding my hand. “Hungry…” “Shit… I thought we’d have more time. I wonder why it’s happening so…” “HUNGRY!” I growled louder. “Alison, tell them I’ll be back soon. I need to help Nia.” Vic said as she helped me to my feet and wrapped her arm around me. I was shaking at this point. “Is she diabetic or something?” Alison asked. “It’s… something. Just… don’t interrupt us, okay?” Vic ordered before rushing me off into her office next door. “Sweetie… why are you so hungry so soon?” Vic asked, after she had closed the door behind her and carried me into the middle of her office. “I… I don’t know… I need… to… FEED!” “Right, let’s get that sorted, then we can worry about why.” She said, fumbling about in her pocket before pulling out a key. The key to my chastity belt. “But… how… What about… Hell?” I asked, panting. “We’ll figure that out later. Just take a bit from me for now, okay sweetie? Just enough to keep you going for a bit longer… don’t drain me like last night.” She pressed me against the wall of her office, the chastity belt falling to the floor with a clunk. Kissing my neck, she pinned my arms above my head and began kissing my lips tenderly. “I…” I moaned. “Go on, sweetie… feed…” And so I did. As her fingers pressed against my most sensitive area, as lips pressed against mine… I stared at her. ‘Just a little bit, Nia… maybe… maybe it won’t alert Hell…’ And so I let go. I gave in to the pleasure, to this intimacy, and started draining Victoria’s life force from her kiss. Trying my best to balance the hunger I felt and the control needed to only drain her of a small amount, I focused. She moaned in pleasure as I felt her grip on my arms weaken. ‘Just… a bit… more…’ And just as I was about to finish, just as I was about to get enough life force from Victoria… I sensed something. I stopped immediately, causing Vic to look at me with concern. “But we both seemed so close… did you… did you get enough?” She asked, panting a bit, clearly out of breath and feeling exhausted after having some of her life taken from her. I was out of breath… for different reasons. I hated edging, but right now I had to just deal with the frustration as I looked at her in the eyes. “I sense a demon.” “Sh… shit…” She breathed heavily. “What do we do?” I asked. She’s the clever one, the one who is good at coming up with plans, so I left it to her. “Hide. My personal bathroom is through the door over there. Hide in there.” She ordered. “What about you?” “I’ll throw him off the scent.” “You sure?” “Go on sweetie, I got this.” Without hesitation, I rushed off into the door by the side, shutting it behind me. ========================================================== Loving all your theories so far! They're so much fun to read! ? I hope everyone enjoys this chapter! Please leave likes and comments and all that fun stuff, I love reading them! Thank you to all my patrons for their support! Don't forget, the next 4 chapters of Infernum Infantem are available on my Patreon which can be found here if you go for the second tier. You get two weeks early access to chapters of Infernum Infantem. New chapters of Infernum Infantem every Wednesday/Sunday! Also just a quick note: I don't mind people saving this story for personal reading. But I'd appreciate it if people didn't post it elsewhere, even if you're just suggesting it to other people. If you want to show others, please send them a link to the first page of this post! Thanks!

@wetmessycrinkly Welcome to Daily Diapers. Feel free to join us in chat sometime. We have a good time over there most days. Also feel free to browse the rest of the forum. Sorry to hear about your incontinence problems I have #2 incontinence issues. And I am also going to be going 24/7 soon. working on the financials on that one. Though I do have accidents. And I make sure I am close to a bathroom or make sure if I am out and if I do have diapers I am wearing one. My good friend @~Brian~ And a few others like @Little Sherri @Kif @oznl @Kawaharu @Little Belle @Beccathelittle @Rachael-Little @Young1 @Enthusi @Crinklz Kat And a few others have been helping me and talking to me I have my own post on here as well. Which helps me a lot. There are many post on here that can help you with your 24/7 if you like you can do what many of others have and keep a diary like on this thread about your daily life in diapers is like it helps with everything. I love reading the stories my friends post on here. And I would like to add you as a friend as well.

For many of us that have ben paced into a diaper 24/7 or have chosen this, it is potentially at times stressful at the office . The normal happenings after a stressfull day is for my wife to give me a bath and cleaning, place me into a clean diaper. Then I either reach for a baby bottle or a paci to relax and then lay down for a nap for a little while. what do others do after a stressful day.

oh, Thank you, AbabeBill! Huggs Hi Eddie. Thank you for answering. Have a lovely day.

@Crinklz Kat wow that is some lost.

Well, I'm enjoying having the blinds up in my office today, because it's a wall of white out there, so I can walk around in my diaper and not worry about giving any of my neighbours PTSD. I'm in a Rearz Lil' Squirts Splash right now, because at some point I may have to go pick my daughter up from school, and these are a good "out and about" weight - comfy but they don't render my butt visible from space. I anticipate being asked to get her because my wife doesn't relish driving in bad weather, and right now, it's snowing pretty decently out there. They're keeping on top of of the roads, though - they look clear, even out here, which is a bit out of the city. Kudos to the city crews. It's funny, because this type of weather is represented as a major "event" these days, whereas, when I was a kid, I think that it was more or less "normal" to be getting snow, in the winter, in Canada. I barely remember ANY snow days occurring when I was in school, whereas my kids have them with amazing frequency. Maybe that has more to do with the evolution of liability concerns than it does with climate change, but, this winter has been unusually warm. Case in point: I have yet to fire up my snowblower. All the show-falls we've had so far have been too minor to warrant bringing a gasoline-powered device into the fray. I've just scraped a few inches off the driveway a couple of times, or, it was going to be 5 degrees above zero the next day, anyway, so I let the driveway "auto-clear". Maybe, maybe I'll have cause to finally see if the thing starts tomorrow, if we get the full 8 inches or so (20 cm) that they're calling for. I'm not holding my breath, though, because they've already overestimated the impact of a few "events" this season, to the point of closing the schools for what turns out to be a few centimetres of snow and some light rain. Funny enough, the schools are open today, and lo and behold, it's snowing pretty good out there.

Just one?

How long have I been saying the same?

Not much to add LMDO

Welcome to Daily Diapers

@herb330 For me since I work for myself and I do not go to a office if the day starts getting stressful I just stop working. And if I choose to I may put on a diaper if I am going out. As I do not trust my butt any longer. Most times when I am home I am either on facebook or I am on here or I might have one of the streaming services on watching tv. I have 2 monitors so I can watch tv while I work or while chatting in the DD chatroom. Or reading some of the forum post. That is it for me. @Little Sherri your daily unstressing days are cool. Just wondering though since you just sleep in just a diaper are you not afraid of leaks? Even though I do have a protective cover over the mattress on my bed I rather not wet the bed. When I go fulltime I will be wearing pul pants to protect the sheets. I got like 4 or 5 not sure how many. And when I go fulltime I plan on getting more so I have a lot to choose from.

Go home, take the kids for a bike ride, then back to work!

Hello! Just one of those periodic reminders to say: A) Thank you for continuing to read this story. I do appreciate you sticking around! B)If you are dying for more of this story, Tier 1 subs to my Patreon get access to new chapters before anyone else. Right now, there are 5 more chapters of this story to read there. Also, if you decide to sub to a higher tier, there are many (many) short stories and series available to read that are exclusive to the Patreon. Drop by and help support the cause, if you can! (The cause = making people read naughty stories, I guess.) Twenty-Eight I could’ve been more observant. I could’ve taken notes of the streets we had turned on to get to the hotel. Hell, I could’ve noticed what the hotel itself was actually called. But details like that only seemed important to adults. In the last few minutes of the drive, I was thinking about the number of details that I didn’t care about when I was a kid. When my family took vacations, I was just there, enjoying whatever was put before me. I didn’t think about the hotel reservations. The plan for our meals. Getting tickets for an amusement park. Travel accommodations. I had been tempted to ask about things like our accommodations, or what her schedule would be like, but I bit my tongue every time. Those were adult concerns that only Mommy would care about. It felt good to just…not care. I couldn’t remember the last time I was able to just sit back and let life happen around me without being an active participant. Bills, work, meal planning, grocery shopping. All of those things still existed–and eventually I’d be back in that world. But not right now. This mentality, combined with the distance we were from everyone else I knew or cared about, was making it incredibly easy to fall into the babyish state that Mommy wanted me in for the next few days. Who was I kidding? I wanted to be in the state too. “Well?” Mommy asked as we took a few steps into her room. No, not a room–an entire suite. “What do you think?” I had wide-eyes and an open mouth. My head was shaking. “Th-this is nicer than my apartment.” “No offense,” she said. “But it better be. Go ahead, take a look around.” The living room we were in seemed to act as a central hub to the suite, with doorways branching off a kitchen, a bedroom, a bathroom, and…another room? The thought of there being another bedroom–and the possibility of being sent there to sleep with Mommy, was a little distressing. I jumped from room to room, quickly scanning everything. Everything was immaculate. Everything felt designed. Curated. Just by walking on the carpet with my cheap sneakers, I felt like I was corrupting this space. King bed. One of the biggest TVs I had ever seen. A fridge already stocked with assorted beverages and snacks. I felt like every time I turned a corner, I was in awe of something else. I was admiring the jetted tub in the bathroom when I heard Mommy walk up behind me. “That should make bathtime fun, yes?” “Y-yes, Mommy.” “There’s a toilet and a bidet too,” she said, pointing to the units on the opposite side of the room. “Not that you should get too excited about that. You certainly won’t be needing them.” It was a very obvious point, but one that still made my cheeks glow. “You have one room left to investigate,” she said with a smirk. The other bedroom–which I had started to write off as just excess space that we wouldn’t need. But now that she was trying to shepherd me to it, I was curious. It was, in fact, another bedroom. Except the bed had been pushed all the way against the wall, leaving a large space in the middle of the room, which was now occupied with a playpen. Among other things. “What…is all this?” “Surprise,” she said, wrapping her arms around me and hugging me. “It’s not the full-on nursery I wanted–but there’s not much you can do when we only have the place for a few days.” Next to the playpen was a large flat pad on the ground, next to some neatly stacked piles of diapers. The more I looked around the room, the more I noticed. The pacifiers and baby toys. Clothing laid out on the bed. Baby food jars and baby bottles. “H-how did you do all this?” I asked. “I made some calls,” she said. “I’m an executive, that’s what I do–execute. I ordered some things and had them sent here. Hired someone to set it all up. It was a piece of cake, really.” “All this for…me?” “Let’s not pretend that I don’t get anything out of this,” she said. I wanted to cry. I might’ve been, a little bit. I couldn’t think of the last time that someone had gone this far out of their way to create such an experience for me. She was right–this was likely just as much for her. But it made me feel like the most important baby in the world at that moment. How do I thank her for this? There was only one real answer. I’d just give her what she wanted. I immediately dropped to my knees, my thumb in my mouth. I looked up at her face, hoping my face would express how spoiled this pathetically dumb baby was feeling. “Look how precious you are,” she said, running a hand through my hair. “Are you ready? To just be my baby and nothing else?” My head was automatically nodding. My entire body felt consumed by the lust I felt for her. “Let’s get you out of these clothes,” she said. “I think I’d like to see you crawling around in just your diapers for a bit.” Such a simple desire, but it was something we never really had the space to do. Aside from the confines of her office, there wasn’t anywhere that I could just be a free-range baby. “It’s not a changing table,” she said, pointing to the long pad, “but I thought this would do nicely for the next few days. A changing pad. Why don’t you lie down on it so that Mommy can undress you.” I quickly crawled over to it, flopping myself down on my back. My feet were already up in the air without her asking–eagerly anticipating her hands to free me of the useless adult clothing I wore. She plucked my shoes and socks off first, followed by my pants. Then, she helped me out of my shirt and tee–leaving me entirely nude except for my diaper. “Quite wet,” she said, grasping the bottom of the diaper and squeezing. “But I knew this. You made a pee-pee in the ride over, didn’t you?” I nodded, my thumb back in my mouth again. “Poor Mr. Joel, he probably had no idea what to make of that little scene, huh?” I shook my head. I thought back to the things I had said while in the backseat of the car. I could barely believe that was me. Had I actually said the word ‘poopies’ out loud? “It’s wet enough for a change,” she said. “But…I don’t see a point in changing you if you’re going to need a diaper again soon. Do you need to go, Baby?” I could feel some pressure in my bowels. There wasn’t a dramatic urgency yet, but it was enough that I could probably coax something into my diaper if I wanted. “Yeth, Mommy,” I said, the thumb giving my words a perfectly infantile lisp. “Why don’t I leave you in this diaper for now,” she said. “Go on and crawl around. Explore. I’m going to be unpacking a few things.” “Uhm…Mommy?” “Yes, darling?” “Wh-what if I…go.” “Say the word, Baby. I know that you can.” “P-poop. What if I…poop?” “What do you mean, ‘what if?’ I’m expecting you to. Don’t think about it. Just do it.” “But…thould I find you? Or…” “I’ll find you,” she said. “Trust me, I’ll know if it happens. When it happens.” I was on my own in the makeshift nursery. I started to climb up to my feet, but I thought better of it and got back down on my hands and knees again. Even when Mommy wasn’t here watching me, I wanted to be a baby. And, strangely, when left to my own devices, I found it even easier to let that headspace take over. I crawled. And it was so fun to have room to crawl around that I did a few laps around the room. Such a stupid thing. Only a baby would enjoy this. I grabbed one of the new pacifiers and slid it into my mouth, letting my slobbery thumb land back on the soft carpet again without any regard for things like germs or dirt. Next, I clumsily pawed at the new toys she had bought for me. Oversized plastic keys. A rattle. A plush dinosaur. Giant chunky blocks. Do babies actually like these sorts of things? What are you even supposed to do with… But then a few minutes quickly passed as I sat in my soaked diaper, idly shaking stupid baby toys around in my hands. I’m such a baby. I felt my cock straining in my cage. Such a baby. Fuck. I couldn’t get enough of those words. I’m a baby. A baby. That’s me. I’m a big baby now. A big stupid toddler. A diaper-filling little… I got back on my hands and knees again and began crawling around the room again, the plush dinosaur–a stegosaurus that felt like a ‘Spike’ to me–still clutched in one of my hands. I didn’t even realize what I was looking for when I started my latest loop around the room, but then it dawned on me: I was looking for a place to poop. A summer or two ago, I was at a summer barbecue hosted by my cousin. They had a little girl, maybe no older than 2. At one point she waddled out of view of everyone, prompting my mother to ask where little Jessie had gone. “She only really does that when she has to make a dirty diaper,” my cousin had said. “She’s at that age where she knows she’s supposed to start learning how to use a toilet, but chooses to use her diaper anyway. So she’ll sneak off and poop her pants while nobody’s watching.” I could relate to that. I found a nice little place alcove between the playpen–which I only then realized was quite large–and the bed where I felt like I could do my business. I’m not sure if it felt right, but it certainly felt safe. I grunted and pushed, expecting my body to offer more resistance. It didn’t, perhaps having already given in to the same primal and babyish urges my brain was being overwritten by. Most of it was pushed into the diaper all at once, a firm mess that expanded the back of the diaper considerably. I reached behind myself and felt the bottom of the diaper as I pushed again, getting the last of it out–each push expanding the diaper’s size a little more. I had messed my diaper plenty of times in the last few weeks. In front of people. With the help of suppositories. In places that I probably shouldn’t have messed myself. But even when it felt good–and, honestly, it always felt good–it didn’t feel like it did now. There was something about being in this room, surrounded by these things, and being left by myself, that made this feel better than it had ever felt before. My hand glided back and forth over the back of the diaper, feeling the shape and size of my mess. I squeezed at it a little. “Unh.” My cock strained again. Fuck. This was a mistake. My hormones were all over the place and the pleasure-center of my mind was combusting. What was I supposed to do? All this sexual energy. All this desire. And absolutely nothing to do with it. I let myself fall back on my ass, squishing the sizable mess between my ass cheeks and the diaper. I slid back and forth in my diaper a few times, just little movements, feeling the mess spread even further. I needed Mommy so badly. I needed her to tell me how much of a naughty little baby I was being. I needed her to tell me how badly I smelled–because I was already quite stinky. I needed her to…literally do anything. If she wanted to throw carrot sticks at me, I’d have gladly accepted that. I needed Mommy to fuck me. No plan. No thought. No conscious decisions being made. I let my head fill itself with fantasies and wishes while hips continued to gyrate back and forth in the diaper, smushing the contents into a disaster that I couldn’t begin to grasp. Just a big stupid baby. Look at me. So stupid. So fucking horny. Stinky. Making poopy diapers and helplessly squirming around. So pathetic. So, so, fucking pathetic. Such a hopeless little… “What’s going on in here?” My body froze in place and my neck craned to the door where I found Mommy in the doorway. I had no idea what to say. I wasn’t even sure if I could form words if I wanted to. “Believe it or not, it wasn’t the stench of your dirty diaper that got me back in here,” she said. “It was the sound of a diaper crinkling so much I thought you were wrestling with it. And…maybe you were?” I clutched Spike tightly looking down at the loaded diaper between my legs. I had completely forgotten about shame–it’s an emotion seemingly reserved for people who know better–but it was finally washing over me. What was I doing? What had I let myself become? “Just look at you,” she said, shaking her head. “This is…apocalyptic.” Was it that bad? I had no idea. No clue how to even gauge how bad things might be. “I’m not sure how you did it,” she continued, “but this is a certified blowout. Look at you. It’s coming out the waistband. And the leg bands. And you even got it on the carpet!” I looked down at my diaper again, lacking the entire picture she was seeing, but seeing enough. “Come here,” she said. “Crawl over here, to the changing pad.” I did so, finally showing a little caution as I slowly lifted my dirty bottom from the carpet so I could crawl back to her and the changing pad. It was a short distance, but it might as well have been an entire pad. Her eyes were fixated on me as I lurched forward, one knee or forearm at a time, with my absolutely filthy diaper swaying in the air behind me. “I’m not upset,” she said, her lips forming back into a small smile again as I laid back down on my back on the padding. “But I am a little curious as to what was going on in here.” I pulled the pacifier from my mouth, taking my time with the words as I re-learned how to speak: “I got…carried away.” She chuckled softly as she began to untape the diaper. “What were you thinking about?” “You. The diaper. Everything…” “Everything,” she repeated. “That’s a lot.” I nodded. “It felt like a lot.” The diaper was pulled open, completely exposing the messy contents within. I didn’t dare look down at myself to see what I had done. Instead, I looked up at her face. She looked as composed and confident as she always did, even if I could tell that she was unsure of where to start in the cleanup effort. “I thought this thing would make things a little easier for us,” she said, gently jostling my caged manhood. “A ‘set it and forget it’ sort of thing, you know? But it seems to have turned you into the horniest little babe who’s ever lived.” “I…I’m sorry,” I said. It felt worth repeating: “I got carried away.” “It’s nothing to be sorry for,” she said, stroking my cheek with the back of her hand. “I like you like this.” “R-really?” “Don’t pretend you didn’t already know that.” There was more I wanted to tell her, but I wasn’t sure if I should or not. As it turned out, I wasn’t so far out of my baby-space that I could stop myself if I wanted to. “I just want to c*m so badly.” Her smile got bigger as she pulled the first damp wipe from the package. “Of course you do. Do your diapers make you horny?” “Unnnh,” I groaned–a guttural reaction I hadn’t seen coming. “Probably not just diapers,” she said. “But specifically dirty diapers, huh? I bet you just love the feeling of them.” She was right, though it was far more than that. It was, literally, everything. Everything made me horny. “I promise you, I’ll give you your c*mmies,” she cooed to me as she began to carefully clean away the mess from my skin. “N-now?” “No,” she said, giggling. “Not now.” “Then…when?” “You’ll know when it’s time. I promise you that.” I could’ve whined some more, but I didn’t want to sound any more pathetic than I already did. Besides, the more I whined, the more at risk I was of convincing Mommy that she should postpone my cock’s relief. “Yes, Mommy.” “Good boy. Now, I’m afraid I have some news that you might not be entirely happy with.” My heart sank in my chest. “Yes?” “An old colleague of mine is in town for the same conference. It was a last minute decision on her part, apparently.” “Oh,” I said, expecting this to be the part where she told me that she’d be spending some time with her friend instead of with me. “She’s asked me to get drinks with her this evening. Maybe go to some clubs. But, I have other plans.” She smiled at me. “So…” “I won’t be going out to the club with her tonight. Still, social obligations being what they are, I can’t not see her while we’re both in town, so I agreed that we’d meet her for dinner.” “We?” “Afraid so. So, assuming we’re ever able to fully clean this stinky catastrophe you’ve created, we’ll need to get downtown to meet Gretchen.” “D-does she know about my…diapers?” “She doesn’t, actually,” she said, laughing. “Let’s see how long we can keep this a secret from her.” “So do I…have to wear a new one?” “Oh yes,” she said, playfully booping me on the nose. “You’re still a baby. You’ll always be a baby.” I accepted this change of plans very quickly. As always, I trusted her. The details of what we did, who we met, and when we did any of it, were far above me now.

