mental leveling and preparation
I have a slew of articles for this site I am putting up. Titles illuminating the lasting effects of having to contend with these crazy mortality conversations you have with yourself and others, the what’s now, what’s next and hopefully some things and links to places to get some more help in understanding all this stuff. I realize I am in a unique predicament to relay a pretty fucking healthy way of reasoning all of this out. As I think I have mentioned before, I had seen some therapists in my life because I lived in NY and that is what you did. The city was full of a plethora of options and I saw a handful that never particularly felt enlightening or that they were going to open some door to some new level of peace. That I had to find on my own.
I think that if you were living an amazing life and you were piddling along with not a care in the world and you get leveled by this shit, PTSD is a very real thing. For me, I couldn’t tell you I suffered any particularly measurable level of anything fabulous in life prior to my first dissection, so you could guess it was something like just a continuing theme of disappointment and some realizations as time passed from that point. I thought I deserved it, to be honest. I was living out of the home I grew up in and had been for most of my senior year in high school and THAT Fall, after my boyfriend at the time told me he was leaving to sing for a band he still actually does still tour with, well, my heart broke into a million pieces. He was the first person I felt I could trust not to leave me and my immature realizations as an 18 year old ended up truly devastating the internal cording in my body. Genetics or not, there is nothing to suggest there is a definable timeline these aneurysms happen, which leads me to believe outside factors like stress and heartache absolutely have a place in lighting the fuses to the bombs threaded through my body. I did it to myself. I certainly didn’t have the emotional tools to steady my expectations through that time because I was young and love was something magical and life sustaining at that time.
This reminds me of that shit like in the Gift and some other often absurd concepts where you would be able to blame yourself for your own failures. I hate that people say you need to just positively think yourself out of a bad situation, like the pain and hurt should become invisible because imagining better is all you need to do. I think PTSD is sometimes largely a rejection that bad things happen to everyone, good and bad. It is a rejection largely to life. I have argued for my own goodness, hell people have told me I should have children because of that goodness resonating. I am one to think about everyone before making a judgment. And I was adopted and had a really hard hard life from the beginning to be honest. I did not grow up in an encouraging and loving place. I grew up resented and felt pretty goddamn out of place with people who I felt didn’t want to listen to anything I had to say ever. Even now my presence and participation is questioned and questionable.
Don says often enough they don’t make a pill for fucked over. I think that is absolutely the truth which is why I could not personally advocate for medication to dull the sense and mind after these kinds of events. Yes, you are fucking depressed. You almost died, and many of you enjoyed single digit life survival chances, who the fuck isn’t going to find that if not depressing, certainly something for future consideration? The closest I ever got to anything close to any mood stabilization or anti-depressant was the seizure medicine, Depakote. I had a seizure in an airport a decade plus ago and they put me on it. Unfortunately it made me so hungry I could eat a house–and I couldn’t reason away the weight gain to stave off the once every few years seizure incidents when I smoked weed so it seemed kind of over the top. I have aural freaky deja-vu migraines now but no seizures in some time. I stopped taking it because that kind of hunger is painful, so why do it? I am not into torturing myself for anyone’s purposes. So it seemed reasonable that I made the final decision there. I am sure many people would argue with my reasoning, but I consider the human mind a magical and beautiful thing that doesn’t always need the crutch of medical and chemical manipulation to understand stability. Says the semi pothead, I know.
I think if your issues are chemically that your brain is unsound that certain antidepressants might work. I knew a number of people growing up on them who seemed to have their personalities milk-washed in an unnatural state of nothingness. I have felt an enormous burden of pain in my life–both physically, spiritually, socially, every ally a person needs to live a life. I did nothing but be born which I had no decision in–so how could I take any responsibility for any of that, number one, and number two, if you kill your ability to feel your deepest pain, you are also burdening yourself to feel none of your biggest joy. My issues have never been about anything related to a chemical imbalance. My issue is people are fucking assholes and you need to sometimes just walk away to live your best life. I find there is absolutely nothing wrong with that–and I have used that measure of success to make enough decisions that I just might know what I’m talking about–sometimes it is that damn simple.
