The Return To Innocence

So, my thoughts have been spinning merrily amidst what could be a spiraling episode of... Oh, fuck, probably everything at once. After I had a chat with three doctors about the consequences of stress-related memory loss, I quietly decided to start a private mindfulness therapy, which I have only been sharing with the psychologist, for advice, while I move forward in my own brain to stop my own brain from destroying my mindstate.

Tomorrow, I see my general physician and have her write a referral for the local hyperbaric oxygen therapy center. Although it's a bit premature, as they have yet to call me back about an initial consultation. While I was filling out their online New Patient form, I started wondering if they would even take someone like me, with two dozen illness. Even though cerebral palsy is the cornerstone. I just feel so excited about it. That's a good thing. I can still most of my emotion things.

What I find beautiful and fascinating about my private therapy protocol is that almost nobody believes me. I have been stuck in something insane since 2010. Why would they believe I would "get better" now, so many years later after therapy and medications and meditative exercises? Then again, none of them have been in long term therapy or medication. It really does take many years to spur a change this massive. Hence the secret protocol, which includes a possible medication update and potential oxygen therapy.

I don't expect anyone to believe me. I don't expect anyone to believe in my desire to change with this therapy protocol. How could they? Why would they? I am the same as I was when symptoms started. But I don't want their belief. I don't really want support if there is no actual active knowledge. How can you say "Hey, I've been there, I get it, fist bump in solidarity" unless you really have gone through a similar structure of treatment repeatedly for a grab bag of illnesses that mindfuck you for no reason?
Actual legitimate question, BTW.
If you're also a parent of someone with interconnected psychiatric and neurological disorders, I would love input, because when I try to explain these things to my mom who only has hereditary ADHD controlled via lifestyle, my emotion-brain starts shutting down so my technical-brain can word at her, and I know she wants less science and more human. I'm trying. I just cannot get past that very protective mental guardian who shields emotion-Joanna from Outside. And oh, as much as I love Serena, she feels it is easier and gentler to let me sleep while she and Koan the calico kitten organize and compartmentalize all the Me. Ananta works hard enough balancing out all the neuroweird that Alicia in my private epileptic Wonderland can't reach. I haven't had much success in psychically merging with Asha. We are working out my dissociative and depersonalization episodes first.

I will do this. It will happen. Steps have been severely taken. Hard to talk. But if you think you get it, I would love a discussion via Private Message. I am willing to reveal bits and pieces of my Rebuild Joanna Brain Project to acquire tips and advice from those who get it.

Now, see, I view many people as family beyond my blood family - who shall remain the besy family I would want. Various people in my social circle - friends plus family - have always stood with me. I will always need and want that. But for those who are truly normal and looking at me with confusion, puzzlement, exasperation, fear, anger... and the type of condesencing that means pats on the head, chuckling, and "I love you sweetie. Of course you'll change." "You do nothing. You never help. You are too self absorbed, you don't think, you claim memory loss. It is all right, dear. We are used to hit. Just finish writing." Followed by another hair tousle. I'm used to it. It's routine because I am me.
I am not out to prove them wrong, not entirely. I am out to prove to myself that my neuroplasticity really might eradicate the worst of the annoying symptoms.
Maybe this whole autistic ramble came from my hope and excitement over this slow gentle therapeutic process. If loved ones want me to speed it up, I can turn away for a while to meditate.

All I know is that my own husband has been putting up with me forever, and that says something huge.

Love you, LJ family.