hello everyone. This is my very first post ?. I am a closet baby but a fulltime cuckold. I love the stories and I am looking for a couple to keep me occupied.... Can anyone recommend one? I also would like to make friends with others with similar interests. my email is rstod00@gmail.com. I would LUV to hear from you. Thank yew. ???

Hello all. I have been on this site as a reader for a long time but have recently some financial hard times. I need to exercise every revenue stream that I can so I have launched my own patreon for story content. I realize there are many patreons out there. This one is different in that it focuses specifically on female partners forcing men to wear diapers due to some bodily disfunction. Of course, there's plenty of this content out there, but most of it is mixed in with sissy dress, women in diapers, societies with a subpopulation in diapers, and other things which I am personally not into or which diminish the humiliation for me (e.g., the man secretly enjoying it). I think there might be other people out there with my tastes, so I am starting my own patreon to provide it. To compensate for the patreon being new, I am promising to deliver and additional 500 words of content for every new subscriber during a one month period. The base is 3000, so if you and 5 other people join, I will provide 6000 words this month. I like a slow burn but I also want something in every section of a story to turn me on, the provided free content is the start to a story that will introduce diapers in the second part (released on patreon only) and will continue to slowly devolve from their until poor Andrew has been humiliated in every way I can think of. I also promise that this post is more than just an advertisement. Below is some free content and if people show they want to see more (some patrons subscribe) I will post updates on Andrew periodically here but I will not post all content here and I will not post the most humiliating sections of the story here. https://patreon.com/user?u=7664738&utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=join_link Without further ado, Andrew's Saga begins. The coffee shop was crowded. Andrew had grabbed a high-top table and was waiting on his order when he saw Megan enter. Her dress surprised him. He was expecting a casual look, skinny jeans, sneakers, maybe a sweater—it was cold outside after all. Instead, Megan looked ready to hit the clubs. In fact, she was dressed sexier than during their date the previous week. Her leather skirt, fishnet stocking, and heeled boots had garnered more than a few sideways glances. She was wearing a sweater, the but the neckline was wide, and it fell below one shoulder, revealing her lace bra strap. Adding onto it her dark red lipstick and Andrew felt he could hardly be blamed for his growing hard on. Andrew was definitely regretting his choice of clothes now. Her text to meet for coffee had come while he was taking care of some household chores. He hadn’t even considered changing but now was painfully aware that his fashion choices were a misstep. He’d been told he shouldn’t wear plaid shorts with a plaid shirt, but he only owned the one pair of shorts and this shirt was his favorite. As Andrew stood to wave her over, the barista called his name for his order and the surprise jolted him out of trance of self-castigation causing him to bump into the table and knock over a napkin holder. The noise caught Megan’s attention, along with everyone else in the shop, and Andrew was glad, for once, that he was small enough that even a raging hard on would not be detected under his clothes. He tried to walk naturally to get his drink and wave to Megan, but he knew by the pitying look on her face that he was being somewhat less than smooth. The truth was, Andrew hadn’t expected to hear from Megan ever again. Their date had initially gone well. Megan had flirted with him and he’d blushed which she seemed to find charming enough. Their conversation had gone well. She’d seemed to appreciate his reasoned arguments concerning the recent election and why older generations should take youth more seriously. As their dinner ended, Andrew felt sure another date would be forthcoming and had been resolved to not mess up the good-bye kiss. Instead, there was no good-bye, at least not at her doorstep. She’d invited him in all the way into her bedroom. It had started out well. He knew she didn’t invite him in their to talk so he did the bold thing, the masculine thing, he gently cupped her face in one hand, then grabbed her hip firmly with the other and kissed her, hard. She reciprocated and he moved his hand to the nape of her neck, then so her shoulder, then cupping her breast through her shirt. For her part, she seemed equal eager and moved her hands over his chest and around his hips until she was unbuttoning his pants, pulling down his zipper … But that’s where it had stopped because instead of letting loose a massive hard-on she found a sticky wet substance. The both froze but for different reasons. Andrew because he was still cumming. Megan because she was completely disgusted. Then she did something unexpected, she grabbed the edge of his jeans and yanked them down hard exposing his now flaccid penis. And there he was, standing with his pants down around his knees while his date stepped back, fully clothed to stare at his dick. “Did you just cum in your pants?!” “I, uh,” “That is disgusting.” He tried to stammer out that it had been a while, that he could go down on her, that he might be ready to go again in an hour or so. She wasn’t in a mood to hear it. “Just go.” She shook her head, dejectedly. Andrew did just that, pulling up his now gooey pants, somewhat happy that she didn’t bother with remarking on his small size. Flaccid, it was only a single inch, if that. He’d cried that night at home, humiliated, wondering what he was going to do. This was the first time premature ejaculation had gotten in the way of a potential relationship. He’d had more compassionate girlfriends than Megan. One’s who hadn’t been disgusted, but ultimately they’d all eventually admitted that they thought he would improve and their sex life wasn’t what they wanted. They had trouble seeing him as masculine. Their attraction had declined. Now, Megan appeared to be giving him a second chance. When she reached the table after getting her own order, he’d stood and she’d held out her arms to give him a hug. It wasn’t a kiss but he’d take a hug. She’d held him tight, pushing her hips into his like she was horny for him, and leaned into his ear to say he smelled nice. He tried to play his tensing up off like he was embarrassed for the compliment and surprised at the hug, but the truth was, her body so close to his hard on and the anticipation of repairing the other night was too much. He’d cum, right in the middle of the coffee shop. His only hope was that they would be there long enough that it would remain hidden by the table until it dried. And they did manage to have a decent conversation, picking up where they’d left off the previous week. An hour went by before there was a lull and by this time, Andrew felt certain he could walk about the world without his accident being detected. At the lull, Andrew finally felt brave enough to probe into what exactly was going on. “I was surprised you texted …” He started, hoping she would pick up the thread. “I like you.” She paused thinking of how to proceed but in seeing Andrew’s smile she quickly qualified, “as a friend.” “Ah.” He felt all the air go out of his sails. This was not a second date. “Don’t pout.” She waited for him to look at her. “Good boy.” Again she paused as confusion washed over his face at the diminutive expression she had just used. Megan just smiled enigmatically. “Actually, I wanted to meet with you because I have friend I’d like to set you up with. I think she’ll really like you. But first, tell me, did you cum earlier? When I hugged you?” Andrew didn’t know how to react in one second hope and eagerness and in the next abject humiliation. “No,” he stuttered. Her look hardened. “Andrew, do not lie to me or I will not give you my friend’s number. I want the truth. Did you cum in your pants?” It took a minute for him to respond but she waited as he tried to read her expression. She looked serious and he felt like a little boy lying to his mother. He didn’t know how to get back on even footing with this woman. “Yes,” he finally admitted and looked down at the table. “Thank you for being honest, sort of. You clearly have a problem. I’m no doctor so I can’t tell you how to fix it, but you know, you don’t have to go around with wet pants. If you’re going to cum whenever a woman gets close to you, you can wear a little protection, like a pad or something.” She looked over his blank face. “Like a menstrual pad. You’ll have to switch to briefs but isn’t that better just squirting out cum all over yourself?” He’d never thought about it before. What man thinks about sticking a menstrual pad in his pants? “This way, when you have your next accident,” she paused on that word, giving it emphasis and Andrew squirmed turning and could feel the heat in his face, “when you have your next accident, no one will know but you. Plus,” she smiled broadly, “it might mask your other,” she held up her thumb and pointer finger to emphasize the next word, “little problem.” Andrew didn’t know what to say. He felt like his dick had just receded back inside his body he was so emasculated. She’d gone there. Not only saying he needed protection against his accidents but that his cock was tiny. He could not have felt more pathetic. “Why …” he wanted to ask why she would set him up with her friend. Why would any woman ever want him but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Finally, as his eyes started to well up with tears from his inner thoughts about how useless he was, Megan took pity on him and grabbed his hand. “I wouldn’t set you up with my friend if I didn’t think it would work out. Not every woman has the same desires or needs.” When he looked like he had calmed down a bit she continued, “But no woman wants to touch a man’s pants only to find out he soiled himself like a child so where the pad, OK?” Despite the brutality of the words, her tone was gentle and they both smiled at each other. Megan was right. Whoever this girl was, Megan wouldn’t set them up if his small dick was going to be a problem for her.

