Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: dying

My tongue-in-cheek self-help book

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I want to write a self-help book, and I want it to focus on me dying. Twice. Then coming back to life! Or maybe do a series of self-help videos. I just don’t know how funny it would be after one or two shorts. Because, basically, my advice for any situation is to die.

Really. It’s the best thing that happened to me. And I did it twice.

I have suffered from severe depression, anxiety, and body dysmorphia all my life. They all started when I was seven. Coincidentally or not, that was when I realized I was going to die. I became obsessed with death, but in a push/pull kind of way. I did not  want to die and yet, I wanted it more than anything. The idea that one day I would just be gone forever repulsed, excited, and terrified me. That’s something I thought about for the following three decades of my life.

As for the trio of mental health issues, well. They crushed me when I was a kid and during my teen years. A defining moment was when my mother put me on a diet when I was seven. When I was seven. I had to repeat that beacuse it’s only in hindsight that I realized just how fukced up that was. I see pics of me when I was that age, and while I was chunky and solid, I was not fat.

Even if I were, I was still a little kid. I was in my growing phase. Telling me I was fat and that I needed to restrict my intake was cruel. I don’t want to argue about whether my mother meant to be cruel or not because in this case, impact matters more than intent. It would have been bad enough if she had put me on a diet and then just left it at that, but, no. She had to nag me about it. She would tell me that I had such a pretty face. If only I wasn’t so fucking fat! No, she didn’t say ‘fucking’, but it was certainly implied in her tone.

We did not have sweets in the house. My mother insisted that we had fruit and veggies at every meal. I know that’s a good thing, but it made me not eat fruit or veggies for several years when I was in my thirty. I wasn’t doing it on purpose–I just could not make myself eat fruits and veggies because of being forced to do it all my life.


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Not a practical solution

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In yesterday’s post, I was writing about how dying (twice) is the best thing that has happened to me. Bar none. Yes, I will state it that baldly because it’s true. It has taught me so many things, the main one being appreciation. I have dubbed every day I’m alive a bonus day, and I am deeply appreciative of it.

I have said this several times. I should be dead. For real dead, I mean. Not temporary dead. Permanent dead. I should not be here. I should not be breathing air. I should be in the ground. Or rather, scatteered to the win. I would like to be cremated when I die, but in order for that to happen, I need to write a will. My mother and I had this discussion several years ago. I said I wnated to be cremated. Much to my surprise, my mother  vigorously protested. I thought because she was a Christian, she would be all for it. Christians are about the soul and not the body. But no. She said that she needed a body to visit, which freaked me out.

I am not gawping at the world every moment of every day. You can’t live life like that because, well, you just can’t. I was talking to my brother about a woman he had dated (read, had sex with) for a month. He was waxing poetic about her because the sex was so good. He has mentioned it more than once that he wanted someone else with a matching libido. Which, fine, but I tried to gently tell him that it probably would have tailed off over time because that’s life. You can’t keep anything at a high level of intensity for many years. Emotion-wise, I mean. It’s just not sustainable.

He didn’t want to hear it, so I let it go after making my point (three or four times. I’m fucking stubborn). You can’t make someone hear something to which they are closing their ears.

It’s true, though. I’m sitting on my couch and looking out the window. It’s a gray day, but there are streaks of blue in the sky. My conifers are green and the trees are budding. It’s 57 degrees after wildly swinging weather. It feels nice. I like anything up to 60 degrees. I’m wearing shorts and a Batman t-shirt. Life is, as they say, good.

I was talking to K the other night. I said that while I was the same person, I had gained perspective from dying. I said I thought I was a much more positive person (but not in a Pollyanna way), and K agreed with me. I’m much more likely to tell my friends that I love them. I’m much more likely to express what I like.


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High risk; higher reward

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I want to write a self-help book because I have found one easy trick to curing depression, anxiety, and body dysphoria. It’s called dying, and I cannot recommend it enough. Twice is even better, to thoroughly cement the teaching. I jest, but not really.

Ever since dying twice, I’ve mulled over how to talk about this. I know it sounds like a humblebrag to say that I suffered walking non-COVID-related pneumonia, two cardiac arrests, and an ischemic stroke within twenty minutes without a scratch, but it’s basically true.

There is no way for people to relate to what I went through. I know that. It’s why I rarely mention it. In addition, I know how it sounds when someone peddles something that isn’t relevant. I know how impatient I used to get when people said to look at the bright side of life or that life was precious or that we only had one life to live. I hated that bullshit because it sounded so sanctimonious. “You don’t know me or my life. Don’t tell me to be grateful!” That was me whenever I heard anything of that ilk.

But. Here’s the thing.

They weren’t wrong.

Here me out. The one thing that I’ve learned from my medical crisis–well, the biggest thing. I’ve learned plenty–is that life is really fucking short. I can’t say we only have one life to live because I’m on my third, but in terms of relative time, 50 years is a blink of an eye.

Before I had my medical crisis, I suffered from depression, anxiety, and body dysphoria. I had an almost-crippling depression that made it dififcult to get out of bed in the morning. I had anxiety that made me almost paralyzed with indecision. And, I hated my body with an intensity of a thousand suns. It started with my mother putting me on a diet when I was seven and nagging me all my life for being a fat cow.