Since I am still in shock, I feel like I'm moving through the Kubler-Ross stages of grief completely out of order. I've accepted that Rose is dead and I am deeply depressed. While I held her waiting for Adam, I knew she was dying and I was already angry and bargaining. When the vet said she was critical, I accepted and realized she was probably going to die. When she coded and they couldn't revive her, I accepted and understood, then went right on to bargaining again, blaming myself and how I just kept waiting. It became anger, wondering how the fuck a five-year old cat with a clean bill of health could suddenly present with congestive heart failure and die so quickly. I became angry that we hadn't figured it might be genetic. I became depressed that I couldn't have known. I still blamed myself for not finding a way to take her to the clinic sooner.
When we held her body, I went through acceptance and depression again, followed by deep gratefulness that at least she waited until Adam came home, that Adam got to hold her, that she knew how much we loved her. Depression again. Acceptance.
No denial. Slight isolation.
I updated Facebook right there in the clinic's comfort room, since in this age of instant communication it was much faster than a sobbing phone chain. We finished holding Rose and signed the private cremation form. We walked to the car. My best friend Beca called and all I could hear was her screams, and I cried. She and her husband James came over with food: Whole rotisserie chickens that I ripped into because I hadn't eaten all day. Alcohol because it helped dull the pain. Being a doctor, she commanded that I keep taking Klonopin, as well as baclofen, two to three times a day just to keep my mind and body from shattering.
I realized how desperately I needed them there, and she knew it, and late that night she brought me to bed, fed me my drugs, and climbed into bed with me. Adam was downstairs on the couch with James.
I clung to my plushie ginger tabby Haiku all night. Beca and James left early this morning, and Adam came up to sleep with me. I woke up and instinctively reached behind my head to the soft pillow where Rose would be sprawled out, and I made a soft whimper of intense pain, because she wasn't there.
And Jupiter has been meowing, softly. Meowing and meowing. I don't know how much he understands yet. Luna has been so quiet, but always there, always ready for a hug. It's only been a day. I've only shed a few tears. The real grieving hasn't begun.
People are gently discussing taking me across the street to the new shelter on Solstice or after Christmas, to let me adopt a cat. Others have suggested waiting a few months. I cannot wait. Because I don't believe in waiting for too long. My heart cannot take it. I cannot spent months mourning and empty when a pet dies, otherwise I may lose my mind. See... After Tuesday died in November 2006, I spent four agonizing months with a growing, burning, echoing hole inside me, until I begged Adam to take me to the old shelter on Rothgeb just to look, just to see... and that was where Luna stole my heart and filled my soul. And one year later, my other best friend Charlotte begged us to come see her former coworker's new litter of five female gingers, and Adam picked up one, looked into those wide bright sunny eyes, and announced she was coming home. And Rose took our hearts and ran.
I never expected the baby of the family to be the first to die.
I think we will always be a three-cat house now.
I want and do not want isolation. I don't want platitudes. I am completely fine with "I'm so sorry for your loss" - as "sorry" is shorthand for "sorrowful" and it helps me to know that others feel the loss and mourn with me. But I am depressed. And I don't know what to say.
We have been getting so many phone calls and messages.
She was only five years old. I guess it was genetic. She was so young.

Now, her soul resides in the gold-cream clay sculpture Adam had made in her likeness months ago. Adam absorbed her energy, stored it, released it, and made sure she would stay with us.









The house of Rose's soul.
Oh sweet Bast, please love Rose and care for her. Give her sweet cuddles and nuzzles and kisses. And give her as many treats as she wants.
With Adam Paul, the sculptor.

Aww, I remember writing this last year and people being very amused.
***
Bright eyed, bushy haired, bright colors, babbling due to painkillers and happy muscle relaxants and healing gemstones and all that weird pseudoscience silliness that I believe in despite my atheist agnostic upbringing.
I've been pagan since I was a teenager, so hah. Polyagnostic polytheist pantheist eclectic witch who will believe even if proven completely wrong. Even when my parents insists that it's just my brain and that psychic powers don't exist, I will agree because that is true, too. There are so many truths out there. I love quantum everything.
See, I follow the Discworld concept: Even if a deity manifests in front of be and insists it is a great god, I will tell it "That's nice. Just because you exist doesn't mean I believe in you. I believe in my Higher Brain smushed with my Subconscious, which you possibly came from. But since you are here, let's party anyway. Red wine?"
I firmly believe that Man created God, and the Universe created both Man and God, and all gods everywhere sprang fully formed from Man's brain because Man's brain is more complex and extreme than we can ever conceive. The universe is bigger than everything.
And I have also always believed in All The Gods, so whenever someone asks me if I believe in God, I always ask "Which one?" which leads to confusion and people thinking I'm, like, evil or something and must be saved or whatever that means. *shrug* I don't care. I like what I like and I don't want to push it on anyone because my faith is mine and your faith is yours.
I just ask that you please please do not attempt to convert me to Christianity because nope nope nope. I am half Jewish, I know that Christianity is a Jewish heresay, I know Yeshua was just a man who explored various believes including paganism and then returned to talk about it, and that he wasn't part god, he was just a very good orator. So, no. I am who I am and if you leave me alone I will not roll my eyes and facepalm at you. I love you all, I always will... but I can love everyone without being bothered by proselytizing. Love is love is love is love. There is no wrong or right, there is only love.
***