Haian pull on adult plastic pants. 3 in a pack £22.99. I bought medium as I wear medium nappies and they're a good fit - plenty of room to accommodate a full load LOL but small enough to fit nicely. They are HUGE on the side but I just fold them down and the leg seams are fairly tight but as that's where 99% of your leaks come from, it's no bad thing. The brands @Beccathelittle recommended just weren't available in the UK.

I rest my case. Thank you. I am a plastic pants dude.

Good for you and your relationship!

Aww shucks

Blue Monday https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy5WM1xYbGo

Hehe

must..... steal..... from......dailydi......

Wow, now we know who Mike Pence really is!

That sounds lovely, but it's not the way my evenings usually go. Generally, I go into the house after work, head up to our bedroom, and take my work clothes off. Then, depending on the status of my diaper, I might either change it, or let it ride, and I'll either put on jeans and go do stuff outside, or go for a walk, or, if the weather is lousy, then I might put on track pants and play around with cleaning up in the kitchen or whatever. At some point after the kids go to bed, my wife and I will head up to our bedroom, where she likes to crochet and watch TV, and I'll either watch TV with her, or I'll read. Usually I'm in just a diaper and a t-shirt for the last couple of hours of the evening, because that's how I sleep.

I'm 24/7 a abdl. Therefore I'm in diapers all of the time. In addition use pac's and baby bottles.

Welcome and congratulations on your decision. Wearing 24/7 is such a relief after years of anxiety about leaks and accidents. I've never looked back after nearly 18 months and my continence has completely gone now so it's a good job too ? I look forward to hearing all about your adventures!

That design is interesting, it is very much like the malecot catheters that expand/collapse the wings with a stylet, but instead uses what appears to be an external tube (straightener) to both place & retrieve the stent. But it is a prostatic stent so may not be long enough to bridge both urethral sphincters. If it were long enough, it looks like the straightener would need to be placed just into the bladder. The pusher would push the stent out of the straightener so the first wings can expand into the bladder. Then be slowly withdrawn to repeat the process for the lower wings. Retrieval would be possible with the opposite process if the retrieval string were passed through the straightener, just by pulling it back into it. At least that's what I'm gathering... Wish these springy wing stents could be made at home though because I like that idea.

Hi Packie, and welcome to DD. Nice to meet you, glad to have you join us. Come in, be comfy, there plenty of likeminded people here. If you have questions, just ask. Relax, have fun, and enjoy!

i was potty trained later than the average age but that may be due having autism and learning disabilities i cant remember

