Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: frustration

Hidden (and undiagnosed) disabilities and me

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I’ve been playing Have a Nice Death (Magic Design Studios) daily on easy mode, and I still can’t beat the game. There are like half the enemies with less health and they do less moves.  Same with the bosses. And I still can’t beat the goddamn game. I can get through the first three worlds easy-breezy (well, mostly so, depending on what items I have–and we’ll get to that later (or not because that’s not the point of this post)), and then the fourth world presses me before the boss utterly destroys me. By the time I get to the final area (I think? Who knows? I have not got past the penultimate boss yet), I’m worn down.

Here’s what I noticed. This is a roguelike-lite that depends a great deal on twitch responses. And coordinated responses. Neither of which I’m good at. There is a thing in the last area in which you have to jump up disappearing platforms and then jump through narrow slits that have spikes pointing out. I can’t do it. I don’t mean I won’t do it, but I literally can’t. My brain just won’t process it in real time. So the second time I went into this area, I had full health and all my heals (three ‘big’ ones). I had to do a section like this to get to the mini-boss before the big boss. By the time I got to the mini-boss, I had no heals left because I used them up on the fucking disappearing platforms/spiky slits bullshit.

This is when I had it confirmed for me that things that I have thought of as minor inconveniences were actually probably hidden disabilities that I had never had diagnosed. I am not faulting my mother for this because, I mean, these kinds of things aren’t even dealt with well in our time now, let alone forty to fifty years ago. Also, I don’t even know what exactly this would be. I was talking about it with a friend, and she mentioned dyspraxia when I said I was clumsy. After looking it up, I didn’t think that was what it was, exactly. This was in a conversation about me tripping on things and knocking things over.

From what I’ve read, dyspraxia is about poor physical coordination and not being able to do physical things well that other people can do, two-handed things like playing an instrument or not being able to type well. Hm. I’m reading more now and there’s a section on perception that really rang true for me. Sensitivity to light/sound/touch, not being able to gauge distances correctly, etc. The latter has only gotten worse after my physical crisis, by the way.

I’ll have to read more into dyspraxia. Maybe it will help me deal with the problem. Additionally, it’s comforting to know that maybe it’s not just me being a clumsy oaf (which was my friend’s point), but an actual thing. This, by the way, is what I like best about diagnoses–it’s a way to say, “It’s not you being clumsy or not paying attention–it’s your brain.” Or more to the point, my DNA.

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What constitutes progress

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I’ve been home from the hospital for four weeks, which has made me reflective. That’s twice as long as I was in the hospital, as difficult as that is to believe. It feels both longer and shorter than four weeks simultaneously. On the one hand, I have a hard time believing what happened to me happened at all. On the other, it seems so far away from me. When I read about what happened to me in my brother’s Caring Bridge journal, it’s as if I’m reading about a fictional Minna. It’s partly because I wasn’t awake for it, obviously, but it’s also because I’m back to ‘normal’ with only my stamina still low. It’s hard to believe something traumatic happened to me when all outwardly indicators are gone.

I don’t use the walker at all any longer. Not that I used it in the first place. I brought it with me on my morning constitutional just in case and used it a few times so I wouldn’t have to work as hard walking, but I never *needed* it. I never used the commode my brother put together or the puppy pads. I wore the pull-ups (like Depends) for a month, but never used them. The only thing I use is the shower chair–and that’s just so I can wash my feet. Oh, and when the nursing aide comes to wash my hair. It’s nice to have, though, in case I do want to sit down.

I’ve been frustrated as I might have mentioned before because my progress has slowed to a crawl. As I said before (and this is the humblebrag part), I came back with a vengeance and was probably around 85% of my physical capabilities when I woke up (minus the stamina, obviously. But I don’t consider that part of the physical capability, though it is, really). I may not admit it out loud, but I was pretty proud of myself when the physical therapist (PT), a day after we met, said that she didn’t have anything else to teach me. Remember, they were talking about months of rehab once I left the hospital and were pretty dire about what my abilities would be if I woke up. A big if.


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Learning to Tolerate Frustration

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I hate weeding. I hate it so much. If I had a top ten list of things I hate to do, well, it wouldn’t be on it, but it would be close. I especially hate it when it’s sunny and dank out as it is today. I sit there, sweating, resenting the hell out of the glowing orb in the sky. Let me be clear. Even though I’m a cold weather kind of gal, I like te sun shining in the sky. However, not when it’s dank. I fucking hate humidity because I sweat like a pig. When I used to read ‘health articles’ , one of the general tips was that you should workout until you break a heavy sweat. I break in a heavy sweat just by stepping out into the sun, so it’s not a good barometer for me.

Anyway, I was weeding today and just thinking nasty thoughts towards the weeds I was pulling out of the backyard. It seems so pointless in that even if you get the roots, there will always be more weeds to take their place. I will say, however, that I like breaking down boxes with a box cutter. There’s something immensely satisfying about destroying boxes to their basics. I also will say that I like manual labor as it makes me Zen in a way. I don’t think about anything as I’m working with my hands, which is a relief for me. My brain is constantly humming, and the more I try not to think about things, the more my thoughts race around in my brain. To be able to have it blessedly free of thoughts is a miracle, but is it worth doing the manual labor? Box-breaking, yes. Weeding, no.

