Back when I used to go to the gym, I would wear my Walkman so I could play music as I worked out. Yes, Walkman; I am that old. At some point, R.E.M.’s It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)–by the way, I love that the title to this song is so long. I am terrible with titles, and this feels like one I would come up with. Anyway, it’s a catchy song and I was grooving along to it.
Once it was done, it started up again. Ok, weird, but I decided it must have just been some kind of error and went with it. Until the fifth or sixth time they played the song. Later, I found out that the music station was changing over to something else and this was their way of saying so long.
I thought that was hilarious, TBH. I like the ‘I don’t give a fuck’ feeling of it. And it’s a great song to boot. I didn’t mind listening to it for half an hour straight; I just thought there was something weird about them repeatedly playing it. If I love a song, I will listen to it on repeat for ever. When I first heard the Rent soundtrack, it was all I listened to for several months.
Anyway! The song is perfect for me because it really speaks to my situation. My world ended. My LIFE ended. Say it with me–twice! And Idefinitely feel fine about it. It’s funny. I wouldn’t feel too weird about telling people about what happened to me as far as the dying part. It’s weird and wild, but it’s not…I don’t know quite how to put it. It’s not…embarrassing? Shameful? At any rate, in an appropriate place and time, I have no problem sharing it.
Additionally, I don’t have any problem cheerfully admitting that my memory is shut now because of it. The stroke, specifically. I used to have a stellar memory. I prided myself on it. Now, I have to write shit down or I will not remember a thing. And I’m fine with it! As I’ve said, it’s a more-than-fair trade-off for having more years of life.
I’m currently listening to the song again for the first time in a long time, and it’s not exactly as I remembered it. The first minute or so is just listening all the things that are wrong with the world, then the chorus kicks in. Huh. I just read what it’s about. It’s based on a dream Michael Stipe had about the literal end of the world. I was going to say it’s about revolution and having to destroy what is in order to make room for what will be, but no. That’s not what it’s about.
I’m going to say it’s about that to me! Or rather, that’s the message I’m personally taking from it. It’s the end of me as I know me, and I feel fine. Because I do–in general. Me dying twice has mostly been a positive thing. That’s the part that is difficult for me to talk about with people outside my inner circle. I have no idea how to relay that dying twice was the best thing that happened to me.
I would like to find a support group for this, but it’s been impossible. I am the ruler of Googling, and I cannot find anything for the life of me. The reason is pretty clear–nobody has gone through what I have. All the support groups I found were for caregivers and people who lost loved ones to cardiac arrests/strokes. I don’t know what to do. Maybe ask my doc about it, but even then, would he be able to help me out?
The Mayo Clinic is the best hospital in the world. I’ve been perusing their site to see if they have anything for me. They don’t. The basic assumption is that people who die, well, they’re dead. They don’t need support! They need a funeral and people to grieve over them.
People don’t have a cardiac arrest and live. People don’t have TWO in succession and live–that’s for sure. As for strokes, people survive those, but they aren’t necessarily in any shape to talk about it. It’s funny. I consider the stroke almost incidental. I mean, yeah, it’s serious. Strokes are bad news. I’ve read a ton about them in the past year. The prognosis is grim for most people.
I was so fucking lucky. I can’t emphasize that enough. That’s why I don’t want to talk about it because most people who know someone who had a stroke (or had one themselves) weren’t that lucky. K keeps telling me that it’s my life, and I have a right to talk about it. I know that, but at the same time, I don’t want others to feel bad. It sounds like a humblebrag to say what I went through, but then to dismiss it with, “But I’m fine!” Or that I’m delusional. Even if someone were to believe me, how the hell do you respond to it?
It’s so out of the realm of normal experiences. There is nothing to reference. How do you wrap your head around that? I can barely do it, and it’s something that happened to me. I’m the one who went throguh it! There’s no snappy way to sum it up and deliver it in a palatable way. I don’t want to make people feel bad. I don’t want to put them on the defensive. But, this is my reality. This is my perspective. Everything I am today stems from this night. The core of who I am is formed around this root.
I’ve been thinking about this since then. I’m the same person, yes. I’m still snarky and cynical, impatient and solitary. But, I’m also grateful, even more empathetic than before, able to see the beauty where I couldn’t before, MUCH less depressed and anxious, and my self-esteem has shot through the roof.
As a female-appearing person who has heard negative messages in both my cultures about how abhorrent fat women are (especially from my mother), I hated my body. I loathed it. I refused to look in the mirror because I hated the grotesque creature that was staring back at me.
The hospital changed all that. I’m positively arrogant now in how much I love my body. It got me through death twice with barely a scratch on it. It took one hell of a beating and kept the fuck on ticking. Plus, with my new glasses, I’m cute AF, yo! I’ve never participated in the diet culture bullshit, but I felt like a hypocrite because I hated my body more than any fo those calorie counters. Taiji helped get me to the place of being studiedly neutral about it, but that was a lie.
If I could have lost 100 pounds magically, I would have. I would not have cared if it meant taken fifteen years off my life, which porves it’s not about health. I just wanted to be one of those skinny women who could fit in a size zero bathing suit.
That’s a lie, though. I was a size zero at the worst of my anorexia. It did not make me happy. I still thought I was a fat cow who should not exist.
Now, I look at my body, and I glory in what it can do. I do my half hour of weapons in the morning and revel in each movement. My biceps are bulging and my calves/thighs are THICK. My shoulders are broad–and they needed to be to carry the weight of me traversing the abyss. I didn’t have the Covenant Ring (shout-out to Dark Souls), so I had to do it the hard way. Those Four Kings did not know what was coming, and I whupped their asses–while unconscious! This all makes sense if you’ve played Dark Souls.
I’m so grateful that I love my body now, but it does make it even more difficult to talk to women. Not my close female friends, but women in the collective. Whenever anyone asks how not to hate her body or how she’s struggled with body dysphoria, there’s nothing I can say. I would not have listened to someone if, deep in the hatred of my body, they had the audacity to tell me I should just love my body or that it was beautiful the way it was. I would have thought they were mouthing platitudes or just trying to be nice.
Yes, I can share what I went through and why I feel the way I do, but it’s not something I can transfer to someone by osmosis. There are no words to make someone believe she is beautiful whes she thinks she’s disgusting.
I don’t have anything actionable to suggest–that’s the problem. I can’t tell these women to die and come back again. That seems REALLY risky to suggest. But I have nothing else. This is how my perspective changed, and there’s no shortcut to it. Believe me. I’ve tried for my entire life to make peace with my body. Taiji is the thing that got me the closest to neutral, but it was dying that made me realize how fucking fantastic my body was.