Chapter 5 I Know You Are Not I woke up, laying on the sofa, my Uncle still right there, but he had laid me out so I could sleep properly. I felt a little different, too. I reached down and confirmed that my sweats had been replaced by a skirt, and I had a really thick diaper on now, not the pull up I had on earlier. I opened my eyes, and I turned to my side, and looked out at the dim living room. The television was on, and I could see my little sister, sitting between Jason who had an arm around her back, and Jessica, who was talking quietly to her. There was a cartoon on the television. “Hey, sweetheart,” I heard Uncle’s voice from above my head. “Feeling better?” I looked back up at him, and smiling, I nodded. He saw me feeling around my bottom, and lifting my skirt, and feeling I had on a really thick diaper. I nervously rubbed my legs together, hoping he wasn’t disappointed in me, and hoping I hadn’t wet myself again, causing the diaper to leak. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he whispered to me. “You’d peed yourself again, so I told your aunt that proper or not, you couldn’t wear wet sweats in front of the other kids. And we were afraid if you woke up, and I wasn’t there to protect you, you’d get scared again, so I went ahead and changed you myself.” I shrugged. I don’t think I minded that he changed me. He wasn’t ever improper with me, as far as I could ever remember. I pulled myself into his lap, which caused my skirt to ride up a little bit, but I didn’t notice, and I looked up at him sitting in his lap. I felt safe. He lifted me a little bit and fixed my skirt to hide my diaper again. “Your Aunt is making dinner,” he told me. “Are you hungry, sweetie?” I nodded. I started to watch cartoons when suddenly, Jason and Mike came into the living room and got in front of Uncle’s view, which blocked mine too. And Jason frowned a bit as he looked at dad. “I’m sorry,” he told his dad. “For what?” he asked. “Well, I didn’t tell Mike more than he needed to know, but I told him that the girls were abused before.” “I trusted you,” Uncle said looking a little hurt. “I know,” Jason said. “I didn’t tell him any details. I just told him, that Margaret’s teasing both Valana and Lacey, was not going to help them with their mental issues.” “Dad…,” Mike said cutting Jason off. “You can trust me, too. And Jason said I wasn’t to talk to Margaret or Jessica about what we talked about, and I promise, I won’t.” Uncle put a finger on his mouth at both of them, and then he picked me up and carried me upstairs, and we all went into Uncle’s bedroom. I was spending an awful lot of time in there. “What did you tell Mike?” Uncle Scott asked Jason. “I told him that the girls don’t know better than to pee their pants, and that it wasn’t just neglected potty training. That’s what I understood. I know they had scars, so I told him I didn’t understand everything you were talking about, but it seemed the scars and the girls’ fear of telling people they have to pee was related, and then I told him that Margaret made Valana pee her pants on purpose in the car.” He sighed. “That’s a lot more than I wanted you to tell him.” “I know. But it was necessary.” “Why did you think it was necessary.” “Because we don’t want Valana sleeping with Margaret,” Jason told us. “It’s too tempting for Margaret to pick on her in her sleep. I didn’t know they had issues, like two years ago, and it was Margaret’s idea, but we played pranks on both the sisters and caused them to wet the bed on purpose because we didn’t know they weren’t potty trained.” Uncle Scott frowned. “Last year, I stopped being part of it because you and mom told us that they weren’t potty trained, but you know, Mike was still a little kid. He couldn’t resist pranking them. And Margaret is probably still going to do it even though she knows they pee on accident.” “Okay…,” Uncle Scott said. “That still doesn’t explain why you thought you should tell Mike.” “I’m getting to that,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you all the stuff that made me want to talk to Mike. Anyway, I talked to Mike, and told him that the sisters were suffering and we needed to make them feel safe.” “I want to let Lacey sleep in my bed,” Mike cut Jason off a little impatient at how slow this was going. “I told him that Margaret disturbing Valana’s sleep was not going to help her, and I was giving my bed up for her. I told him that boys and girls shouldn’t sleep together, and then I told him that Valana will worry if her sister isn’t in the same room.” Jason looked down. “I told him all that so he’d understand why I wanted to let them have our room.” “That’s nice of you, but where do you think you’ll sleep? Sure, it might be okay if Jason shares a bed with Jessica, if you really want to, but Mike can’t share a bed with Margaret, and I’m not putting Jason with Margaret or Mike with Jessica,” he told the boys sternly. “We didn’t want that either,” Mike said. “You know us boys really like camping,” Jason told Uncle Scott. “If it’s okay with you, we can set up the good tent in the backyard, and Mike and I can sleep there, and we’ll pee on the grass at night when we have to go. I mean, if that’s okay.” Uncle Scott frowned thinking about it. He rubbed my back and seemed to think about it as he massaged me. “I’ll talk to your mom about it, boys,” Uncle Scott said. “But you need to understand something. Your cousins can’t help it, and we have put them in diapers for the night, but there is still a good chance that they’ll leak some into your beds.” “I know,” Jason said. “I was hoping you’d get plastic covers for our beds tomorrow so they don’t make it seem like Mike and me pee the bed when they leave.” Uncle Scott smiled and nodded. “Well, like I said, I’ll talk to your mom about it before bedtime. When I do, I’ll need you to watch these babies extra careful, and as soon as you know they’ve wet their pants, knock at our bedroom door and let us know.” “I will. But why don’t they go potty?” “They’re in regular diapers for now, so they can’t really pull them down and back up without ruining them. Besides, as sticky as the tapes are, they will have a hard time getting them off, so are likely to wet before they get them off anyway.” Jason and Mike nodded. “I’ll talk to your mom later about it. And boys?” They looked back just as they were about to walk away because Uncle Scott said “And boys?” “Thank you for being willing to do this to help your little cousins.” “No problem,” they both said. Then Jason came over and squatted down where Uncle Scott was holding me, and he whispered to me. “I told your little sister I’d protect her. I know this helps her as much as it helps you, okay?” I nodded at him and smiled. He was being so nice to me, and I felt butterflies in my stomach because of how understanding and nice he was. “I… I hope… I don’t want to… I mean… I … wet the bed… I don’t … I hope….” He kissed my forehead and said. “Don’t worry little cousin. I hope you don’t wet on my bed, too, but if you do, I’m not going to be mad and I know you aren’t toilet trained especially at night, okay?” I nodded. As Mike opened the door to the bedroom about to leave, I saw my Aunt. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Mike?” He turned around and sighed, and looked up at Aunt Susan. “We asked dad if us boys can use the good tent in the yard this summer and give our cousins our bed.” “Oh?” Jason looked down. “I told Mike about the girls’ being abused, and probably emotionally trained into peeing their pants. I told him so he’d understand why I didn’t want Valana sleeping with Margaret. Margaret pranks her all the time, and I know they aren’t toilet trained, mom, but even if they were, they’d wet their pants and the bed because Margaret thinks it’s funny for them to have wet pants all the time. She’s been pranking them the last two years and making them seem like they are always wet.” Aunt Susan frowned. “How would you know that?” “Well, the first summer they came, I sort of thought it was funny too, before I knew they weren’t potty trained. But last summer when she did it to them, I felt like it was excessive to do it to them two years in a row, so I just had nothing to do with it. And then this year, I find out they aren’t even toilet trained, so I got even more against it, but given how Margaret blackmailed Valana into wetting the whole time in the car, even if she could make it…, I just felt…, I don’t want Valana sleeping with her. I know she’ll make her wet herself again in her sleep. I mean, I know Valana will do it anyway, but natural peeing in her pants with a thick diaper like this on her, she’s not likely to leak that much, and I’m afraid Margaret will want to see her think she leaked even more.” My aunt and uncle looked at one another. “I agree with you. It is a bad idea to let her sleep with Margaret, but you do realize this means she might wet your bed, and if you have friends over you might have to explain a stain or a smell.” Jason looked down. “I’m not going to take my friends to my room this summer. I’ll show them the tent and tell them that I gave my room to my cousin because she’s thirteen and needed her own room, and her little sister gets scared and sleeps with her. If they happen in my room, they’ll just think Lacey wets the bed, but Lacey is at the age where some kids just start getting control at night, right?” Aunt Susan smiled and nodded. “No,” I told Jason. “Don’t tell them that Lacey does it. Lacey only wets sometimes. You can tell them I peed the bed. Don’t hurt Lacey.” “Valana, cuz, I’m not doing it to be mean to Lacey or to you. I’m trying to protect you. Besides, I’m not going to let my friends in my room while you are using it, so I don’t think it will even come up, okay?” I nodded. “So… um… Lacey will sleep in Mike’s bed in case the sisters get scared of not seeing each other,” Jason turned back to his mom. “And I’ll let Valana sleep in mine. She’s a heavier wetter, and since it’s my idea to let them use our room and our beds, it’s not fair to Mike to let Valana sleep in his bed in case she does make a stain on the bed.” Mike mumbled. “I wouldn’t care. She can’t help it.” Aunt Susan sighed. “Okay, well, I have dinner ready, so why don’t we go down and eat, and then after dinner, we can rearrange the sleeping assignments then.” “Then, that’s a yes?” both Mike and Jason looked hopeful. I wasn’t sure if they wanted to sleep out in the tent, and if they were excited by that, but even if that was the reason they were excited, it meant that Lacey wouldn’t wet Jessica and get her mad at her, and it meant that I could watch Lacey better and not let Margaret pick on her. “Yes, boys, that’s a yes if your father has already been leaning yes on it,” Aunt Susan said. “Now. Come and eat your dinner. Margaret, Lacey, and Jessica are waiting for you.” I thought. Oh no! Lacey down there with only Margaret and Jessica? Even if Jessica didn’t want to be mean, she couldn’t stop Margaret. I leapt off my Uncle’s lap and ran down the hall and down the stairs, and to the table, to make sure that my sister was sitting next to Jessica, both of them happily talking, and Margaret sitting on the other side, away from my sister. I sighed in relief. The others were not too far behind me, and Mike laughed at bit when I sighed in relief. I looked over at him and the others as they came in. I had gotten to my sister by then, and looked down at her pants to see if she was wet or dry, and I put my arms around from behind her, while she talked to Jessica about something with dolls or whatever. The food at the table looked really good. They put my place next to my sister, and my aunt at that end of the table, and they put Mike and Jason on either side of Margaret with Uncle Scott at the other end of the table. It was pretty big table! Uncle Scott and Aunt Susan were very religious, and though at our house, the prayer was very simple and to the point, Uncle Scott’s prayer went on a bit. He did bless the food, which was the purpose of this prayer, or at least I thought it was, but he also thanked God for letting my sister and me stay with them. He also asked God to open his children’s hearts and to be sensitive to other’s needs. I wasn’t sure if he was doing that because of what he has learned that Margaret did to us the last two years, or if he was just praying in general, but it seemed like it was too specific to be a coincidence to me. Then we started eating, with Aunt taking plates to put some of the food on that was probably more rationed, and the kids all grabbing some from bowls on the table of what they wanted and how much, the parts that was not as rationed. I just sat still as did Lacey, waiting for everyone to get some, but when Uncle Scott noticed this, he spoke up. “Kids, guests first,” he said. “Why do all of our plates have food on them, and our guests’ plates are empty?” Jason blushed as did Mike. Jessica just shrugged. She was a little kid after all, and Margaret just looked down like this was annoying more than she was embarrassed. “Now, Valana, would you hand me your sister’s dish please?” I did do, and he put some food on it, and then passed it to Mike who put some sides on it, and a lot, too, and then they passed the plate right over Margaret, which I was happy because that meant she couldn’t mess with my sister’s plate, and then Jason put some potatoes and other stuff, and then Aunt Susan put some meatloaf on it, and then she passed it to Jessica who put it in Lacey’s place. Then Uncle Scott took my plate, and it went around the table in the same way, where Jessica passed my plate to Lacey who put it in front of me. “Now, you kids can continue getting your food,” Uncle Scott told his own kids. Margaret kept looking at me through the top of her head, and I didn’t like the looks she was giving me. I think I was annoying her, somehow, even though she was the one that had been mean to MY sister earlier. We started to eating. I noticed Lacey move a little funny a couple of times while we were eating, and Jessica was telling her stuff that made her laugh. She tried to politely listen to Jessica, after all, Jessica was nice to her, but I could tell that something was bothering her. I just didn’t think of what right away because the last time this happened to her, it had to be about three maybe four years ago. She was a big girl, and she never caused trouble at the dinner table. After some time, though, I did notice the tell-tale signs of her knees tapping each other close together, and I saw her squirm a little bit rubbing her legs together. Maybe it was because dinner was so sudden, or maybe it was because she just didn’t know the rules, but she had misjudged when to use the bathroom, and now, she was trapped at the table, and would have to either try to wait, or hope no one yelled at her for having an accident. I hoped she could hold it long enough to at least not be at the table. She did have a diaper on. If she could just manage to hide what was happening, maybe no one would know it happened at the table, if she was careful. I wasn’t sure how to tell her without drawing attention to her, so I decided to just keep an eye on my aunt and uncle and on Margaret to make sure they didn’t hurt her. She always tried to be a good girl at the table. “So this is what I want to have happen,” Uncle Scott said at one point in the middle of dinner. “Mom and I have decided that we’ll let the cousins sleep in the same room, and Jason and Mike have volunteered their rooms and their beds.” He looked at them to make sure that they had not changed their minds. Both of them smiled. “Even though the little ones are not toilet trained,” he reminded them. “And you are not allowed to get mad at them for wetting in your beds tonight….” Still, Jason and Mike looked at one another and shrugged. “It’s just one night. Tomorrow, you’ll get plastic for our beds, right?” Uncle Scott nodded. “Okay, well, then, after dinner, I will need Jason and Jessica’s help rearranging stuff for the cousins,” he continued. “And I’ll need Margaret and Mike to do the dishes….” “We have to set up our tent in the backyard,” Mike reminded Uncle Scott. “Yes, we will. I’ll help you with that once the girls’ stuff is organized in your rooms and the dishes are done, okay?” Mike sighed. “I’m not the one that was mean to our cousins. Why do I have to be punished?” “Why do you think you are being punished?” Aunt Susan asked him. “Well, Jason gets to help set the cousins up, but I have to do a boring chore with Margaret who was just a big meanie to Valana since picking her up.” “It’s not a punishment,” Uncle Scott told Mike. “It’s what needs to be done, and I do need Jason’s help, and honestly, I don’t want Jessica doing the dishes without your mom in the kitchen to watch her.” Jessica looked down. “You still think I’m a little kid,” she told her dad. “Well, maybe I do, honey. You are only ten years old. When you are twelve like Mike, then I’ll treat you a little more like a big kid.” She sighed. “I could help with the dishes,” I offered. “No, we need your help to help decide where you and your sister want your stuff and to make sure we get things right for you two,” Uncle Scott said to me. Honestly, he was probably just trying to treat his house guests special or something, but I doubt that earned me any points with Margaret. When our plates were cleaned, I thought Lacey was going to get away with it. I was sure she had peed her pants by then, well, her diaper, and it didn’t look like she had gotten caught. I started to raise my hand a little, so I could ask to be excused from the table. “May I please be excused?” I asked Aunt Susan. “Why? Do you want to use the toilet?” she asked me bluntly, and I was sure that was not allowed, and I don’t know why, but it felt like a trick that I better say no to. Besides, I didn’t think I had to go anyway. “No, ma’am. I just thought we were done.” “Well, I have some dessert made for us tonight,” she said. “In honor of having some house guests for the summer.” Jessica smiled and nodded. “I helped mommy make some chocolate moose pies the day before we went to get you, and mommy said it was for our first dinner with you.” I smiled and looked down. I wasn’t exactly used to anyone doing anything for me or even for Lacey, except our own mom and dad. “Jessica, will you come to the kitchen and help me?” Aunt Susan asked her. Lacey looked up at me, and I could see the concern in her eyes. I mouthed to her. “Don’t say anything yet.” She nodded and looked down at her lap. Uncle Scott was suddenly looking at me, and I frowned. It looked like I needed to say something quick. “Um… I was just telling Lacey she can play later,” I told him. “At home, dad doesn’t care too much if Lacey plays at the table, but she’s ten years old, and knows that she shouldn’t be playing at the table at restaurants or at other people’s houses.” Lacey looked up at me, telling this lie, and her lip quivered, but then she looked down at her lap, and nodded her head. I hoped she realized that me lying about her playing at the table was a lot smaller a problem than if the wrong people realized she peed her pants at the table. Aunt Susan and Uncle Scott were nice so far, but that doesn’t excuse Lacey peeing her pants at the table. She should have done that before dinner, or held it until after dinner. Some nice chocolate like pie was set in front of everyone within a few minutes, and Lacey looked up at me. I knew she didn’t deserve to eat it since she caused a problem at dinner. No one knew she had been bad yet, though, so I really didn’t want her to get caught. I nodded at her to eat the pie. I knew she felt guilty though, and I didn’t blame her. I mean, I don’t really know what mom would have done these days if she caught Lacey wetting her pants at our Uncle’s dinner table. It had been so long since we were hit for that, but then it had been a very long time since Lacey had last peed her pants at the dinner table, even at our house. We both had learned a long time ago, I think I was like eight or nine, that you don’t ask to go once you are sitting in front of your dinner, and you don’t pee your pants at the table. It’s not clean. We were eating the pie, and Aunt Susan asked Lacey. “Don’t you like it?” I think Susan and Jessica both looked a little hurt that they put the work in this, and Lacey wasn’t enjoying it. I wanted to help Lacey, but what was I going to say? Yeah, she loves it, but she peed her pants and doesn’t think she deserves it? No, I couldn’t say that. “Yeah, I like it,” Lacey looked down. “Okay, I guess I better tell you now.” She looked down with tears coming down her cheeks. “Lacey,” I said trying to cut her off. “No, Valana. I know you don’t want me to be spanked, but I am the one that was bad, and I’m not letting them hit you for what I did.” Uncle Scott and Aunt Susan looked bewildered completely missing the mark on what Lacey had done. “I peed my pants…,” Lacey told the table. “I told you, little one…,” Uncle Scott started. “No, I mean, I peed at the table,” she cut him off, not something she should have done, but it seemed she was determined to get whatever punishment was coming her. Aunt Susan still looked confused. “Okay, you peed at the table? So? You are not toilet trained, sweetheart.” I looked at my aunt, wondering what she was saying. Okay, yeah, we’re not potty trained. Okay, our body isn’t working right. But that doesn’t give us the right to pee at the table and make dinner dirty for everyone, did it?” Uncle Scott and Aunt Susan started to realize, like a slow burning dawn that was just staring to rise the sun over the horizon, that what we thought was bad, wasn’t just that Lacey peed her pants, but she did it at the table, and made it dirty while everyone was eating. Aunt Susan stood up, and I got up and got in front of Lacey. Even if Lacey was a bad girl, I wasn’t going to let her hit my sister. I put my hands up to guard my face as I just slipped between my aunt and sister before she could do anything. I saw her hands coming down towards my sister, so they touched me instead. Only, she wasn’t slapping me. She reached down and she hugged me. “Baby, I don’t know what people have done to you and your sister, but if you are not potty trained, then there is no way you can tell your body not to pee, even at the table. You wouldn’t be hit for an accident.” I looked down. “We know better than to pee at the table, and Lacey hasn’t peed at the table for a long time. She knows it’s dirty. I think it’s just because dinner was suddenly ready and she didn’t have time to get ready for it, or maybe because we aren’t having dinner at normal time for us, she just… didn’t know it was time, and forgot to wet her pants before she sat at the table.” My aunt and uncle looked at each other, and then my Uncle picked up Lacey because Aunt Susan was already hugging me, and this made it hard to stop him getting Lacey, but he didn’t hurt her. He just whispered to her. “Sweetheart, do you like the chocolate pie?” he asked her. Lacey nodded with a sad little quivering lip. “If you really like it, it will make your aunt very happy if you acted like you enjoyed eating it, and we’ll worry about the pottied diaper afterwards, okay?” “But you gotta spank me,” Lacey told Uncle Scott. “Because I was bad and made the table dirty while people are eating.” He sighed and shook his head. “First of all, the most you made dirty was the chair you are in and the floor,” he told her. “And that’s if your diaper leaked. You don’t feel like your pants are wet to me. And not being toilet trained means that you can’t control when you pee at all, baby. That means if you have an accident at dinner, watching television, playing outside, or even out at a restaurant, it’s normal. If you were able to actually control where you peed, then it wouldn’t be an accident, and you’d be potty trained, honey. You’d always go in the potty, and both you and your sister have shown your aunt over the last few days that you are not potty trained, and for the last two summers before this one, you’ve wet your pants and wet the bed, too, baby.” Lacey looked up at him. “But it’s not the same, just wetting my pants, and then wetting where people are eating. That’s gross.” He sighed and patted her back. “Just eat your pie, baby. Okay? Once you are fed and we are all going up to move your stuff into the other room, then Aunt Susan can change your diaper, sweetheart. And we’ll check your big sister, too.” “I don’t think she peed at the table,” Lacey looked a little bit scared. “I don’t care you think she peed at the table or not,” Uncle Scott patted her butt, softly. “I want to check her anyway and make sure she is comfortable. No one is getting a spanking for wetting their pants at the table, baby.” Lacey nodded. When she was sat down, she was sat down in Aunt Susan’s lap, which surprised both of us. Aunt Susan knew that Lacey had peed her pants. What if she leaked? But even knowing that, Aunt Susan held Lacey and told her to eat. She even played with her a little bit, as if they believed me when I told them that she wanted to play, but knew better than to play at other people’s table. Jessica played with her too, and then Jason asked me. “Valana, I’d like you to come with me maybe in a couple of days to meet one of my friends. They have a sister that is your age, but Margaret hates her. Somehow, though, I don’t think you’d hate her, and she might even like you.” I shrugged. Dessert did take a while, and to my shame, I started to pee my diaper, too. I was kind of scared, so I just kind of peed on purpose so no one would realize I was wetting my pants. It was the same thing I do at middle school. Just pee a little bit, then when you think no one is looking, a little bit more, and a little more until you are done and no one noticed what you did. I was glad they were not mad at Lacey. I wasn’t sure if they’d be mad at me though. I am thirteen years old, and should definitely know better than to pee my pants, but what else could I do? I know I’m not supposed to leave the table when everyone is eating. That’s just rude, and asking to go, and being denied because I’m older, will let everyone know I have to go, and then everyone will know when I peed my pants. Somehow, Margaret knew though. She smiled at me, just as I finished peeing my pants, and she looked over at Aunt Susan. “Mo...om,” she said in a singsong tantalizing voice. “Valana just peed her pants!” I blushed. I definitely knew better than lying about it. “Margaret,” Uncle Scott didn’t sound happy. “Tell me what gives you the right to embarrass your cousin!” She looked down. “How did I do it? I didn’t even do anything to her. She just peed her pants. Check her if you don’t believe me.” I shook a little bit, my face really red. I knew that Margaret didn’t do anything to cause it this time, because I did it, kind of on purpose, and I knew I was staring to have to go during dinner, so it was natural and had nothing to do with her. “I’m not saying she didn’t pee her pants,” Uncle Scott said. “We all know she’s not toilet trained, but you just heard them talk about it being bad, as far as they knew, to wet at the table, and now you are calling her out on it. You know what, I’ve had it with you. After you wash dishes, you are going straight to the bathroom and then to bed.” “I don’t need to you tell me to go to the bathroom,” Margaret yelled at him. “Unlike some babies around here, I do know to go before going to bed.” I blushed. “And that attitude right there is exactly why you are going to bed early, and why I told you to go the bathroom first. You want to embarrass Valana, maybe we should tell you when we think you should use the toilet.” “Da...ad,” Margaret frowned. “That’s stupid. I’m toilet trained and I know how to get to the bathroom. It’s Valana’s fault she doesn’t use the toilet.” The parents sighed and shook their heads at her. And after dinner, just like Uncle Scott said, Mike and Margaret was doing the dishes, and Lacey and me went up the stairs to start moving stuff out of the girls’ rooms and into the boys’ room. The boys shared a room, but both sisters had their own room. It wasn’t my place to say anything, but it seemed strange that Jason, who was more mature, and Mike, who was older than Jessica, would have needed their own rooms, and Margaret and Jessica could have shared. I have shared with Lacey since I could remember. Lacey was taking into the boys’ room, and Aunt got busy changing her diaper while Jason and Uncle Scott took stuff for us into the bedroom, and they asked me where I wanted it. No one changed me just yet. When Lacey was changed, she was starting to close her eyes. It had been a long day for us both. I guess she was tired, and she was asleep before we got the room set up. I knew Lacey wouldn’t really care where her stuff was as long as the space seemed fair to her. When the room was set up, Aunt Susan stayed behind to change my diaper for me, and then I laid in the dark for a few minutes, about to go to sleep, when I saw a shadow or something pass through. “Hello?” I called out. “Shush,” I heard in the dark. “I’m going to tell you something. You might think it’s mean or you can take it the way you want, but you better know something….” I knew it was Margaret’s voice by now. “I don’t believe that you are not toilet trained,” the girl said. “But mom and dad do. I don’t really care one way or another, if you like peeing your pants. But you are going to get in a lot of trouble when they find out you are playing them.” I turned away to try to ignore her. “You can ignore me if you want, but remember this, if they get the idea you are potty trained, you’ll have a lot to answer for, and you’ll have to explain peeing in your pants all those times I didn’t tell you to do it. And if Lacey is potty trained, just imagine her getting spanked.” Then Margaret left the room. I didn’t really know why she did that. If she knew I was toilet trained, I don’t know why she didn’t tell her family so. If she did, then maybe I’d be in trouble instead of her. I finally closed my eyes and drifted off….

