I want to talk more about my brain and how for the longest time I thought it was broken. And why it’s important to talk about mental health issues.
Side note: (And, yes, this soon into the post). There is a toxic positivity that pervades American thought that says if you work hard enough, you can overcome anything. Any time there’s a success story, it’s trotted out as proof that hard work and a positive attitude are all that’s needed to succeed. Which is not true at all. Yes, both of those things are needed, but so are luck, synchonicity, and did I mention luck? Luck plays a huge part in success, no matter how much Americans want to deny it, ignore it, or are oblivious to it.
Take my medical crisis. A few months before it happened, my brother had a friend who got pneumonia and went to the doctor. The doctor said because he could breathe, he should just take the meds the doctor prescribed. Then, the doctor sent him home. This was during the pandemic so hospitals were struggling with the overload of patients. My brother’s friend woke up in the middle of the night, unable to breathe. His wife called 911, and an ambulance was sent. During the ambulance ride, Regions Hospital called the ambulance to tell the EMTs that they, the hospital, had no rooms. The ambulance had to go to a different hospital, and my rbother’s friend had a heart attack and died.
A few months later, I woke up and could not breathe (Or I was still awake. It was three in the morning, so the latter is more likely than the former). I managed to call 911, and the police managed to get to my house in less than four minutes. How do I know? I’ll get to that in a second.
I managed to follow the instructions form the 911 operator. I kept talking to them while I stumbled to the front door. I unlocked it and then promptly passed out. I do not remember any of this, by the way. I had to be told about it later.
The cops knew to bag me when they came because I wasn’t breathing. When the EMTs came, I had a cardiac arrest. I had another on the way to the hospital. Oh, and the thing I always forget or just tack it on as an after thought–the ischemic stroke.
I was unconscious by the time we got to the hospital. I stayed that way for a week. I eventually found out that it all started wiht me having walking (non-Covid-related) pneumonia. So my story was very much like my brother’s friend, except I got all the lucky breaks. This was ALL luck. Or as I like to say, I got through with the help of love, Taiji, and luck.
You could argue that Taiji was on me–meaning that I actually have worked on it. It’s something I have done and continue to do. But the other two? I had no control over that. Oh, sure. You could say that my friends and brother love me for me, which is about me. However, it’s still not something I actively did, if that makes sense. And luck? Well the word itself is self-explanatory.
Back to the topic–no, let’s keep talking about luck. I really need to emphasize that Americans have such a weird fixation on being in control. I mean, I understand it, but it’s really to people’s detriment. I know I swing too far the other way in thinking I have no control over anything, but it’s been shown that pessimists are more realistic than optimists.
I do think there needs to be a balance. I used to be really pessimistic as a way to brace myself from feeling bad when bad things happened. That didn’t really help, and endlessly focusing on the bad can be a way to miss the good as well. Or to subconsciously make decisions that go down the negative path.
I tend to think I’m just stating the truth when I say things that some may perceive as me being negative or hard on myself. Like me saying I’m fat. Or me saying my parents don’t love me. Or that I would have been a terrible mother. I say them all in a matter-of-fact tone, but people rush to reassure me that it’s not true.I’m not fat–I’m plump. Of course your parents love you! You would have been a great mother! They might even believe some of it, but I wish people would trust me to know myself.
The latest one was the realization that I was able to treat my parents with compassion if I didn’t think of them as my parents. If I did think of my parents, I got dragged down by our history and everything that has caused us problems in the past. It was bad for several decades. Really bad.
I don’t remember exactly when my mentality changed. It had to be after my medical crisis because I well remember how depressed I was the three months after coming back to life because my parents were here. They used to visit every summer and my mother would visit for Lunar New Year as well (about four weeks for the former and two weeks for the latter). It was such a struggle each time they visited. I ended up feeling drained, depleted, and depressed.
I still had difficulties every time I talked to them on the phone. Until at some point, I started viewing them as an old couple who were on their last journey on earth. One of them had dementia, and the other was doing her best to take care of him. They are both in their mid-eighties, and they do not deserve to be dealing with this in their last years on earth.
To make it clear, I am not saying they should be excepted from it happening for any particular reason. I just mean it sucks for anyone who has to deal with it–no matter if they’re my parents or not. That was part of the realization that made it easier for me to deal with my parents. By depersonalizing the situation, I could find the compassion that was solely lacking.
Is that just my brain? I don’t know. I haven’t heard of anyone else who does that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it other people used it as a personal coping mechanism. I’m sure there are also some psychologists who would dissuade their clients from using it as it’s deliberately dissaciating in some sense. However, I’m consciously making the decision to do it, not doing it as a reflex. Does that make it acceptable? Don’t know.
This went in a completely unexpected direction, so I’ll pick it up tomorrow.