By Laura Salas
Once they realized they couldn’t do it alone, his parents signed him up for a local care center. His father would get up every day at 5 o’clock in the morning, get him dressed, load him in the car, and take him to the special care center for the day. Eight hours later, he’d pick him up, bathe him, feed him, and put him in bed. For years, that was their routine…
Joan Pistorius was losing her grip. The struggle to keep up with her son’s needs, with the burden he had become and the suffering she felt he must be in, was too much to bear. One day, at her lowest, Joan walked up to her son and said, out loud, “I hope you die.” It was a plea to God perhaps, or to the fates that they end the struggle Martin and his family were going through. She was told he couldn’t hear the outside world in his condition…
Then, when Martin was around age 16, he began regaining consciousness. At first, he wasn’t aware of what had been happening, he couldn’t even sense others around him. But as his mind came back to him, he soon realized that he could hear others, sense their presence. He had heard the cruel thing his mother had said to him in her time of despair. Yet, he still could not impart anything to those around him. He couldn’t move at all…
Before long, Martin was aware of everything, just like any normal person would be. But he couldn’t express himself, couldn’t move his eyes, or wiggle a toe, his brain and his body were disconnected. This realization was a worse shock than all the others, he was a boy in a man’s body now and he was trapped within himself.
Meanwhile, everyone in Martin’s family had been so used to him not being there that they ignored him. Even if he could have made a sign to let them know he was there, they wouldn’t have seen it. The stark reality finally hit him: he was going to spend the rest of his lifetime trapped in his own mind, totally alone, with only his thoughts for company. He would never know true love, never have children, never work in electronics. There was no escape…