I have and being an adult baby and Incontinent, I always talk about the perks and benefits of being kept in diapers. People know I am diapered and many know I am kept as an adult baby instead of an adult, grown up and big kid.

When are you just going to give it up and let go? ??

I was just talking to a buddy of mine about the idea that 'news' today is designed to enrage and terrify people. Keeping folks in a constant state of fear and outrage is quite harmful IMO. Polarizing topics will always garner some sort of divisiveness but it's the constructive discourse that is missing from most mainstream and all 'fringe' news outlets. This "us against them" narrative is getting old quick.....

Just in case anyone wants to further discuss this, the video was of Alison, a news reporter. Her show is called 'Alison At Large'. There was some news in there but it was mostly her ranting about the transgender and ABDL communities. I regret that she is not on this forum to address my concerns but I still feel like a discussion is in order. I agree with her that we shouldn't push our lifestyle on children but she seemed to think that all transgender and ABDLs do it. She talked about how she feels she is unable to find any common ground with lifestyle enthusiasts. In my opinion, very intolerant. It's not the first ABDL bashing I've heard on the news. I remember other times I've heard reports shar similar negative opinions on the community in general. Generalizations, in my opinion, can be toxic and dismissive. I don't mean to just point out the bad. What can we do to raise awareness and promote tolerance? One way I will try is by setting a good example to others by being aware, open-minded and tolerant.

Lol. She sucks. We have a flag? News to me.

This is amazing and your approach has a lot in common with the approach I used to untrain myself, which I am (slowly) writing a guide on. Something that will help you on your journey is accepting that you’re incontinent, because… well, you are! This is quite common. In fact @Kaliborio recently wrote about this in her Tumblr blog… how those of us who untrain think we are continent when we are not. Once you accept and identify as someone who has poor bladder control you’ll appreciate that you have an obligation to stay dry and the only practical way for you to meet this obligation is with diapers. You’ll notice that you feel strangely vulnerable when not diapered and so you rely on your diaper to keep you dry, like it’s a crutch. This will likely worsen your bladder control in the long run but that’s a good thing, right? Your bladder control already isn’t that good, and it’s only going to get worse with time. As for community support, this is critical. Please post updates with your progress and ask for help when you get stuck. Also there are some semi-private Telegram groups for untraining and wearing 24/7. Feel free to DM me for links. Cheers!

My wife snd Family are fully supportive of my need to wear 24/7 and when I first told my wife I was having issues and had made an urologist appointment she did research and came with me to my urologist appointment and insisted no meds no surgery that my choice to wear 24/7 was the correct choice. As theres no side effects that meds would bring.

I'm the same. I've worn in front of them, and nobody has said anything. My brother bought me a Lego set for maybe he knows something.

@KifI guess part of the reason why I have not grappled with the the emotional side of things in written form *yet*, is mainly due to having already grappled with it before committing to a 24/7 lifestyle. I had already been actively wearing to bed and was fully a bed wetter, that part I was OK with. I knew if I really wanted to retrain I'd figure something out but It brought me some sort of peace / contentment that I'm sure many people who frequent this forum feel. When it came to 24/7, my two biggest concerns were generally about: 1. Fear of becoming antisocial / not being myself out and about. 2. LTR/Dating/Marriage stuff I had to mentally promise myself that if I were to commit to this I had to never become antisocial nor hide away like some padded cavewoman. In these two months I've already been around friends, family, birthday & Halloween parties, and my doctor. I promised myself I would keep being me, and I'm not going to let my fears win there. 2. This one was more of a hard part for myself, something I'm sure a lot of people have definitely used as a reason NOT to commit to this sort of lifestyle. My fear of not being able to find my other half for life. It definitely was a reason I had not dipped my toes into wearing permanently in my twenties. My imaginative fear of being that lady who has to be diapered.. What sort of person would want that!? I'm no longer dating to just date, and at this age I'd rather wait for somebody who IS ok with this part of me than just trying to lock it away and act like the ab/dl thing isn't part of me. I'd hate to be in a situation where I married somebody and then dropped an atomic bomb on them later.. Hey yeah I know you married me for x/y/z but I'm a little and love diapers.. I couldn't personally do that nor wouldn't want to go through that. I'm happy being me, and I don't want to have to hide me. If somebody can't vibe with that part of me, or see past it then that's on them. I'm sure the right person will come around eventually That was my line of thought how I pushed past that mental barrier too. I'm sure as time goes on there may be new hills/battles to go over, but I've in the past had to face a lot of fears of the unknown. Each time I did, I found myself happier for doing it, and it made life a bit more exciting. Will see what happens next! I'll definitely write about it if something comes up I struggle with down the road. But for now I'm happily waddling into that unknown.

