Fear, pee and homeopathy.

I used to wet my bed up until I was in 12th grade! I lived in a small countryside home surrounded by thick woods, it was as if living in the forest and there wasn't any bathrooms in side the home. So if I want to pee at night, I first need to grab the flash light from under my bed, go up to the main front door, open the door without waking up anybody else, step out into the thick darkness, walk about 100 ft to the bathroom which was detached and isolated from home. At night that bathroom looked like a ghost house. Because of the trees, the nights looked so thick and dark, to add to the effect there were so many crickets and other small creatures such as frogs etc made a lot of noise.

It wasn't uncommon at all to encounter poisonous snakes around the yard. [The home is in the middle of about 50 acres of land cultivating various trees/plants (cashew, coco, mango, papaya, banana, pineapple, coconut, coffee etc) and paddy fields]. We always used flash lights to go out at night, if not, we would possibly step on a snake. My Dad used to keep a big bamboo stick to kill the snakes [Sometimes he used the same stick on me and my brother as well, not to kill us but to discipline us]. He killed a minimum of 2-3 snakes every month. Sometimes the snakes even come inside the home and once I remember one of them got into my parent's bed, fortunately it didn't bite them. I used to see my Dad as a 'hero' because he wasn't scared of snakes at all. Some of our neighbors used to come and get him to kill snakes they find in their chicken houses. He wouldn't let me or my brother go near him as he try to kill the snake. Once he kill them he would call us to take a closer look at the dead snake. Most of them belonged to the cobra family. They weren't very big in size but highly poisonous.

As a kid, whenever I wanted to pee at night, I used to wake my Dad up and he used to accompany me to go out. I was scared of darkness, snakes, ghosts and all kind of night crawlers. I didn't believe in ghosts, but I was scared of them! By the time I was in high school I felt bad about waking my Dad each time I wanted to pee, but at the same time I was so scared to go out in the dark by myself, so I peed in my bed! It wasn't that I peed while asleep, but I peed knowingly!

My parents thought it was a 'disease'(obviously I didn't tell them that I was deliberately doing it). My Dad started looking for treating my 'illness' and found out there is some effective medicine for this in homeopathy. (There wasn't any website called www.stopbedwettingnow.com) He found a doctor (who is specialized in treating bed-wetting) 30 kilometers away from home and took me to consult him. I still remember my Dad's embarrassed face as he explained my 'problem' to the doctor, but the doctor didn't seem to bother much about the fact that I am in 12th grade and still wetting my bed. He prescribed medicine for 2 weeks and then I had to visit him every two weeks to give an update and collect the next course of medicine. Homeopathic medicines weren't available in pharmacies, the doctors themselves sold it in their clinics. I used to take two buses to go to that doctor every two weeks for many months. [The only 'vehicle' we owned was a bicycle, so we relied on public transportation to go to places. To catch a bus itself I had to travel 2-3 kilometers on my bike]

I can't remember when exactly I got over my fear of going out in the dark. It was around that time we built a new home (next to the old no-bathroom-inside-home) and there were two bathrooms inside. It was a big relief! When we built that new home we put a thick layer of pebbles around our home for two reasons: 1. it looked good. 2. it would scare the snakes away. When the snakes crawl onto the pebbles it makes noise and that scares them.

You might be wondering what am I getting at with all these. Well, honestly, nothing much! I tried to find a 'spiritual application' for this story but I really couldn't, so I thought I would just share this. The only one thing I can think of is the 'power' of fear. Fear made me to wet by bed deliberately. Fear didn't let me think outside of my own 'solutions', it literally paralyzed me. I am pretty sure if I took courage to explain to my parents what was really happening, it could have saved a lot of frustration, time, money and efforts. Look what fear can do...