It starts with Saturday, Imbolc 2013.
See, on Facebook, I ran into the girlfriend of a guy I had been friends with for years but had never honestly had one on one time with. Which is the story of my life, actually: Having all these friends and these acquaintances, and having memories of only parties, large gatherings, where if I wanted to talk with someone alone I had to almost push my way through and schedule a place.
Ben had always been The Dude. He abides. He has always abided. He is friends with so many people. It is understandable. His girlfriend, Jess... I didn't know her. We seemed to have many things in common. After months and months, I finally reached out to message her. And we began talking. And something started happening.
I said, "We really really need to get together. Just us. No parties, no house gatherings. Adam may or may not be home. But no matter what, I want you meet you, in my house." And she agreed, and we made arrangements for Imbolc weekend. Adam was indeed going to be home, so he and I set up for brunch and awaited the arrival of Ben and Jess.
They arrived, and I hugged Jess like an old, lost friend, and looking at her there was this instant knowing, this instant understanding and energy of "Yes, I know you. It has been so many lifetimes. I missed you." I hugged Ben the same way, but with a little less intensity, as I already knew him.
After a magnificent brunch, I gave Jess a tour of the upstairs and showed her my gemstones, and we talked about our spiritualities, our energies... how I am a beacon and she is a generator. And yes, the energy that came from her made my head buzz pleasantly. I realized that several items I'd been keeping hidden had been meant for her, and she was extremely grateful. I had randomly thrown wood brushes, lip balms, skin creams, gemstones, and makeup into a black canvas shoulder bag; I gave her all of it. It turned out that it was all exactly what she needed, even the bag. It had all been intuition and connection. I had known her already. And we talked about knowing people, about how she and Ben had known immediately that they were for each other. We talked about energy, about metaphysics and quantum physics. We talked about getting together again, since they live very close to our neighborhood.
When they left, and the energy was still rushing around the house and my head, I sat and considered. I believe I tend to be a little forceful and intense when establishing a friendship with a person I deeply like. I wanted badly to grab Jess' hands and tell her how deeply I knew her, how intensely we connected. But she knew. It was in her face. She always made eye contact when we talked and she always smiled at me. She glowed.
Later, I messaged her, asking if I did okay, if I wasn't too extreme, if I didn't put my feet in my mouth too much. No, she said, she and Ben had genuinely and honestly had fun and wanted to see me again. And that relaxed me more than I could have realized.

Making friends is so, so, so difficult, because I need to communicate on specific levels before I can actually approach them. Fascinatingly enough, Facebook and Livejournal are among the best things that have happened to me regarding this kind of communication. I need to type out words, ritualistically, deliberately, allowed to pause and stumble and correct. I need to assure myself that there can be a connection when we meet. My family cannot understand, and I know why, and I get that. But I am unable to simply walk up to someone and start a comfortable conversation without feeling an absolute terror of possible rejection so deep that I can hardly speak.

I love fiercely, I love deeply, I love powerfully, I love in ways that seem insistent. I need friends who can do that with me. And yet I will always, always wonder if I am making mistakes, if I am coming off as "too crazy, too weird, too dumb, too whiny, too clingy, too repulsive." I have learned that in the past, people have questioned my relationship with my husband, wondering how he could "put up" with me, if I was truly the right partner for him, if he could even handle me on a constant, consistent basis. I have taught myself to let those comments go, because nobody has any say about my relationship but my partner and myself. However, it really is fascinating and very interesting that people who should know me would assume that I am not good enough to be loved by someone who has so many different ways of living than I do.

Loving me is a hard thing, a wild thing, a weird thing, a deliberate thing, a test of strength and resolve. I am intense and extreme and stubborn and wistful and insane and I am too much inside my own head and quite often not fully aware of my environment. To love me is to live a journey through many worlds. I just want friends who can do that for me. I don't even care if they would badmouth me. These days I have stopped caring about many things.

The heart-breaking problem with online friendships is that meeting in person is usually improbable, or highly difficult. But if I were able, if I had all the money and opportunity, I would find a way too meet all the friends I have made online who I knew could love me the way I needed.

