Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: rebirth

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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New birthday, new life, who dis?

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I was musing in the last post about my rebirthday and how it’s coming up. Well, that’s what I meant the post to be about, but I meandered into family dysfunction once again. Which isn’t as far a stretch as you might think, actually. I have spent decades unlearning the toxic things I’ve been taught by my mother.

I’ve talked about this before, but I gave up on my father very early on. I knew from the time I was eight or nine that he did not like being a father. At all. He never interacted with my brother and me willingly other than to tell us to do something. I can’t remember him ever smiling or being happy about anything. He only ate Taiwanese food and was very radical pro-independent Taiwan. I have no issue with the latter, but I had a hunch that he only felt that way beacuse it personally benefited him. Again, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing because no one wants to be oppressed. I’m just saying that he did nothing that didn’t have a personal benefit.

When I went to college, I became a psychology major. I learned about narcissism as a disorder (which no longer exists), and it clicked in my brain. I knew that was my father to a T even if I didn’t have the word for it. With him, it really is as simple as he never thought about anyone other than himself.

Because of this, it was actually easy to understand him. He was consistently self-centered and as long as I kept that in mind, I knew what to expect from him. Oh, and he was a raging misogynist as well. Plus racist/nationalistic, and every other kind of ist. I knew better than to tell him anything of importance. Also, my mother would often tell me not to tell him something or the other because he could not handle it–according to her.

This is classic triangulation, and she was queen of it. Did she honestly think he could not handle the fact that I was bi or that I got a tattoo? Probably. Was she right? Probably. However, in a functional family, it would be up to him to decide how he would react to that information. And to be honest, my mother did not react well to either. At all. So it was ironic that she displaced her discomfort on my father.

How uncomfortable was she? When I got my tat, she mostly pulled a long face and let it stay that way for the whole talk. She commanded me not to tell my father, but I can’t remember if she said anything else. It was clear that she was very displeased, though. I was twenty-two, and I still hadn’t grasped yet just how dysfunctional my family was. In a functional family, she would have  voiced her displeasure, but then realize that it was my body and shrugged it off. She never had to actually accept it, but she could have at least been neutral.


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What needs an upgrading

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It’s my brithday today as I’m writing this. My real birthday, I mean. I think of September 3rd as my rebirthday, which is more important to me than my actual birthday. I have never cared about my real birthday. In fact, I used to hate my real birthday because I thought I should not be alive. In addition, I would think of all the milestones I had yet to meet and feel really depressed.

For many years, I refused to tell pople when my birthday was. When I first joined Facebook, I had to give a birthday. I didn’t want to because they refused to make it private. So I chose a day in January–just a random one. Then, every year I was surprised when I received birthday wishes on my FB wall on a random day in January. Now, FB doesn’t make you announce your birthday, thankfully.

I hated, hated, hated my birthday. I refused to tell anyone when it was, even if they asked me directly. It made some people mad that I wouldn’t tell them, which didn’t make sense to me, either. Why did they care when my birthday was? I mean, I do get that they want to celebrate it with me, but still. If I did not want to celebrate it, then why should they? That’s the part I did not understand.

Then, there was a phase when I didn’t care about it, but I saw no reason as an adult to celebrate it. Why announce it like a kid? I didn’t hate it as much as I did, but I certainly did not see any reason for it. If I were to be honest, I slightly looked down on people who were really excited about their birthdays. As an adult, I mean. Birthdays, like Christmas, were for kids. It was silly to care about them, but each their own.

Now, I don’t care about my birthday at all, but I also don’t look down on people who do. And I appreciate people who wish me a ahappy birthday because they love me and want to acknoledge my existenvce. That’s a nice sentiment and one that warms my heart.


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Birthing a new life

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It’s almost nine months since I died twice–and came back twice! The latter fact is very important to the narrative. Obviously. If that hadn’t happened, then I wouldn’t be able to write this. That still trips me up when I think about it, by the way. The fact that I should be dead. It’s also not something I find easy to talk about because it’s pretty much a conversation stopper. It’s not something I want to whip out casually, but it’s also very important. It literally changed my life, even if it didn’t change the day-to-day aspects of said life.

When I came out of the hospital, I said that I did not want to talk about what I was doing with my life for six months. I had the luxury and privilege of focusing on my recovery, not that I needed it. The biggest issue I had was my stamina, which was roughly 10% of what it was pre-trauma. But even that is lucky because so many people could not even get out of bed.

There was someone in an Ask A Manager thread a month ago who talked about having a stroke in January. She was unable to drive any longer and had to work from home on a reduced schedule. She had trouble typing and basically, her quality of life was dramatically reduced. Her whole life was turned upside down in the matter of minutes.

This is one of my issues with finding a support group. First of all, to put it bluntly, there aren’t many people who survive one cardiac arrest, let alone two–and a stroke. Those who do, have stories like the commenter on AAM. It feels almost cruel to stroll in with my story about evading death without a scratch. I know my story is my own and that I don’t need to feel guilty about it, but I do.

I’ve said many times that I don’t question why this happened to me. I’m not in great shape, don’t always eat the best, and am pretty sedentary. Why NOT me? I’m susceptible to bronchial issues, which is how it all started. Non-COVID-related walking pneumonia. That stressed my heart enough to trigger two cardiac arrests and then a stroke. I have no problem accepting that this all happened to me.

But, what happened next just may surprise you as it did me (yes, I just Buzzfeeded that sentence. What of it?).

I should have died. I did die. Twice. But I should not have come back. I. Should. Be. Dead.

You know what gets to me the most? Survivor’s guilt. I don’t ask why the initial events happened to me, but I question why I was the one who lived. Why me? My mom insists its because I’m a fighter, but that’s giving me way too much credit. I’m sure she also thinks it’s an act of God, but I think that’s giving ‘Him’ too much credit.


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