Chapter 33: A New Mourning I woke up again; this time with sunshine streaming into the room and a giant hand patting my butt. Correction: Patting the back of my diaper. Damn thing had swollen up so much over the night that it was practically its own entity. Bitterly, the thought occurred to me that this nighttime diaper was just as much an escape deterrent as a forced incontinence brief. If the crib bars hadn’t stopped me from getting out, there’d have been almost no way I could have gotten far with that much bulk surrounding me. I’d barely been able to roll over. “Did you sleep well?” Janet cooed down at me. “Looks like you did.” She felt the lumps that I had deposited in the back a few hours ago. “It’s not fair,” I reminded myself in a whisper. “It’s just not fair.” Janet hoisted me out of the crib by my armpits. “Oh yeah!” she groaned. “Was definitely a good choice to put you in the nighttime diaper.” A second later, I was laying on the changing table. I’d been left naked save for the diaper. I didn’t need a mirror to know that my hair was a mess. My skin still had that vague pink of a healing sunburn from the bug zapper treatment. Janet meanwhile was already put together. She wore a plain navy blue dress. I’d probably seen her wear it around campus any number of times. Her hair was combed and pulled back into a bun and for some reason, she wore a rubber apron. Her eyes though, they still had the same baby crazy as the night before. This was a madwoman with my friend’s face on it. Something else felt off in that moment. It was a Friday. The sun was up. If not for yesterday I’d be teaching right now. “What time is-?” My mouth snapped shut as Janet ripped the tapes off my diaper and peeled it back. I went numb and mute as Janet broke out the baby wipes and started cleaning my crotch and backside. I don’t think something like this was ever covered when I was a child; but for some reason it didn’t seem right to have a conversation while I was in the middle of having my ass wiped. Apparently, Janet didn’t quite feel the same way. “We’ve got a big day ahead of us, baby boy.” She chirped. “We’re going to the stylist, and the doctor, and then a very very special place. I took the whole day off and left lesson plans for a substitute so we could have today and the whole weekend to get adjusted.” Adjusted? Is that what she was calling it? I just gritted my teeth with each wipe, trying to concentrate even as it felt like I was being probed inside and out. I didn’t bother to ask “where” this special place was. What would be the point? She would’ve told me if I’d been meant to know. She wouldn’t tell me. Knowledge was another form of control that I wasn’t allowed to wield anymore. Not according to her or any other Amazon that had been in my life prior. What I did know was that I had to pee a little bit again. More proof that I wasn’t really a bedwetter or a pants pooper. Proof that I’d only be able to present myself. For half an eyeblink, as Janet threw the last of the wipes in the used diaper and started to ball it up, I considered letting my bladder go. She wanted a baby so badly, let her see the downside with a little target practice. Problem was I wasn’t a baby. And I’m not referring to emotional or mental states, either. I’m not exactly a stud; not even by Little standards. Amazon diapers would more than contain me. But I had gone through puberty all the same and had more than nub. When actual infant boys pee, the only direction it can go is “out”. Barely a nub there. Right then, my pecker was positioned so that if I let go I’d more than likely end up pissing on my chest (if I was lucky). I could hypothetically take aim and fire, but not even Janet- typical Amazon that she had become-would think it innocent or accidental. Not worth the risk. So I was left with the choice of peeing all over myself and forcing janet to wipe me down more while confirming her own biases... or holding it in long enough to at least pee in a diaper...allowing Janet to confirm her own biases. “It’s just not fair,” I whispered again. Janet tossed the used diaper into the pale. “What’d you say, Clark?” “Nothing,” I said. I took a deep breath and braced for another diaper...hopefully one that I could walk in and fantasize escape in. I wasn’t escaping today. I’d already made peace with that. I’d have to see the system before I figured out how to crack it. That meant being “good” for the time being. The fresh diaper didn’t come right away though. Involuntarily I let out a yelp as Janet picked me up and held me against her. “You didn’t get to have a bath yesterday,” she told me. “Let’s fix that.” Janet’s words went in one ear and out the other. I was already freaking out about being naked. I don’t think of myself as a prude. I don’t think there’s anything wrong or immoral with being unclothed in certain circumstances. I just think there’s a level of vulnerability about being naked around people; or even naked just by yourself. Clothes, even ones that would do nothing for you in a fight are a kind of armor in that they conceal some of your most vulnerable parts. Being naked around someone is a sign of power and trust. Either you’re naked and feel powerful enough to expose everything, or you trust the people you’re with to see you at your most physically vulnerable. Cassie and I would be naked around each other all the time in the comfort of our own home; oftentimes doing nothing remotely sexual. We were just two people, doing our own thing and didn’t feel like having any clothes on. Other times one of us would be naked, and the other one was cold or just didn’t feel like going through the effort of shedding clothes. Cassie and I were equals. We knew each other completely. We trusted each other. This was completely different. I was naked in this woman’s arms, her bare hand literally cradling my butt. She was fully clothed; extra even with the rubber splash apron. We were decidedly not equals; after yesterday I felt like I didn’t know Janet at all and neither of us truly trusted each other. What were crib bars and highchair trays but restraints built on lack of trust? Even during all four diaper changes (yes I’d counted) I’d been seen naked but it had been more of a transitory thing. Here? In Janet’s arms? I was completely naked and didn’t like it one bit. I felt vulnerable. Powerless. I actually wanted to go back into a diaper if only for the sliver of protection it provided. Shivering but not from cold, I was carried out of the disgustingly pink nursery and into a pristine white bathroom. The bathtub was already filling up. Janet sat me down on the edge of the tub and I looked at the open bathroom door while she tested the water. Janet might not be trusting for an Amazon, but she was careless. Overconfident. I wouldn’t run. Not yet. But someday...soon maybe… I glanced down at my own hairless body and winced again. Escape or not, this part was permanent. I’d have to get used to having the skin of a toddler. Some Littles- especially in non-Amazon run countries- still have surgeries that leave scars. Closed up gashes on legs and stomachs and chests; wherever the knife sliced them open to get at a defective organ or a shattered bone. The level of medical technology in those countries hasn’t caught up to Amazons in that regard. I’d been scarred, too...it’s just my scars were all over and completely smooth and undetectable. I turned my neck and looked over Janet’s head and arms as she bent down and switched the water around with one hand while adjusting the hot and cold knobs with the other. I peered a large plastic Amazon sized jug that sat on the opposite edge of the tub; it’s label just barely readable at the periphery from where I was sitting. My eyes still slightly blurry with sleep could still make out the sudzy looking logo on it. “Is that…?” I hesitated. “Is that bubble bath?” Janet’s head whipped around as if me speaking to her was some kind of miracle.. “Yes,” she beamed. “Yes it is!” She looked at me, as if trying to get a read. “Would you...would you like some?” There was a strange kind of hope in those eyes. Maybe even a kind of lust. I don’t know how else to describe it. Mentally, I made some calculations. “Yes, please…” I said, and hated myself a bit for adding in that “please”. Janet smiled even brighter and started adding in bubble bath by the cap full; letting the still running water churn it around and mix it. Good. The bubbles would give me a modicum of cover. On a lighter note, the stuff inside the jug was a bright sky blue. No great importance, but it was a small relief after a night being surrounded by pink. “If my Little baby Clark wants some bubble bath,” Janet said as she placed me in the tub, “then he’ll get bubble bath!” Great. She was “spoiling” me. At least I didn’t have to call her “Mommy.” I must’ve made a face when she plunked me in the drink. “Too hot?” she asked. It was just below lobster boiling. I had barely nodded when her hand shot to the cold knob; even going so far as to splash some of the cold water gingerly in my direction. It helped a little. “Thank you,” I mumbled, more out of habit than out of actual gratitude. No need to make waves right now. This was day one of Hell...just make it to day two. My muscles were just barely starting to untense when a rubber yellow terror jumped in my vision. Janet had grabbed a bath toy and was now shoving it in my face. “Ducky?” There is no way to tell an Amazon “no” and get the desired result. Saying yes doesn’t help either. I was out of words. I just kept my mouth shut and glared at her. I was not her baby. Not her doll. Right then I wasn’t even her friend. It did not have quite the desired effect. Janet giggled. Tittered with delight even. “Oh my gawd!” she cooed. She dropped the rubber duck in the foamy water beside me. “Are you giving me your ‘teacher’ look?” I said nothing. Just doubled down. “You are, aren’t you?!” She was blushing, but it was for me, not at me. I started trembling, vibrating even. Anger? Fear? Righteous indignation? All of the above and more? Yes. The stare down was not having the desired effect. I was never quite the terror of campus, but I’d at least been able to make a second grader or two walk away and get back to class. “Cutie,” Janet said, “that wouldn’t have worked on me back when we were co-workers.” Carelessly, whimsically even, she palmed a few suds and rubbed them into my head. I now had a bubble hat... “It’s definitely not going to work now.” To hammer in the point, she grabbed her phone out of her rubber apron and clicked a pic faster than I had time to realize what was going on. “No! Don’t!” I cried out. “Aaaaand post,” Janet said. She slipped her phone back into the rubber apron. “So cute.” She was absolutely giddy. My attempt at a glower just melted to something more of a mope as rage transmogrified into despair. My bath picture, naked save cotton candy scented bubbles in my hair, had just been posted online. It was the first of what would no doubt be many more photos and indignities that I’d have to endure today. I didn’t have to wait long for worse to come my way. Babies didn’t bathe themselves. Janet grabbed a washcloth and dipped it in the soapy water. “Give me your arm,” she said. It was nicely put, but it was still a demand. No choice; no point in resisting. Even though I would have loved to have splashed so much to have made her rubber apron pointless; I wasn’t ready to test those metaphorical waters. Littles that openly rebelled so hard and fast got their minds fucked out of their skull via a hypno screen. So, I gave her my arm and let her rub up and down my arm. “Thank you,” she told me. PING! She reached for my left side. “Other arm.” I obeyed. PING! The washcloth scrubbed me from shoulder to hand. “Now let’s get your ears.” PING! “And your neck!” PING! “And your face!” PING! She was gentle, admittedly. And through the washcloth her fingers danced, making tiny tickling motions. I was in no mood to laugh, though. I even bit my tongue to purposefully suppress anything from getting out. “Next let’s get your arms and chest.” PING! PING! “And your belly button!” PING! Even muffled by the apron, the incessant noise coming from Janet’s phone was distracting. “Are you sure you called out successfully?” I said. “You seem to be getting a lot of texts.” Admittedly, I probably sounded a smug; a bit spiteful, too. A knowing smirk flashed on her lips. “Those are just Facelog notifications. People are responding to the picture I just posted, baby.” What?! Every ping...every annoying little ding had been people...possibly people I knew responding and replying to that picture. Every little ding and ping was somebody seeing me naked and hairless in a bathtub. My mouth hung open. Janet just giggled some more. Her hand plunged beneath the water. “Now let’s wash your toes.” PING! “And your legs.” PING! PING! “And your penis.” PING! PING! PING! I just sat there in shock. Mute and dumb as every last bit of my personal space was violated; most if not for the first time. I was forced to stand up. “Gotta get that hiney too. Wipes won’t do all the work.” PING! PING! PING! PING! I stood there as my ass was washed for me. I jumped and all but cannonballed when I heard the tell-tale camera sound effect from behind me. “Aaaaaand post. I knew you’d love playin’ in the bubbles,” Janet cooed. I didn’t reply. I was only starting to digest the fact that now my naked ass was on Facelog. PING! PING! PING! PING! PING! And Janet’s tiny corner of the internet was having a field day with it, apparently. “Such a good baby!” No. No I wasn’t. I was just being a good doll. But what was I supposed to do? Everyone thinks they’re going to lead the revolution until the monsters are at their door. And even if they do swing; they only get one good punch in before they’re taken away and the neighbors quietly shake their heads. Trapped inside myself, I didn’t notice when Janet came back with a loaded toothbrush and some kind of creme filled mouthguard; Little sized. “We’re not gonna have bathtime like this every morning, Clark.” she said. “Mommy has to get to work early. But we can have baths at night before bed, okay?” No. It wasn’t okay. Nothing about this was okay. But that’s not what “okay?” meant in this circumstance. “I understand,” I replied. “Good,” she said. “Something we will be doing every day is taking care of your teeth!” Instantly, thoughts of gum mouthed and pumpkin grinning Littles flashed across my gray matter. Littles like that one on the bus, eating gum off the floor. I didn’t want my teeth “taken care of”. Not like that! Stupidly, I was about to object. I opened my mouth to ask a question or to just scream. That was all the opening my captor needed. Janet grabbed my jaw with one hand, and forced a toothbrush past my lips. My mouth foamed up as bristles coated with bubblegum flavored toothpaste scraped across my teeth and gums. I hate bubblegum, too. Absolutely horrid stuff. Littles are supposed to like sweet stuff, but bubblegum is my own personal exception. I thrashed, I really did. Thrashing only made Janet reflexively grab onto my jaw and brush that much harder. She was positively gentle on my skin but ready to murder my mouth. Thrashing wasn’t working out. “Okay,” she said after far too long. “Spit.” I did. Right onto the floor. Fuck it. I’d pretend not to know better. It’s not like she gave me a sink or a cup. Janet didn’t even acknowledge it. The mouthguard forced its way inside me and cupped my teeth. “Don’t bite down,” Janet warned. “This will help clean your teeth and make them white and shiny.” Clean them? Or make them fall out? I could only grimace as the foam that had been cradled in the mouth guard tingled on my teeth. At least it wasn’t bubble gum flavored. Giant Amazon fingers pried the mouthpiece out. “All done.” It wasn’t, I told myself. Not by a longshot. It was just the beginning. I was given just enough warning to close my eyes before my hair was rinsed out with a cup of warm water. Amazon cups sometimes seem close to Little sized buckets. Just before Janet pulled the drain plug, I remembered to pee, letting the bubbles and sudz conceal my added stream. Yeah. Kinda gross, I’ll admit. But better down the drain than in my pants. I was still in a kind of denial; still mourning my lost adulthood. Peeing in the shower was something I did occasionally when I was still in charge of my bladder. Peeing in the tub was close enough. Still...not fair. Wrapping me up in a fluffy bath towel, Janet carried me back into the nursery and finished drying me off. “Gotta get my Little boy dressed,” she said. “Can’t let ‘im go out all nakied!” Ironic considering she had no qualms about posting naked pictures online. Typical. Diving deep into my own survival, I started taking notes of my surroundings. Ignore the pings that were still coming from Janet’s phone, I told myself. I had to focus on how to get out; how to free myself now that no one else was going to. Again, Janet just pinned me down on the changing table with her free hand. She didn’t like to use the chest strap. Good. I could use that. Don’t squirm, and she might let that hand go lax. Unlike the changing table in Beouf’s classroom, the diapers were directly above me. Janet didn’t have to bend over or take her eyes off of me to reload supplies. Bad. As Janet unfolded the fresh diaper, I tilted my head to the side and appreciated just how high up I was. The changing table was taller than me. Much taller. I wasn’t roll-off-and-die high up; but any advantage I’d have gained through surprise would be lost in getting my bearings after the fall. Okay. Nix changing table escape plans. I’d probably. “There,” Janet said, giving my belly a quick tickle. “I bet it feels better to have some clothes back on.” I was so deep in thought that it hadn’t registered that I’d been fully re-diapered until the tapes were already done up. Pulling me up into a sitting position, she planted a kiss on my forehead. “I love you,” she said. I didn’t know how to react to that just then. So I just avoided eye contact and looked down at my knees. I caught sight of my diaper. Puffy white, with pictures of rainbow colored monkeys dancing along the landing zone. Why did it look so familiar? I’d seen it before somewhere. It was the same type of diaper that had been planted in my room just before Spring Break. Same brand that Ivy Zoge wore, too, come to think of it. But that’s not what was bugging me. Monkeez! These were Monkeez! The same diaper brand that I’d shopped for my nephew wore. Sitting up there on the changing table, I looked just like he did! “Monkeez is the only major diaper company that sizes for all babies,” my sister-in-law had told me. And to Amazon thinking, she was right. These fit me just fine… Not only did I look like a baby, to Amazon sensibilities, but in a weird perverse sort-of-way way to Little ones too. I was in a scaled up version of something that babies...actual babies wore and used; and knowing that made it kind of worse for some reason. I didn’t have time to ruminate or stare at the diaper decorations any further. A field of white was yanked over my head, my arms disentangling themselves and being guided through armholes. “I was going to use this to complement a dress,” Janet told me, “but I think a plain white onesie will work until we get you some better boy clothes, don’t you?” She didn’t wait for me to reply before laying me back down and sealing me in at the crotch snaps. That’s the best part for Amazons with Little dolls; no consent required. Some assembly perhaps, but zero consent. Back on Janet’s hip I went after she’d checked her phone and removed the apron. Back into the kitchen we went. Great. Another highchair feeding, with a pristine white onesie that might very well be ruined by the end. Then time. Such is life in the dollhouse. “No time for a proper breakfast, hon,” she said, bobbing me to the fridge. She opened the door and dug out one of the last things I’d have expected. Speaking of mundane normal things being scaled up: “Do you want a shake?” It was a breakfast shake. Just like the ones I chugged everyday before hopping onto my scooter. It was a two-liter’s worth; much bigger than anything my weak morning stomach could assume in one sitting, but it was the exact same packaging and logo. Chocolate too. “You drink these?” I asked. Janet took a baby bottle out of the cabinet, cracked the lid of the Amazon sized shake and poured some in. “I mean, it’s not the greatest flavor,” she said. “But it fills me up first thing in the morning and helps keep my weight under control.” She chuckled to herself. “Maybe it’s the flavor that makes it so I don’t eat too much.” I watched as she screwed the cap on the baby bottle and handed it to me. “Drink up.” I did. Immediately. Even through a rubber nipple, the taste was amazing. That got another giggle from Janet. “Yup,” she said to no one in particular. “I think he likes it.” My eyes rolled back in my head as I suckled. I closed them to just shut out the world and enjoy the taste. I didn’t even argue or struggle as she cradled me. It wasn’t the chalky taste of protein mixed with chocolate that I exalted in. It was the taste of familiarity, the taste of routine, the taste of something that wasn’t explicitly made for a “baby”. The taste was Heaven. “My girlfriends were right,” Janet said. “This stuff does make good baby formula in a pinch.” Heaven came crashing back down to purgatory with those words. The taste was good...but not that good. Looking up at her, I watched as she downed the rest of the bottle in just a few gulps, followed by a mighty belch. “Nice one.” I shut my mouth. Stupid, Clark! Stupid! In reply, Janet draped me over her shoulder. “Thanks. Your turn.” Heavy hands patted and pounded my back until my own gas bubble rumbled up out of my belly and shot into the air. “Like Mommy, like baby!” I grimaced as another burp shot out of me. In sharing her food- in talking to me like I was something of an equal- Janet had tricked me into thinking she was decent for just long enough so that I guzzled the stuff down. It had just made burping me all the easier. “Don’t get used to this,” Janet warned. “As soon as we go back to school, you’ll be eating breakfast and lunch with the rest of the Littles.” Whatever good feelings the breakfast shake had given me that hadn’t been already destroyed evaporated with that declaration of my future. “I understand,” I sighed. I wanted to growl...but sighing would have to do for now. She traipsed over to the kitchen table and reached for a certain stuffed animal that had been abandoned. “Don’t forget your lion,” she said, handing it to me. “Wouldn’t want him to get lost.” I took the lion and held it, if only so that Janet would let the matter be. I didn’t hug it or cuddle it close as much as I pretended I was cutting off its air supply. Crush its ribs. Inflict on it all the pain that I wanted to inflict on other, bigger, more deserving people. “What’s his name?” Janet asked as we got to the garage door. I rolled my eyes but hid my face. “It doesn’t have a name. It’s just a dumb stuffed lion.” “Okay, Clark.” she replied. Even though she wasn’t looking right at me, I could still hear the condescending smile in her tone. “Just let me know what Lion’s name is when you think of it.”

