Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: new life

Dog days of summer

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One of the most frustrating things about having a background in psychology and a fairly in-depth knowledge of my own behavior and why I act the way I do is that it doesn’t make it any easier for me to actually do anything about it. In fact, it makes it harder sometimes because then I will berate myself on top of not doing what I need to do. I can sit there with my (last) therapist and say, “I procrastinate on doing what I need to do because I dread the negative consequences if I mess it up.” I make a lot of sense when I talk about my issues, and before my last therapist, I was able to snow the three or four therapists I had before her.At the end of the last post, I mentioned that it was hard to fix my bad behavior, even if I knew what I was doing wrong.

This is not a humblebrag, by the way–me saying that I could run rings around most of my therapists/counselors. It’s a flat-out brag. Or rather, it’s the truth. I am really fucking smart, especially when it comes to people and motivations. Including my own. I’m a bit of a Cassandra in that I know what is going to happen before it happens, but people don’t want to/can’t hear me. Then, I have to watch the shit happen as I predicted without hollering, “I fucknig told you so!” afterwards.

My mother on the other hand, not only doesn’t know her own issues, she denies she has any. That’s not completely fair. She knows some of her issues such as that she’s anxious about everything, but she has an excuse/reason for it all. She justifies her anxiety, even when I point out that it won’t help anything to be anxiaus about her situation. It’s not as if I don’t have compassion. I have anxiety as well, and I have a hell of a time keeping it under control. Well, I used to before my medical crisis. It’s not as bad now, but it’s slowly creeping up again.

The difference, though, is that I try to mitigate my anxiety whereas my mother does not. She displaces it by dumping it on my brother and me–repeatedly. Ironically for a therapist, she has every excuse not to see a therapist herself. The only time she did was when she had to for her practicum. She still talks to that woman as her mentor (my mother’s mentor), but they no longer do therapist/client sessions. As far as I know. I have mentioned to my mother more than once that she should see a therapist. This was usually at the point where I was about to snap because I could not take it any longer.


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It’s nearly my (new) birthday

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We’re coming up on my third birthday. Obviously, not my real third birthday, but the third anniversary of the day I died (twice, and came back to life). That was September 3rd, 2021, and it’s a day forever etched in my mind. Which is funny because I don’t remember any of it. My brother has told me at some length what happened, but I don’t remember any of it. The last thing I actually remember is messaging with Ian the day before about Nioh 2. After the expercience when I was home and scrolling through my messages to him, I did remember that.

When my brother and Ian told me what happened, it was as if I was listening to a story about someone else. It’s really weird to hear about it when I have no recollection about it. I only know about it as a fait accompli. I read the last page of the story without reading the beginning. Or rather, the hundredth or so page because it was NOT the end of my story.

I have to say, though, that the high I felt for the first year has almost completely faded. When I first woke up, I was amazed and delighted to still be alive (once I digested what had happened to me). One simply cannot live in that heightened state continuously, though, and it was inevitable that the high would wear off. Frankly, it’s amazing that it lasted a year, to be honest.

For that first year, though, I was high on life. This was strange for me because I’m a pessimistic person by nature. I try to rein it in, but it bleeds out at my edges. I see the negative in everything, which is partly the way I was raised. My mother is the same way, which is who I get it from. She will always point out the negative and complain about it. She doesn’t even realize she’s doing it. I, on the other hand, am very aware that I do it. It doesn’t stop me from thinking it, but I try to keep it under wraps. It doesn’t often work.

For my first rebirth year, I walked around full of gratitude and awe. I marveled at the smallest thing such as how gorgeous the view outside my living room window looked. Ice cold water was so good as well. In fact, my brotehr teased me in the hospital beacuse I kept asking for ice water and then raving about how good it was. He laughed and told me that I did not have to thank them for bringing me water; it was their job. I retorted that it wasn’t their job to bring me a glass of water every few hours and even if it was, it didn’t hurt to thank them for being so attentive.


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Nine months and birthing a new person

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It’s been nine months since that fateful night. That’s enough time to create a new person–which is pretty much what I did. Yes, I’m the same person as I was before that night, but I’m also–not. This is something I’ve had to live with for the past nine months–the tension between two seemingly disparate things. I’ve mused often about how everything is the same and everything is not the same at the same time.

I’m sitting on my couch, sipping coffee, watching YouTube videos (in this case, an infuriating video by Legal Eagle about how cops don’t have a legal duty to protect individuals) while eating grocery store sushi. Shadow is in his little cat house taking a long cat nap. The sun is shining, but it’s not too hot out. I’m sipping a low sodium V8 as I’m typing this post. This is on the actual 9-month anniversary and will be posted the day after.

Up until this point, I’ve been coasting along and just appreciating the fact that I’m still here. I call these my bonus days, savoring each and every one. I should not be here so the fact that I am with nothing more than a bit of short-term memory issues is truly miraculous.