I’m working on being more flexible in general, but it’s difficult. I find comfort in my routines, so anything that fucks with that garners a massive side eye from me. However, doing a few hours of housework every day has been good in that besides giving me time away from my thoughts, it also makes me feel productive in a way that I don’t with doing mental work. Clearing out the garage and seeing the actual progress is satisfying in a way that writing two-thousand words isn’t.

As many of you know, I don’t cook. Many years ago, I did bake, though, and there was something so soothing about handling the dough. It’s tactile, and it feels wonderful to have it ooze through my fingers. Then, placing the lump of dough (or lumps) in the oven and waiting for it to form into something delicious and edible was great, too. The smell wafting from the oven would tantalize me until I pulled it out, all brown, smelling earthy, yeasty, and sweet, and ready to be shoved down my gullet.

I did do a little bit of cooking. I made a seven-layer dip, a potato corn chowder with a whole tub of sour cream that was fucking amazing, and kung pao chicken. They were all tasty, especially the chowder, but it was so time-consuming. It made me feel good, though, to have this huge pot of chowder ready to be eaten, and what’s better on  blustery Minnesota winter day than a steaming bowl of corn chowder?


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The Frustration of Art

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I remember fondly my twenties for one reason: I wrote as if the world wasn’t watching, and I was damn good. I reread some of the things I wrote back then with amazement. My writing was fresh and alive, and the words just popped on the page. I’m talking specifically about my fiction because I didn’t start blogging until later, but it remains true for the first few years I blogged. I was good, damn it, and it actually saddens me to read my old works because I feel as if I’ve lost a step or seven in the passing years. Why? I have a few reasons. Let’s tackle fiction first.

One reason I started writing fiction was because of my frustration at not seeing stories that resonated with me as a Taiwanese American bisexual woman. Even now with literature being more diverse than it was twenty years ago, finding those specific parameters aren’t easy. Taiwanese is a subset of Asian, and we’re not talked about very much. Hell, most people only know that we’re great at producing electronic goods. We used to be known for manufacturing cheap goods as well, but that’s slowly gone away.

Most Americans don’t know or care about the fraught history of Taiwan concerning its relationship with China, which is frustrating, but understandable. It has no affect on Americans, so why should they care? It’s not something I write about much, but it definitely influences my writing. In fact, I think I may inject more of it into my writing, come to think of it. Anyway, I don’t have a problem with making my protagonists Asian, specifically Taiwanese. Or women. Or bisexual. The problem is that I’ve been writing the same variance of a story for many years, and it’s becoming stale to me. I’ve reread some of the more recent fiction works I’ve written, and while they’re still good, they’re not singing to me.

To clarify, I can read something I’ve written and recognize that it’s a solid piece of work that might interest a reader who’s never read anything of mine. To me, however, it’s old hat. In addition, I like to put in black cats because I’m a huge black cat lover, and I want to mention my passion for taiji as well. Again, these aren’t problems in and of themselves, but I feel as if I’m in a rut. In addition, my fiction writing has gotten more prosaic, and I’m not entirely pleased with it. I recently wrote a sequel to a mystery I wrote sixteen years ago, trying to recapture the feeling of the original, and I just didn’t feel I did it justice. The protagonist is one of my favorites in a large part because she has no fucks to give, and she’s mostly amoral. That’s not fair to her, really. She has a moral code; it’s just different than most people’s. God, I love her so much. I really wanted to bring her back, but I’m a different person than I was when I first wrote her, and she’s different now, too.

I feel as if I’m restricting myself too much in my fiction by making my protagonists like me every time. I’m trying to mix it up, but I really want to see someone like me in fiction. I think the problem is that I need to get that novel published before I can move on. I’m not good at the business end of art, which is something I’m realizing in my blogging as well. I have this vague idea that I can self-publish, but if I want to go that route, I’ll have to do more of the business shit myself. That’s not something I’m interested in at all, but I could learn if I choose to.


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Kathy Rain: A Girl After My Own Heart

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badass katmobile!
Hurtling towards oblivion.

In my desperation to find a game that I can play an a post-Dark Souls III world, I started rummaging through my pile of shame. Any gamer who uses Steam knows exactly what I’m talking about–all the games you bought during Steam sales that you promised yourself you would play at one time or another. Games you normally wouldn’t look twice at or games you’ve always wanted but are too cheap to buy full price*.

I’ve tried a few, and none have really kept my interest until I stumbled on Kathy Rain, a point-and-click adventure game. It’s a game I wanted because I like mystery novels and have been trying to find a good detective game. They’re hard to find for many reasons that I’m not going to go into in this post, but this one looked promising. The tagline is even: A Detective is Born. The protagonist is the eponymous Kathy Rain, a journalism major in college. She’s mouthy, smokes like a fiend, and drives a motorcycle–a girl after my own heart.

It’s set in the ’90s and has the crunchy pixel graphics that I normally don’t like, but it suits the game. I don’t find it intrusive at all, and the closeups of the faces are surprisingly good. The basic story is that Kathy’s college roommate, Eileen, tells Kathy that her grandfather has died. She goes to the funeral, and then she finds out that something weird happened to her grandfather many years ago. She didn’t know about it because her mother took her away from her (paternal) grandparents when she was young, and she  hasn’t been back.

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