About 90 minutes ago, at 10:20PM, my doorbell rang. I looked out my peephole, and there was a fat kid with a platter of cupcakes. Fucking inexplicable. I didn't open the door. __________________________________________________ Chapter 25, Part 2 “If it’s alright with you, I want to start with before you came here. That will help me understand your reaction to this world,” Mary said. She sat with tablet and stylus in hand. She was older than Rebecca, with rectangle glasses and the soft skin of a woman on the far side of middle age. Her voice to this point had been business-like, transactional. She was practiced in the art of her science, at making her patients know what she needed from them and then gently coaxing it from them. Jamie lay on his back against the arm of the sofa, staring at the door to the waiting area. He could stare at the door silently for as long as she could stare at him over her tablet, or he could cooperate and make this as painless as possible. One thing he was determined to do was not to cry. Enough of that. Too many tears shed during and after a life that was over for him now, or at least behind a curtain for good. “I know what you did for a living. What did you for fun?” “For fun? I was sort of active when I wanted to be … I went to the beach a lot to swim … I went to the gym sometimes, when I cared to … I’d get into it for a few months and burn out on it and stop. I liked to tell people I was a hiker, but that sporadic; I’d go months without … I watched a lot of TV, binged a lot of the same shows over and over, just to have the background noise sometimes … I read a lot, but in the last few years I mostly read news; my attention span wasn’t what it used to be, and I’d have a hard time staying committed to a book, even one I liked … I can’t remember the last piece of fiction I read … I always wanted to do something creative like sing or act or play an instrument or paint or something, but it never seemed like I had time, or if I did that it would be too hard; ya know, like I wouldn’t be good at it right away, of course, and I’d get frustrated.” “Nobody’s good at anything right away, right?” “No, course not. Just, when you’re doing something for fun … it’s hard to have fun doing something you suck at.” “Do you ever draw or color now?” “Yeah. In a coloring book. Nothing original.” “You read a lot.” “I do. We don’t watch much TV at home, so I read a lot.” “What do you read?” “I guess you’d call it young adult fiction.” “No regular fiction?” “Not yet.” “No nonfiction or news?” “No.” “So the average workday for a year ago. What was your evening like?” “I left work around 5:30 or 6. If I was staying fit at the time, I’d go to the gym and get home around 7:30 or 8. If I wasn’t, then I’d be home by 6:15 or 6:45 and have dinner and watch Netflix and surf on my computer. Sometimes I’d play video games, if there was one I liked playing out; I was picky about which games I bought.” “And on the weekends?” Jamie shrugged. “A long version of my weekday evenings. I’d usually get up and take a hot bath and read for longer than I meant to. Go run any errands. Go to the gym or beach, maybe have lunch or dinner out. A lot of time, though, well, really, I guess most of the time, I’d stay home all day. I‘d always make plans to go do something like hike or go swimming and then not go. And I’d feel guilty about that, felt like I was missing out on things, wasting my days.” He nodded his head toward his left shoulder in another shrug. “Eventually I told myself that it was my free time and that if I was doing what I wanted to in the moment then it wasn’t a waste of time.” “You like hiking and swimming and things like that?” “Yes.” “And you’d skip them anyway sometimes. Did you feel like you weren’t taking pleasure in the things you liked anymore?” Jamie knew what she was getting at: anhedonia. “Yes. And yes, I was being treated for depression.” “Do you feel depressed now?” “Well … I’m not sure. Sometimes. If I’m busy or with someone, then no.” “When you were describing your free time, you didn’t mention hanging out with friends.” “Didn’t have any.” “None?” “I had long-distance friends I lost touch with. I had work friends, but I never asked them to do anything outside the office, and they never asked me.” “Why?” “I don’t know. I guess maybe we saw enough of each other during the day, or else we all just wanted to draw a line between work and home … I always thought it would be kind of awkward to ask, because you know they’re going to say yes just out of collegial courtesy … and then what if you found something about the other you didn’t like and had to see that person all the time and act normal? I mean, what’s even normal for colleagues to talk about outside work?” “Did you have a hard time making friends, or did you not try, or both?” “Both. I’m bad at social situations most of the time. Or at least think I am and then overanalyze everything. Takes all the fun out of it … and how do you try anyway? Growing up, all your friendships are organic, and then that stops unless you do make friend-friends with your coworkers. Trying to make friends in some random or even purposeful way seemed like too much work and not enough pay off. I didn’t think I’d make ay friends that way.” Mary paused to take more notes before moving on. “About work. Tell me more about what you did.” Jamie took a deep breath. They made it awful hard to put it behind him. Jamie figured his ability to be happy at times over the past weeks was precisely because he was too busy with other things to think back on it. What was wrong with that strategy? It was essentially what he intended when he left. “I was a social worker. I mostly worked with kids.” “Doing what?” “Child welfare.” “What’s that?” “I think you know.” “Yeah, but I want to hear what you did, specifically.” “A relative, a neighbor, a teacher, a friend’s parent, a cop, a doctor, a priest – whomever – reports a concern about a child being neglected or abused or just in a bad situation – that happens most often, whole family is in a bad situation, not abuse or neglect – and I check it out. Go through the guidelines, make an assessment, and if I find the report substantiated, then I try to fix the problem.” “How?” “Depends on what the problem is. Remove them from the home, or sometimes keep certain family members away. Get the family counseling or other services. Try to get them better housing, get on food assistance, get them medical care, get them job counseling. Work with the school to make sure the kid’s getting what he needs. Or work with the police to keep the kid out of trouble, or more often to get him out of trouble. If I do have to separate them from their family, try to place them with other relatives, or a foster parent, or as a last resort, a group home.” Group homes: Jamie shook his head. “Basically whatever I can do to make sure the kid is healthy, safe, and on a path that doesn’t lead to crime, addiction, prison or death.” “Do you realize you just said all that in the present tense?” Jamie hadn’t. “No … I see your point.” “I saw in your file that your job had a lot to do with why you decided to come here. Can you tell me more about that?” This time Jamie didn’t respond right away. It always came back to this. Well, fine, Jamie thought, out with it. “I got tired of failing at my job and seeing people I was responsible for get hurt. Even when I got a kid out of a bad situation, I didn’t get ‘em far. They’re still poor and still stuck in a high-crime neighborhood and still having to choose between life, if they’re lucky, driving a shuttle at the airport or pushing a broom, or crime. And that’s if they even get that far. I had a client who was shot on the street walking home; someone killed him to steal his cell phone. I had a kid die of an asthma attack because his parents couldn’t afford an inhaler after they got kicked off Medicaid and it took too long for the ambulance to get there from the good side of town. I had one of my clients murder another of my clients over an argument, and they were friends. I don’t even know how many ended up in jail or dead after they aged out. I had girls who were prostituting themselves for drugs. I had 12 year old alcoholics. I had pregnant teens. Every which kind of mental illness you can think of compounded by poverty and every other problem they had. Kids who the court returned to their parents only for the parents to beat on them some more or worse. Kids going to jail. Kids getting beaten by the cops or a rival gang. Kids suspended or expelled from school for having a weapon or drugs, and probably one out of every three of those, it was the parent who gave it to them. Kids just so angry they want to fight the world; there’s no room for learning or maturing or being loved or feeling loved when you’re that angry ... and a lot of them were right to be angry.” Jamie took a breath and slowed down, thinking back on all of it. His eyes fell, and he breathed slowly. “Those were just the worst parts. Ya know, like they stand out, but they were rare. Those were … god, they were so fucking hard, but it was the shit that passed for good that … that’s what burned me out. All the work I’d do getting a kid in a good situation, making sure he had what needed, that he stayed on the right path – success was just not falling into gang life or getting arrested or getting killed. Success was the kid graduating high school, though that wasn’t a must-have to count a case as a success, and then getting a job. Any job. Burger flipper, floor sweeper, bus driver, ticket taker, luggage handler, concessionaire at the ballpark. Success was getting them through high school, graduates or not sometimes, without them getting arrested, killed or addicted, so they could transition from a childhood of poverty into an adulthood of poverty or near-poverty. That’s what’s open to kids from poor backgrounds and yes, usually of certain complexions. And fuck if everybody doesn’t ignore that last part, as if it’s just the natural state of things that nine out of ten janitors in any city are the same color as that city’s largest racial minority. Go to LA, and it’s Hispanic people cleaning the hotel toilets; go to Chicago, it’s African-Americans. This whole sprawling underclass that’s just accepted as the norm. “There’s no winning. I had less than ten percent of my kids go to any kind of post-secondary education. Trade school, community college, college. Most of them didn’t make it through their first year. A-students in the shit schools they came from, and not at all prepared for actual learning. “Best outcome was the military, provided they didn’t get wounded or killed. Hard to fail out of that, and it positioned best for a better life, but only if they survived. All but one did, but what kind of society is that? Having to choose between the street or life of working your ass off and still being poor or maybe getting killed or maimed or PTSD. Don’t even list climbing into the middle class as an option; might as well be a myth for how often that actually happens. “And hardly anyone gives a damn. Social workers, teachers, a handful of cops, some do-gooders. Most everyone else ignores it; even if they acknowledge it exists, they do nothing or next to nothing to change it. And worse, half of them that know it blame the kids, say they should work harder, say the parents should get off welfare, and just to help, they’ll take welfare away. Plunge the kid deeper into poverty just because they don’t like an adult is also getting welfare. And then want to throw the key away when a kid starts stealing or dealing, like they wouldn’t do the same fucking thing if they grew up in those environments and with those same chances in life. Fuck; society just turns racist, maniac cops fucking loose so long as one juror or judge or prosecutor can say ‘he feared for his life’ with a straight fucking face.” Jamie rubbed his face and eyes. “So I couldn’t take it anymore. Failing even when I succeeded, and watching all that happen again and again. … You become a party to it, when you make yourself a part of the system. It ends up being your fault, too.” Jamie sat there silent. “Some people would call you a hero for trying.” With his eyes closed and jaw tight, Jamie answered, “Do you have any idea what a shit feeling it is to be called that when you failed and the consequence for that failure is someone gets hurt or hurts themselves or just ends up in another cycle of generational poverty and discrimination?” Mary hadn’t thought of that. People bandied the word ‘hero’ around in Itali, too. She never considered that being called a hero could make someone feel worse, even awful. “So why didn’t you just walk away and stay in that world?” “Couldn’t. I couldn’t be so close to it, literally, and stay away. Couldn’t live with myself if I became one of the people who just ignore it. Hard enough failing all my kids and abandoning them. I … I needed distance, I guess … and a life so different it doesn’t seem … doesn’t seem like I’m surrounded by it. I know it’s bullshit, but … I guess I feel like my kids are not in this world, therefore I’m not ignoring them. I know that’s wrong. I know they still exist.” “Jamie, why was all of this your responsibility to fix?” “Because I took the job … No, because if a few people hadn’t stepped up for me, I would have ended up like most of my kids. I tried to pay it forward. I took the job.” “Fair enough. But why is it you take it so personally? Obviously, not all of your colleagues feel like they’ve failed because they couldn’t fix everything … and surely some left the job without feeling like they’d abandoned anyone. Why isn’t that you?” “Different perspectives.” “Because you were a foster kid?” “That and just … they can forgive themselves for their failure … and that’s assuming they even think it’s their failure.” “You said yourself these problems are systemic, in so many words. Why is it the individual social worker who needs to ask forgiveness? Or at least, why do you think you do?” Jamie didn’t have a ready reply. He didn’t even have a thought process for a reply. He just lay there with his mind clear, his eyes not focused on anything. No awkward silence was going to give him an answer, nor could he reason one out. He knew it wasn’t reasonable; he felt that way nonetheless. There’s no telling yourself not to feel a certain way. You may get over the feeling, or the feeling can be replaced by another, but you can’t reason your way out of a feeling. That’s why they call it a feeling and not an opinion. Sometimes, though, if you wait patiently, the clarity you need just comes on its own, and the thoughts you couldn’t express on purpose express themselves. Jamie started talking again without putting much deliberate thought into his words. They just came. “You have violent people here?” “Of course.” “We did, too. Always something in the news, no matter where you live, right? Some guy murders someone over a drug debt. I can forgive him; maybe he goes to prison, maybe he doesn’t, but I can forgive him because I don’t think he’s necessarily an evil person or beyond redemption. Does that make sense?” “I think so.” “But someone … hurts someone defenseless, hurts his girlfriend, someone …” He swallowed hard. “Hurts a kid. I can’t …” His eyes flashed, and he choked on the very thought. “I can’t forgive that person. Lot of reasons other than evil someone does that. Doesn’t matter. I can’t forgive it. I don’t want to. Maybe that person is beyond redemption or not …” He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. He doesn’t deserve a chance at redemption. Least, I won’t give it to him …” Jamie’s forehead knotted and his lips grew thin; his eyes were looking somewhere not in the room. “Fuck him.” He spat the words out. “Jamie, did someone hurt you, when you were young?” “Sometimes.” “Do you think that’s why you feel so strongly about it?” Jamie didn’t hesitate. “Nope. I forgave those people. They … they weren’t worth hating. They don’t get to have me spend the energy on them that it takes to hate.” “Why then?” “Because … I forgave the people who hurt me because that’s what was best for me. I even meant it, sometimes. But what’s best for these kids, my kids … what’s best for them is that I hate those … that I hate those people, so there’s no mistaking whose side I’m on … and so I fight for my kids with everything. No sympathy for the other side. Empathy, maybe, but no sympathy.” “And did you? Fight for them?” Jamie exhaled as tears came to his eyes. “Fuck yeah, I did. For all of ‘em. Not just the ones who were being hurt but all of ‘em, the ones who needed a little help to get by and the ones who needed saving, from themselves, from others. Fought like god’s own army, or at least I tried.” “And yet you feel guilty.” “I didn’t always win, did I? I don’t even think I won half … The abuse cases were easy by comparison; not always easy to prove, but if you did, you could lock those people up. It’s the other ones. Neglect cases where the parent can barely take of themselves; that’s not a monster, just a pity case … Kids getting into trouble; kids who are hungry every day; kids getting pulled into gangs; kids whose only problem is they’re poor or live in the wrong neighborhood; selling drugs, taking drug, drinking; violence. A kid like that isn’t a kid to police; shit, a kid in the vicinity of that isn’t a kid to police … Trying to save ‘em before they get murdered or end up in jail. Just trying to get ‘em out of school and into the workforce. And so many of those kids … Five; five might as well be a million. Like trying to hold back five oceans that are gonna crash on these kids and there’s just one of me.” “Doesn’t trying count for something?” “How much difference is there between someone who hurts a kid and someone who fails to protect a kid? Whether he tried or not? … You fail; you enable all the other shit that comes at the kid, whether it’s the abusive parent or the poverty what’s gonna swallow her like it swallowed her parents. Kid still gets hurt. Kid still gets lost in the shuffle. You tell them they can count on you … when it turns out they can’t, that hurts them, too … I hurt them, too … and then I left and came here, even after telling … I don’t know how many, but telling them I was always going to there. Just the latest person to lie to them and abandon them.” Mary looked down at Jamie. He had that thousand-yard stare; she wondered what he was seeing right then. Maybe nothing. Jamie was case-reportable, she thought, easily no other little like him and with his experiences and problems in Itali. Others had other kinds of suffering. The circumstances behind his arrival and his decision to not be regressed or even have some memories removed just made Jamie unique. “Okay. I think that’s enough for today, unless there something else you want to talk about.” Jamie shook his head. He didn’t have more to say that day. “Do you want to take a minute, or …” “No, I’m good.” It’s scarier when someone with that much pain is calm. You never know how close to an edge they are or how they might let those emotions out. “Okay.” Mary stood, and Jamie stood after her. “I’m going to ask you to wait in the waiting area while I talk to Amanda and your mom. Okay?” Jamie just nodded and opened the door, walking into the outer room. Amanda and Becky stood and smiled gently. “How’d it go?” “Fine. Your turn, I guess,” Jamie responded with a simple smile, as though he didn’t take this all that seriously, that learning to live with it all was his best chance, so why not talk about it? And why take talking about it all that seriously? “Becky and Amanda,” Mary said, “Jamie is going to wait out here, if that’s alright with you, while we talk now.” When they were seated on either side of her desk, Mary put on her professional smile and deliberately sounded upbeat to start the conversation. “That is one complicated little you guys got there.” “Ya think,” Amanda joked. Mary chuckled. “One of you is rubbing off on the other. Jamie has some wonderful qualities, and I’m sure you’ve noticed them. He’s passionate. He’s empathetic. He’s humble. He doesn’t judge people too harshly. He has a strong moral code. Those are all such great things, things that should be encouraged. Where he seems to be running into trouble is believing it’s his responsibility to fix things he couldn’t possibly fix. He sets himself up for failure in that way. It’s a collision of all those good qualities taken to an extreme and then not applied to himself.” “I’m not sure I understand,” Rebecca replied. “Jamie has a lot of empathy, except for himself. He doesn’t judge other people harshly, but he judges himself harshly, and by standards no one could meet and no one would reasonably hold someone else to. That strong moral code and his passion are partly why. He sees a problem, he believes he must fix it, and whether it was fixable doesn’t matter to him. He does or he doesn’t, and because the problems he was engaged in where he comes from were so big, there was virtually no way for him to walk feeling like he fixed anything, even when he succeeded by the standards of his profession. Does that make more sense?” “Yes. We’ve known all along his work drove him here. That and his childhood,” Amanda said. “So basically his whole life,” Becky frowned. “And we know he wanted to leave there; he didn’t really want to come here, per se,” Amanda finished. “In our calls, you said he has anger outbursts. What are those usually over?” “People treating him like he’s regressed. Or just frustration boiling over, but that’s really rare.” “How does he feel afterward?” “If it’s over someone treating him poorly, he stays mad about it. He’s getting better at controlling those outbursts and ignoring those people, and at not letting it get to him in the first place, but you can tell it still does sometimes. When he just loses his temper, though, when he calms down he’s ashamed.” “That makes sense based on what he just told me. He said he has a difficult time forgiving people who can’t defend themselves, and that’s him now. And realizing that’s him probably drives a lot of that frustration. And when he lets out those negative emotions, then he thinks he’s in the wrong and has a hard time forgiving himself,” Mary explained. She pondered silently for a moment. She began again, “Bottom line is he’s angry at himself. He’s angry at others, but anger turned outward stays anger. Anger turned inward is depression.” Becky was getting irritated, not at Mary but in feeling like they’d been going in circles since Amanda opened his file. “We’ve known that. It’s just … he’s such a sweet and kind person. I …” Rebecca put her forehead in her hand and her elbow on her knee, looking at the floor in front of her chair. “I don’t understand how he can’t see it. How he can be angry with himself.” Amanda interjected. “And we don’t want to give you the wrong impression. He’s happy, at least on the outside, most of the time now. Things were harder at first, but he’s had very few outbursts since the first couple weeks; he tends to get more quiet and brooding than outwardly angry. He’s had, I don’t know, maybe two or three episodes where his frustration boiled over. I mean, is he making progress or not?” Mary smiled to reassure them, “Absolutely he is. I suspect, though, that’s he making more progress in adjusting to his new environment – knowing what to expect and so having fewer big emotions, and learning to control those big emotions he does have better. But I don’t think he’s making much progress with the issues that led him here.” “Guilt, right,” Becky asked. “He feels guilty for having left those kids behind, but that doesn’t even make sense. He left because he felt guilty for leaving?” Mary nodded in sympathy. “It’s a little more complex that guilt. He feels guilty because he let them down, both by not being able to solve their problems and also, now, because he left. More problematic than the guilt over leaving, however, is that he sees letting someone down as being the being the same as purposefully hurting someone. That’s not uncommon in professions like his. It’s someone who empathizes too much with the people he needs to help; he loses the critical distance. There’s no way that person doesn’t burn out. What concerns me is how calm he is about it. That usually means someone has made a decision.” Amanda spoke up, “He wasn’t calm about it when he got here. He was … he was a wreck. He didn’t just cry. I mean … he sobbed, full body, clinging to me, shaking all over. He still cries maybe kinda easily for an unregessed little, and we did have an incident a few nights ago where he got very upset over something, but that’s all become rare. We thought he was getting better.” “I think he’s learning to live with it,” Mary replied. “And that’s a bad thing?” “Yes. If he had done something wrong, by all means, learn to live with it. But he didn’t do anything wrong. If he continues thinking he did, it will hang over him forever, and he’ll probably never be happy with himself or fully embrace this or any life.” “What do you think he decided,” Becky asked, her mind thinking of all the worst possible answers. “That because he’s equivalent in his mind to the people who hurt kids on purpose, that he may not be redeemable, and that even if he is, he doesn’t deserve forgiveness.” “How do we help him?” “We have teach him that he does deserve forgiveness. By showing him all the good he does in the world. But he’ll only accept that if he’s trusts us enough to believe we’re not just saying it. Just saying it will make it worse. We have to show it, over and over, and he needs to see it from more than just the two of you. You guys are on the right track: if he can trust you enough to let himself depend on you for anything, he’ll trust you on this. That’s the hardest thing for him to depend on others for and to accept from them, praise and forgo. Then, maybe, if we can get him to at least accept forgiveness from others we can prove to him one day that there’s nothing to forgive. Or if not that, then that he is forgiven, can forgive himself, and move on.” Becky absorbed that and asked, “How do we show it?” “Two ways. The first is praise. When he does something nice or kind or anything that shows what a sweet person he is, always call it out for him. To him, those are things he’s supposed to do, so doing them doesn’t count. Make sure he recognizes when he’s being those things, because he doesn’t give himself credit for them. The second is love. People worth loving are worth forgiving. Every day, make sure he knows he’s loved, and by as many people as possible. A big, loving, social circle.” That seemed too easy, or at least sounded like it. Mary saw that reaction and added, “And we’ll continue to work in here. This is where the heaviest emotional lifting will get done. He’s stuck in these negative feedback loops. We call them cognitive distortions. These are errors in his thinking: he sees what he thinks are negatives about himself – which I don’t think are negatives at all – and his mind magnifies them and makes them even worse. At the same time, he ignores the good things about himself. What he and I are going to work on, and what we’ll eventually need your help with too, is to break him out of those distorted thought patterns and replace them with positive patterns and coping skills.” Becky sat back in her chair. Amanda glanced from her mom back to Mary and quipped, “So you’re saying this is gonna take a while.”

