I think my little boat hit whitewater and then toppled end over end down a raging galactic waterfall this month. I lost sight of the moon and both my oars and now I'm bobbing up from the pool the falls had me pinned in for a few days. I guess this is what a photon feels like in a funhouse full of mirrors or something, sorta ping around in high speed a few billion times before you hit an eyeball and get lost inside a head, and it happens to be your own.
I think I got very angry about something one day, but it didn't process for several days, and then when it hit me I capsized into a frenzy of loathing. I don't often do that. Yeah, I get emotional power surges and yeah, I have to spin out sometimes like a Chinese lantern, but this was so over the top that even I could actually see my brain working wrong. It was impossible to feel alarmed about it because one cannot objectively feel that about a subjective self and feel the subjective self going on at the same time. It was very interesting watching this play out over about three days. I had control, and I still had ethics, but I had only the raw negative stuff melting down in there dealing with the thing that super ticked me off.
I really don't know how those of you who can't split yourselves handle life when it feels that ugly.
Anyway, I guess I finally had the uber meltdown I had put off all my adult life, and we're all fine here. No actual carnage. I did clean a little more vigorously, though. I doubt anyone noticed, because I kinda stealth clean under all the junk. That's the only way stuff can really disappear sometimes. I live in a house full of packrats.
So here's the deal lately. Back on arm work, and I'm pretty sure 80% of everyone I know on social medias would make a huge deal about it if it were them going through this level of hellish pain and disability dysfunction. Srsly, I have lived with this so long from such a young age that I have adapted into so many workarounds that I can fake everyone out, no one ever has a clue. But here is the truth.
I can't wax on wax off.
So this very simple exercise involves putting your hand flat on a folded towel on a counter and simply swiping big circles both clockwise and counterclockwise. My right arm did just fine. My left arm started out making a square. THAT is how much actual loss of control and function I've been living with in my left arm. If I weren't on gabapentin squashing the Lhermitte's zaps I was feeling every 30 seconds from neck to elbow 24/7 for years, I wouldn't have been able to do it at all. THAT is how close I have come to losing this arm.
And my right arm isn't fine and dandy. I can barely sign my name. I can barely log into a checkbook ledger. I wrote story ideas in spirals for years, well, over the last 3 years I've lost so much control that I had to stop doing that. I can't write. I drop things so constantly that I don't even get upset any more, even if the spill is outrageously stupidly ridiculously crazy, like all the coffee running underneath the microwave into a pile of bills on the other side kind of thing after I bump, fumble, and violently drop a mug. You guys have no idea.
Today my physical therapist noted that my left arm has gotten grainier since the previous ASTYM treatment the week before. That's a new thing, and if it continues it might mean something kinda scary. I've been told before that I have a fibrotic healing response, but we've never seen it happen so quickly in reaction to physical therapy itself.
From wikipedia- "Fibrosis is the formation of excess fibrous connective tissue in an organ or tissue in a reparative or reactive process. This can be a reactive, benign, or pathological state. In response to injury, this is called scarring, and if fibrosis arises from a single cell line, this is called a fibroma. Physiologically, fibrosis acts to deposit connective tissue, which can obliterate the architecture and function of the underlying organ or tissue. Fibrosis can be used to describe the pathological state of excess deposition of fibrous tissue, as well as the process of connective tissue deposition in healing. Defined by the pathological accumulation of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins, fibrosis results in scarring and thickening of the affected tissue, it is in essence an exaggerated wound healing response which interferes with normal organ function."
Fibrotic healing is an immune response, so if the immune system overreacts, the body makes too much scar tissue. Scar tissue makes it more difficult for lymph and blood fluids to move around, which results in less oxygen exchange, less nutrition availability, and backed up waste removal. My arms have already grown measurably weaker, even though I have been able to regain more mobility and flexibility.
Several people confide their fears to me privately, and I try to be available when someone is feeling desperate with their depression. It's occurring to me, again, that I have no one to talk to that actually drops everything and listens. I don't feel heard by anyone I talk to. I'm so used to this that I don't go out of my way making big deals about things. However, part of me feeling so ticked off this month is that I have been attempting to share a few things, and what I got back was dangerously close, in my mind, to being reminded that I'm lucky that I don't have to work.
I worked so hard getting enough of my arms back to drive myself in my own car to my own appointments.
I worked so hard getting enough of my hands back to be able to type. TO BE ABLE TO TYPE.
I worked so hard getting enough hand eye coordination back to be able to play on a game server with a friend.
I worked so hard for so long and I am still unable to comfortably hold a book and read for any length of time.
I shatter my phone cases so badly that I have taped them back around my phone.
I have dropped so many raw eggs that I stopped eating eggs.
I have dropped full coffee pots and crockpots and hot pans full of stuff for years.
I can barely use a mixer without a stand, and those are so heavy that I don't own one with a stand.
I once dropped a jar of spaghetti sauce in between my cart and a Walmart checkout conveyor. This tweet clicks back to source, and of course I blogged about it.
Apparently I don't whine enough or something, very few people seem to catch my alternative lifestyle of constantly crashing and smashing. Even further back I have a blog post about plowing a wine stand in a grocery store with the motor cart I wasn't able to drive very well, and although the bottles slithered everywhere for miles, not one of them broke, and employees came running from every direction when they heard that ruckus.
So now I'm telling you guys. My life sucks, so I eat 'em and smile.
And here come a few background notations, for those who haven't caught this yet.
- My childhood was so tough that I survived being ejected from a flipping vehicle without so much as a tylenol.
- Trying to share pain, sadness, and depression with people got me so much negativity in return for so many years that I barely respond at all to kindness. I stopped hugging people when I was ten. I had to learn how to do that in my 30s.
- Because of these things, my attempts at empathy for others while feeling glossed over or ignored is one of my fastest triggers to the ugliest feelings inside of me that I try to avoid it happening like the plague. I'm not good at tit for tat in convo exchange, and sooner or later I will try the people I love most by fire to make sure they are where they want to be with me.
Now, let's bring this into context.
- Today I saw the cutest baby in the physical therapy waiting room, severe Downs, and mommy knew all the right things to get that happy smile going.
- Later in the day I saw smartly dressed apparently well off grandparents getting crabby all over a healthy toddler in Walmart, when likely they were more upset about the kiddo's mama while they were stuck with the kid. Poor kiddo started crying when he realized he was about to be yanked and spanked (again?) by people with very mean faces.
If you need more context about life than that, you very seriously need to evaluate what your problem is.
In the meantime, I don't mind listening to others needing to talk, but the second it bumps toward being jealous of me not having to work, the hostility I feel is unstoppable and something I have to live with until bitter blackness seeps back out.