Taiji helped with all three of these to a certain extent. Before I started it, I could not be in a crowd of people for many reasons. Too many emotions pouring into me; too much physical contact; too much noise. My depression told me that everyone hated me, and my anxiety told me that no matter how I talked to people, I would get it wrong.

As for the body hatred–I refused to look in a mirror. Even when I was doing my grooming, I would studiously ignore it. I hated my face and my body, and I refused to let people take pictures. My mom used to complain about that, too. That I would not let her take pictures. Well, geez, Mom. Youv’e told me in not so many words that I am hideous and grotesque because I’m fat. You’ve done this my entire life. I can’t imagine why you would be shocked and surprised that I don’t (didn’t) want my picutre taken.

I detested my body and face. I thought I was just too disgusting to live. Fifteen years of studying Taiji (at the time of my medical emergency) got me to studiously neutral. Meaning, I would say I was neutral about my body and face, but I didn’t really mean it.


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Even in death

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I heard a new song last night via the Rob Squad. It’s James Blunt’s Monsters. I don’t usually fuck with JB because I find him annoying, but they said it was the most emotional reaction they’ve had. The song had me sobbing like a baby in part because JB is so raw in it and then has his dad in it (it’s a goodbye song to his father, a Stage 4 kidney failure. His father got a last-minute kidney transplant and is doing well, but it’s still an emotional song).

I watched a bunch of reactors watching the video, and the moment when the camera pans to show the father, well, most people lost it. The story is that James refused to have any kind of autotune in the video–it’s just him singing to his father. The raw emotion on his face and in his voice (plus the tears in his eyes) are just brutal. But, so honest. It’s not pretty. It’s not sanitized. It’s just…this man is saying goodbye to his father.

He has a unique voice, and it works for this song. The last part with his father is devastating. They look alike, and they have the same mannerisms. There’s a part when JB sings about putting his hand on his father’s arm, and then he breaks down. His father puts his hand on JB’s arm, and it’s just…I cried every time I saw it. Then, near the end, the choir kicks in and I bawl like a baby.

In tandem, I read a Slate advice column about someone who’s grandmother had dementia. She kept saying she wanted to die and it would be better when she was dead. The letter writer didn’t know how to deal with it and felt especially bad for his uncle (her son) who was her primary caretaker. He didn’t know what to do. He tried to reassure her that he was loved and all that, but it didn’t matter.

I can relate to that. My father is telling my mother on the daily that he wishes he were dead. After one argument in which he pushed her down, he got a knife, placed it on the table and told her to use it on him. And it hurts me. Because even though my mother has not been a good mother, she’s still a human being who doesn’t deserve this. She’s eighty years old! She’s worked hard all her life. She deserves to have a few years of peace.

Dementia doesn’t care about that. The commenters rightly point out that the grandmother doesn’t know what she’s saying. Or rather, tthat she’s not in her right mind. The commenters mentioned how shocking it was when their _____ (usually father) said they wanted to die while in hospice care–that was the other thing suggested.

Dementia sucks. It really does. It’s nasty, brutal, and has no regards for humanity. And yet. My father was already a narcissist and a jerk before getting it. He was already thin-skinned, paranoid, and, quite frankly, an all-around asshole. He doesn’t know anything about me, nor does he care to. This was before the dementia, I mean.


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The vastness of the universe

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I grew up fundie evangelical Christian. I was told repeatedly that I would go to hell for having sex. And other things, but that was the biggie when I was a teenager. My youth pastor made it very clear how big a sin premarital sex was. I remember he once said that it was better to not even kiss because it could lead to sex. Which, even at the age of thirteen, I knew was ludicrous. Or rather, I knew that there were so many steps between kissing and sex. He was a piece of work in many ways, and this was one of them. I never really believed in the Christian God, but I spent a large chunk of my childhood desperately wanting to believe. And thinking something was wrong with me because I didn’t.

I used to pray at night that God would make me a boy because I hated being so restricted as a girl. Let me be clear. I don’t feel like a man. I know I’m not a man. I don’t actually want to be a man–and I never did. I just did not want to be a girl/woman because of all the things I was not supposed to do. Top of the list was climbing  trees at the age of eight. Running around and shouting in glee are two other. Sitting with my legs open in yet another. Not ever having to wear a dress is at the top of the list, too.

I would pray earnestly for God to change my gender, and I was crushed every morning when he hadn’t. It must have been because I hadn’t prayed hard enough! That was a trope pushed hard in my church, too. If God didn’t do what you requested, it was because you didn’t have enough faith/didn’t pray hard enough.

I had sex for the first time when I was twenty and that was also when I lost my religion. Or rather, when the wool fell from my eyes. Because, you see, the thing that I had been warned against my entire life, that was classified as the very worst thing I could do and would send me to hell for infinity, was one of the best feelings I ever had in my life. I wanted to do it over and over again until I was rubbed raw.

Once I realized how I’d been lied to, there was no going back. I started questioning everything else I’d been taught and the chips went flying everywhere. See, that’s the problem with perpetuating a lie at the core of your religion. Once that gets exposed, it’s impossible to make up for it. This was emphasized so much when I was in church, there was no way they could hand wave it away.


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