Another short update, but i think this chapter might be pretty long when it's done. ________________________________________________ Chapter 25 Part 1 It was lunchtime. Jamie knew Mom and Amanda would be picking him up soon for his first therapist appointment. He was having mixed feelings about it. To start with, they hadn’t asked him if he wanted to see a therapist. It was just announced. Jamie knew why they would have him see a therapist, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to. He’d seen on a couple of times before. One in college for a while, another during his career. He couldn’t remember the first one’s name – that’s how much she helped. The second one was the classic shrink. He’d say something, and she’d node and say “yeah” and “uh huh” and otherwise stay silent until he felt awkward enough to say something else. Jamie understood the technique, but it wasn’t the kind of therapy he thought he’d signed up for. If all Jamie needed was a friendly ear, he could have talked to the neighbor’s dog or a sympathetic wall. She wouldn’t say anything until the session was five minutes from over, and then he’d leave feeling nothing had been resolved, let alone discussed. Moreover, Jamie didn’t know if he wanted to talk about things. Talking about them helps, sure, but sometimes not talking about things helps, too. Between daycare and everything else he was still adjusting to, why bring up the past, which is what he assumed they thought he needed therapy for. He saw no reason not to talk to Ella about his feelings. “So I’m leaving early today to go see a therapist.” “I’m leaving early to see my physical therapist.” “I’ve been meaning to ask if you’re okay.” “Fine. Just healing from something. Did you notice something that looked not okay?” “No … well, I noticed you get tired easily, physically … like when we walked around the field and you needed to stop … just wanted to know if you’re okay … sorry, I’ll stop talking about it.” Jamie cursed his social skills. There were times when a part of his brain would tell, “Don’t say that,” and the other part would respond, “Saying it anyway, Asshole” and ride away on a motorcycle purposefully throwing mud all over the first part. Ella responded by taking another bite of her lunch. Jamie was sure he’d screwed up the only promising regular friendship he had. He was good at a lot of things, but making friends and knowing when to shut up weren’t them. In a professional setting, he was Mr. Discretion. In social settings, he was Mr. Awkward. He sometimes wondered if he did have some degree of Autism Spectrum Disorder. That was the trendy thing to say or joke about, but he didn’t find it funny. He worked with too many kids who did have ASD. It was just that sometimes he would be so inept in unstructured social interactions that he felt it had to be more than being an introvert or just awkward. He sat there glumly wishing he could turn the clock back 5 minutes. Ella stirred her lunch with her spork. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” Jamie head her fine and wasn’t sure if she was being coy or what her intent was. “What do you mean?” “Tell me why you’re going to see a therapist, and I’ll tell you why I go to PT.” Those two things are completely different, Jamie thought. Revealing your emotional or mental health problems wasn’t the same as physical condition. “That’s hardly the same,” he replied. “Why aren’t they?” Ella knew what he was going to say. “Because my … mental health issues are … they’re more sensitive than a … physical problem.” “Is a mental health problem a real health problem?” “Yeah.” “So either you’re attaching a stigma to mental health, or think I am, or you just don’t wanna say. And if you don’t wanna say, that’s fine. We don’t have to talk about.” Jamie didn’t want to talk about it. What he wanted to talk about was Ella and why it was important that no one knew there was an unregressed little at Little Hearth, specifically her. Jamie knew Mom had asked Diane if she had experience with unregressed little, and Diane had responded with just a yes when she must have known telling Rebecca there was another unregressed little in her care would likely have secured Rebecca’s business on the spot. Maybe being a little more open would make Ella a little more open. “I used to be a social worker. I got to the point where I couldn’t stand to deal with everything I had to deal with and be unable to fix it all, and I didn’t think I could stay back there and just walk away from it. So I came here. I think Mom wants me to talk about all that with a therapist.” Ella turned away from Jamie and pulled her back, revealing a scar running down her neck and into her dress. She let her hair fall and turned back. “I had surgery.” “That scar looks old.” “It is.” “But you still go to therapy for it?” “Yep.” Becky and Amanda came through the classroom door. Jamie found himself torn. He wanted to leave daycare; he didn’t want to go to see a therapist; he wanted to keep talking to Ella. All incompatible with one another. “Hey, buddy,” Amanda said when she got near. “You ready to go?” “Yes,” Jamie replied, pushing his lunch away. It wasn’t very good anyway. “This is Ella, by the way. Ella, this is my sister Amanda and my mom, Becky.” Polite handshakes were exchanged. ______________________________________________________________________________ “Nice to meet you, Jamie. You can call me Mary.” “Nice to meet you as well, Mary.” “If it’s alright with you, Amanda and your mom are going to wait in the outer room while we talk alone.” “That’s fine.” “See you soon, Jamie,” Becky said with a small wave as Mary closed the door behind them. Mary turned on a floor fan and pointed it at the door. “Sorry. Just helps makes sure everything we say in here stays in here. Please, have a seat.” Jamie sat down on a regular sofa, one meant to fit littles. It wasn’t a psychiatrist’s couch either, just a regular sofa with a regular coffee table in from of it. Mary sat down in a chair next to the sofa. It was awkward her being so close and looming over him so much, but Jamie liked being on furniture his eye, not up on something he’d have to scramble up or get her help with. Still, he was craning his neck to look at her. It would be easier not to. “Do you mind if I lay down. It’s just hard to talk to you from down here.” “No, go right ahead. Most of my patients do.” Jamie got situated. “Comfortable?” “Yes.” “So, introductions then. My name is Dr. Mary Easterbrook. I specialize in littles only. I don’t see bigs or big children. You should know up front two things. One, I will never tell anyone exactly what you say in here. Two, I will tell your mom and Amanda what we talk about in here, and only them.” “Why them? Isn’t there some sort of privilege?” “No, just like if you were a big kid, I can tell your mom anything I think she needs to know in order to help the two of us in the therapeutic process, and your mom wants Amanda to know, too. If there’s something specifically you don’t want me to tell them, I’ll do my best to abide by that, but I can’t promise. And I won’t tell them anything I don’t think they need to know.” Jamie was trying to keep an open mind. So far this just reminded him of his place in the power structure, specifically at the bottom of it. He understood why she would tell parents and guardians what their little said, but it required him to accept that he was a little and he had no privacy this doctor needed to respect. Therapy works when the patient is open and honest, and already Jamie felt he had to hold back. “How do I know what you think they need to know? I don’t mean to get us off on the wrong foot here, but I mean, why should I be open if I get nor privacy? What if I want to talk about them, for instance?” Mary had worked with a few unregressed littles, and this was always the conversation at first. “I won’t tell them any details unless they absolutely need to know. Otherwise, I’ll keep it vague. As for why you should be open, because it will help you. Do you believe that?” Jamie did, though he also realized the potential for some conflict between his therapeutic interests and his I-have-to-live-with-these-people interests. “I believe that.” To an extent, he wanted to add. “Good. So you know, I do have experience with unregressed littles. There aren’t many of you, and I’m one of the only therapists in Itali who works with them. And I say that just to let I understand your cognitive level. So, I have your file from the agency and notes from what your mom and Amanda told me. Why don’t we start by you telling me about what your time here has been like so far?” Geez, Jamie thought, that’s so much to review. “That’s …” Jamie wasn’t even sure where to start. “How about starting with easy stuff? What makes you happy here?” “Amanda, Mom … Amanda’s friend Mel … Mom’s friend Jane … April, my daycare teacher, she’s nice to me … most little food … not having to go to work, but that’s a mixed blessing … I like feeling younger physically … I exercise a lot here.” When he didn’t add anything after ten seconds, Mary asked, “What don’t you like here?” “When people treat me like a regressed little, you know, like when they think I’m dumb – sorry, not dumb – cognitively underdeveloped, I guess, or incompetent. Not having many people to talk to, getting bored at daycare, getting bored in general sometimes … feeling like I don’t contribute … having to ask for things, you know, bothering people for little stuff … not fitting, but I knew that was going to be a problem … missing my friend, Cheryl.” After another pause, “And what are maybe not sure if you like or dislike?” “Ella, this girl at daycare. I like that she’s there and is also unregressed, but she’s really hard to figure out, too. That sometimes I like being treated like a typical little … I mean, I like when Mom or Amanda feed me a bottle, and sometimes when I use my pacifier; I just don’t like that I like those things, sometimes, I think. And I guess, just being here. I’m not sure if I like it here or not, to be honest. I like my people, and I like not having to deal with a lot of stuff I had to deal with back there, but at the same time I miss certain things … and feel that I walked away from things I shouldn’t have. Mary gave it a few beats. “That gives us an awful lot to talk about.” Jamie laughed for the first time all day. “Ya think?”

I agree, 100%, i too had surgery and yet i still wet my self, but not as much as i used too. my boss tryed getting me to change jobs because as he qoute my handicap. i said hell no what handicap do i have. I can do my job just like everyone else, maybe even better since i dont have to take a potty break like everyone else. lol