Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: issues

But faaaaaamily

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I want to talk about my family today because I’m so tired. I’ve been talking about what I want to do with my life, and I derailed myself by talking about my family in my last post. More specifically, about my father slipping further and further into dementia, and how my mother is dealing with it.

Or not. I mentioned that she is pinning her hopes on him returning to normal, whatever that means. She knows that dementia is irreversible, and yet. She has confided to me that she does things expecting him to return to himself.

I’m doing my best not to snap at her, but it’s hard. She is very rigid in her expectations about what is and isn’t acceptable. when I was in my twenties, I told her several important things about myself that she vigorously rejected. She didn’t just not like what I had to say; she hated it. She hated that I got a tattoo (I have four now); she hated that I was bisexual; she hated that I chose not to get married and have children; she hated that I decided to study Taiji. Those were all heresy in her eyes, but there was one that was even worse–I think.

When I told her that I did not believe in her god any longer. I told her I no longer believed, and true to her wont, she simply let it fly over her head. That’s her way of dealing with unpleasantry–not accepting it it all. A few years after I told her I was bi, I said something casually about liking women, and she said dismissively, “Oh, are you still like that? I thought you were over it.”

So, yes, she did not accept that I had left Christianity. She had people from her mother church (LA branch) praying at me as they circled me, their hands near my face. They asked if they could touch me, and it was a hell no to that. I was so freaked out, especially when some of them started speaking in tongues. NOT a way to try to convince someone to return to the fold, I’ll tell you that much.

But when you’re that deep in, you just can’t see it. Just like people say, “I’ll pray for you,” thinking it’s a positive thing. They don’t realize if you’re not part of their group/cult/denomination, it’s at best, neutral, and at worst, repulsive/scary/offensive.

That’s not completely fair. I’m sure for some people, the positive intent is there even if the receiver of the prayer is not part of the group. Some people can think of it as the equivalent of warm wishes and be at peace with that.


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When it rains, the umbrella breaks

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So. Today I went to the car so I could go to the grocery store. The battery was dead. Ugh. I called my brother to confirm how to jumpstart the battery. He gave me a battery charger years ago beacuse I’m single and he’s the one I would call to demand a jump from (and have done). I got the car going, which is great! But the emergency exclamation point light was on (which, I’ll say was the case yesterday–and I thought it was probably low air pressure in my tires as that has happened before), but then another light came on. A message saying to check the hybrid system with an angry red warning symbol.

Well, hell. I Googled it and discovered that it could range anywhere from the car is about to immediately explode to the sensors might be bruised.  I have done the very mature thing of deciding this isn a problem for next-week me, which is the adult equivalent of putting my fingers in my ears and pretending I can’t hear someone screaming at me.

My brother called me back and told me it could be a fuse. I really hope that’s all it is. There’s another light on, but I know what that one is. It’s an exclamation point in parentheses–which my brother said is a tire that is flat on the  bottom. I can see it now that he’s said it, but I always thought of it as an exclamation point in parentheses (though I call them brackets). I did Google it the first time I saw it and realized it had to do with air pressure, but I never made the connection to the image. I don’t go by images–I go by words.

So this is a angry red triangle with an exclamation point in it. My brother insists it’s orange from the pic he saw on the internet, but it’s red in person. Or this could ba a blue dress/gold dress situation. Anyway, as I was talking to my brother, I went out to the car bectause my brother said there should be another message, and I had thought I had seen one.

I did not. Instead, the check hybrid system message and angry red exclamation triangle both started flickering on and off. Like, it was there, then it would disappear. A few seconds later, it was back> I informed my brother what was happening, and he said it might be a fuse.

This is what I think is wild. The message covers everything from a fuse being wonky to the hybrid battery being bad. That’s a five dollar problem and a several thousands of dollars problem. It makes my head hurt to think that it could be anything from one to the other. Five bucks could fix the problem or it might take $8,000. If it’s anything close to the latter, it might be time to buy a new car.


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More lessons I’ve learned

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There are many lessons I’ve learned from my medical trauma. I mentioned some of them in my previous post and I want to expand on the topic in this one. When I started that post, my intent was to talk about my family dysfunction, but I got caught up in other things.

I would never wish what happened to me on anyone. It was terrifying, confusing, and messed with me on many levels. However, ultimately, I believe it was a net positive for me. Why? Let me count the ways. One, it cleared up the is there an afterlife question for me (no). Two, it made all my body issues disappear. Three, it helped me see that life is short and that we really do only have one life. Er, maybe not so much that as I did die twice. Four, I’m cute AF! Five, I don’t have the patience for nitpicky bullshit. Six, I have a point of view that is unique and worth expressing. There are some other ones, but they’re similar to the ones I’ve stated.

I used to have low self-esteem. I thought I had to earn the right to live. I was disgusting, toxic, and bad for the planet. Yes, that’s what I earnestly believed for decades. I thought that it would be better if I was dead, but I didn’t have the courage to kill myself.  I’m not saying this was sane or logical, but it was the way my brain worked at the time. Therapy couldn’t shake the belief that I had to earn the right to live.

Taiji helped me start inching my way to a healthier outlook. I could go into a crowd without flinching, even if I still didn’t like it. I was more at ease with my body, even if  I still avoided looking in the mirror. I didn’t like the way I looked, but I didn’t hate it, either. I had reached a detente  with my body (and my face), which was the most I could hope.


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Six month retrospection/introspection

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It’s been six months since I had my medical trauma. It feels like no time has passed and all the time in the world has passed simultaneously.  The first month after I came home from the hospital, it was all I could think about–when I was awake. Not why it happened to me because I’m nobody special in that way. I don’t eat fantastically and I don’t take the best care of myself. Yes, I do Taiji which helps, but I’m not hardcore about my health. I smoked two cigarettes a day, broken up into quarters; I started with a half cig in the morning. I like chocolate and while I’m GF/DF for sensitivity reasons, that doesn’t mean the substitutes are healthy by any means. I do eat five to seven servings of fruits and vegetables a day, but that’s about as much as I pay attention to nutrition.

When people asked if I wondered why it happened to me, I always say no. Why wouldn’t it happen to me? I’m not exempt and it makes total sense that it did happen to me. Once again, to recap, I had walking non-COVID-related pneumonia that led to two cardiac arrests and a stroke. Pneumonia leading to cardiac arrests isn’t  uncommon, though two of them and a stroke probably isn’t as common. It’s hard to get exact stats on this kind of thing, but I admit I haven’t researched it that extensively.

What I do wonder is why and how I got so lucky as to survive essentially intact. Without much effort on my part, I might add. Remember, my brother was told that I would probably need to do months if not years of rehab. All the therapists I saw emphasized the long road ahead. The occupational therapist said it could take up to two years for something to get back to normal–if it happened at all. That was the underlying theme, that I could not count on anything returning to normal at all.

I had gone without oxygen for an undetermined amount of time.  The doctors were clear with my brother that my chance of survival was not good. At all. And if I did survive, I’d almost certainly have brain damage. They questioned whether I would be able to walk and talk again–and if I could, to what degree. I cannot stress enough that the idea of me returning to any version of normal was not on anyone’s radar. Me waking up at all was the best possible outcome; the doctors took great pains to make sure my family knew the odds of me coming back to life.


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