Right now, all I know is that I must see Jess, and Ben, soon. Maybe it will help bring me out of this quantum shell I have constructed around my heart.

Yeah, I think I'm starting to slip into a depressive episode.
I just want to stop reacting whenever anyone insults me in any way.
I feel like crying over... I don't know, nothing and everything.
That is why watching Futurama and My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic is comforting, so shut up.
I want people to stop telling me how to be or not be physically and mentally disabled, bisexual, ethically Jewish, eclectic pagan, psychically sensitive, a female, very short, curvy slender, balanced between holistic and pharmaceutical medicines, a writer, a reader, an intellectual, a human.
I want to remind myself how to ignore those people and live my life my own way no matter who says what. I want to stop reacting and overreacting. I want to remind myself to just shut up and walk away with the knowledge that they will not learn nor understand, but others will.
I want to learn how to actually make and keep more friends on my own without wanting to run away.
I want to squeeze all my toys and dolls and meditate and cry cleansing tears.
I just want to be.

I think my "give a fuck" just broke. It's bad enough that I'm in a major depressive episode and already filling up with self-loathing about everything I do and am. It's worse when I forget myself and defend my medication choices to a douchebag who is yelling at me with "All Big Pharma Is Always Evil Forever. You need to stop taking all your poison drugs and just eat these specific plants and herbal formulas, since they will cure your pain and your seizures and your depression and they will even heal your brain damage so you won't have cerebral palsy anymore."
I admit, I flew off the handle just a bit. You know, "Listen, moron, I did the purely holistic thing for twenty-something years, and then I was prescribed a seizure drug and a painkiller drug and a muscle relaxant which completely changed my life in many ways, because I had never known what it was like to have loose, relaxed muscles that didn't clench, spasm, feel paralyzed, or feel like burning. I mean, holy shit, people actually live like this normally? Is this normal? I should have done this sooner! Why hadn't I done this sooner?" And how I looked back on my other life and realized how stupid I was: because even if Big Pharma Is Truly Evil, sometimes they get it right. Sometimes just one drug, or three, can change the life of just one person in unimaginable ways.
And then I explained how I still use supplements and herbs and plants and holistics, and I carefully balance everything, and how I met with half a dozen different doctors who all decided I did not have an addictive personality and that it would be perfectly safe for me to take the wonderful drugs every day. And how strangers on the internet tried to call me junkie and addict without knowing a single fucking iota of a thing about me.
And I explained that because I was in chronic pain, constant agony, and major suffering that was not going to stop on its own, it was safe and fine for me to continue taking the drugs, and fuck everyone who tells me otherwise. And then I explained how sometimes I am in far less pain than normal and when I took one of those drugs, nothing happened. At all. So I was not becoming addicted, because I felt nothing if the pain was not great enough to require drugs.
And then I said a few more angry things about judging strangers because you are not actually concerned about them, you just want to project your personal bullshit onto someone who is doing something that perhaps you or a loved one used to do and it led to addiction and it was horrid for you, and perhaps you have made it your superhero mission to save everyone you encounter from the awful evil Big Pharma that destroyed your life, and perhaps it's easy to yell at people over the internet because you don't need to see their faces or show your face and you feel you have perfect control because the poor stranger is obviously spiraling downward into a terrible tragedy of dependency that only you can save them from.
And by "you" I mean "stranger asshole who decided she knew exactly who I was, what was wrong with me, what I needed, what I didn't need - because obviously those Big Pharma drugs were killing me rather than saving my life in multiple ways."
So, I sincerely apologize if anyone reading this feels slapped, because that is not what I'm trying to do. Normally, when someone gives me the "Drugs bad, herbs good" speech, I just smile and say, "Balance and harmony in all things. Every person is different with different responses to different treatments. Some patients cannot take supplements, and some patients need drugs to continue living a fairly easy life. I am very lucky that I can easily take pharmaceutical drugs and natural supplements in balance. Maybe some day, I will find a plant or vitamin that can legally replace all my prescription drugs forever. I doubt that, because I need certain drugs to keep certain illnesses in check, but if I can reduce the prescriptions and have a supplement as my main treatment, that would be wonderful. Until then, nobody needs to tell me what I should and should not do with my medical health treatments." And that is the most polite thing I can say.