The first two months, I worked on getting back my stamina. Wait. Getting even more granular, the first week out of the hospital, I was waiting for my eyesight to get better. I spent most of my time at my computer. Not being able to read computer fonts was frustrating, not to mention worrying. My brother enlarged the font on my laptop, which helped, but I still took twice as long to read something as I normally would have.

In addition, the faces of all people (and my cat) were melty/fused. Everyone had one big eye and a candle wax-looking mouth. It was really bizarre and disconcerting. I could gauge how my eyesight was improving by how Shadow’s face was doing. His was the first to revert back to normal. I rejoiced when he had two eyes and a distinct mouth again.

The first two months, I had a nurse’s aide who came every week to wash my hair. I didn’t need her after a month, but my mother kept pushing to have her (and the weekly nurse check). When I pushed her on it, it turned out that it was more superstitious than practical. She wanted the weekly nurse check because they could catch anything wrong with me. But that wasn’t their job. Yes, they took my vitals, but it wasn’t as if they were doing a full physical every week. my mom helped me dry off after my showers, but I didn’t need her help after a few weeks. I allowed her to do it for a few more weeks just because it made her feel better.


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Can’t get over it

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One thing that I have difficulty with is accepting that both everything has changed and nothing has changed at the same time. When I recite what happened to me, a sense of surrealness comes over me. How could that have happened and I’m still standing to talk about it? Once again, walking (non-COVID-related) pneumonia, leading me to passing out and collapsing. Two cardiac arrests and an ischemic stroke. Within twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes. Such a short amount of time to completely change my life. Twenty minutes in which I died twice and came back to life twice. Twenty minutes in which my life was hanging on the balance. Not just those twenty minutes, though. My life hung in the balance for a week after that. It’s all so strange because I was unconscious for all that. My brother never calls it a coma because the doctors didn’t call it that.

I looked it up. A coma is when someone is unconscious and not responsive to external stimuli. That was me so I guess we can call it a coma. My mother insists that I listened when she told me to move my extremities. But the doctors/nurses said that wasn’t conscious on my part, but involuntary. I usually just say I was unconscious, which works as well. But in looking it up on Mayo’s website, they say a coma only lasts a few weeks. After that it starts edging into a vegetative state. It surprises me because I tend to think of a coma as months so I thought my one week didn’t qualify because it was too short. I never thought there might be an upper limit to the length of a coma.

I was out for a week. Unconscious, I mean. My brother was thinking about whether to pull the plug or not when I woke up. You could not write it any better, honestly. My brother was on his way to the hospital to talk about it when he got a call from the doctor saying I had awakened.

Side note: I have commented several times about how much my brother did for me during the dark days. I could not have made it through without him and he did it without a single complaint. I can’t thank him enough for it and the one thing I’m most grateful for is that he didn’t have to make that decision–pulling the plug on me, I mean.


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2022 musings and rants

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I don’t do holidays in general and especially not New Year’s. I did resolutions for a few years, but then realized that I was just setting myself up to fail. I don’t do well with goals. Erm. That’s not entirely true. I do well with some goals. Such as when I tried to lose weight in my twenties. I did TOO well and slipped into anorexia/bulimia. That’s one of my issues–I do things too hard, turning a positive into a negative.

This is one of my issues with NY resolutions–making them way too big. Losing a hundred pounds, getting into a serious relationship, writing a best-selling novel, etc. There’s nothing wrong with dreaming big, but there’s also nothing wrong with being realistic. In fact, when I set my goals too high, I lose all motivation and stop doing the thing altogether.

I suffer from depression and anxiety, which plays into my lack of motivation. I can have all the plans in the world, but actually executing them is another story. If I have a detailed plan, then I’m most likely to follow through. That’s what happened when I went to San Francisco for a year for grad school, when I got my cats, and, yes, both the times I went on a diet (that turned into an eating disorder or two). The first example is the prime one as I agonized over it for months. I had lived in Minnesota all my life and mostly on my own. Going to San Francisco and living with housemates was such a different thing for me–and I didn’t know how to deal with it.

I brought it up in therapy several times , worrying endlessly over every little thing. I have to say that having my mother around for three months was hard in part because she vocalized the constant anxiety I have rattling around in my head. I’ve learned to keep it inside because no one needs to hear that, but my mother has never learned that lesson. If anything, she’s gotten worse in her old age–I think it’s because she’s around my father all the time and feels she has to justify everything to him.

Anyway, back to going to San Francisco for a year. Here’s a thing you have to know about me. I hate everything. Hear me out. The way my brain works, I can see a million things wrong with any given thing. I come by it honestly, but it’s also part of my DNA. K and  I used to joke about how different our families are. When she was having marital issues, her mom said she would be fine with her husband or with him. I commented that if I were in the same situation, my mom would point out why I was fucked either way. There are good and bad things about each of these mentalities, but it’s frustrating to always see everything that could possibly go wrong.


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