Colorful and hopefully optimistic but maybe hateful occasionally

[littleoc]

I think the horders tv show is a great idea. I've watched it and they always seem really kind.

I thought so too! The producer who had texted me, later texted me a link to see the show -- and it turns out that she was (is? Hopefully was!) a hoarder as well. That made me feel a lot better. I didn't feel like entertainment to her anymore, which I think made the difference.

I hope you're doing well :) <3

Please don't take any of this the wrong way. I feel like you're a little sister and I want to look out for you. (little sister? who am I kidding? I'm old enough to be your....older cousin. Haha!)

I don't take it the wrong way! Thank you, that makes me happy :) Even if you had meant it in a bad way I probably would never notice, lol :P You must be very empathetic too!

Do you think your commitment/bond is a healthy one? You're taking the responsibility that your mother should be taking. Yes? No?

Short answer...
Maybe?

Longer answer:
My mom is definitely a different person now than who she was when my dad ruled over her life. Somehow doesn't have PTSD (that I know of, since I admit she's never been to therapy) but her life has been no better than mine. There wasn't help for kids of abusive parents/environments in her time (she had her kids when she was much other than most other parents) so she viewed herself as doomed. My dad was even kind of rushed into the marriage. I'm not going to defend my dad too much obviously, but he knew he hated kids and did his best not to have them (in a normal, not-paychopathic person way -- he was still wooing my mom). His cat apparently stole his condom while he was drunk... I know a little too much about that story... lol

My mom had already had one forced abortion. Plus my older sister sort of "read" her belly and guessed my mom was going to have twins, one a girl and one a boy, so my dad couldn't do much about that. Too bad he didn't just run away! But he wanted my mom to take care of him. Then he got jealous of children... he needs way more therapy than my mom does, but my mom deserves it more.

But anyway. I think my mom wants to take responsibility and doesn't know how. Meanwhile my big moves of action always met with a positive response. I told an adult outside our family that our dad was crazy, and instead of shame, I got put into a hospital that was locked too tight for him to get in, and he was legally required to leave before I could be released (or alternatively if my mom didn't leave him, I'd would go to foster care. I was 13 and very aware that all my cousins were in foster care, including my favorite little baby girl, because my uncle was abusing them and their mother chose him over her children. I wasn't worried, though -- a little, but i was pretty sure somehow that my mom would pull through).

When my mom was a kid, she once "admitted" that her dad hit her, and the therapist immediately mentioned it to her father. When he got raped, her mother told her that she would "get over it" and took her to an abortion clinic without her approval (she was under 18). When she married my dad, her family cut her out because they didn't approve of him, making it impossible for her to get support. When my little brother told someone at school that my dad was touching him weirdly, CPS threatened to take her kids away -- same when my little brother broke his femur (long story, but weirdly enough it wasn't my dad's fault). So it makes sense that she would be against getting outside help, while I seek it out. We grew up in such different worlds and circumstances.

I mostly complain about her here because I wish I could interact with her better because it's really all she wants of her kids, and also this is the only place I can complain and feel free to be confused. I'd say our relationship is pretty good for the most part -- she just needs to stop buying me so many gifts :P

So, uh. Maybe on the commitment thing. Yes when I'm feeling... protective? But no some other times. I truly feel she's doing her best even with humanly flaws.. though I wish she'd be nicer to the cat. I feel like the cat cares a little a least.




Also, that's awesome about them in your community! It was hard to tell if this was a blessing or some kind of devilish temptation where I'd just be owned by a TV network... but it's really starting to feel like a blessing.

I hope that I can get my mom to agree to try to let them help. If they end up deciding not to, them at least we'll have agreed we need help and will maybe be able to find volunteers or something? I won't think too far ahead on something like that, right now, though.

 

[littleoc]

A few memories are bothering me and preventing sleep. I'll jot the main ones down here so that I can get some sleep.

I wish I could have helped my little brother out when he said my dad was touching him inappropriately. I have to remind myself that I was a child at the time, not an adult, and therefore it's not my fault that I couldn't immediately help him.

I haven't been able to take down my childhood/kindergarten artworks since my dad put them up (against my will... not certain why he even cared). Strangely, every single one of them has a bad memory attached to it -- about teachers or classmates saying I wasn't doing the art correctly. I wish I didn't remember kindergarten so well :P

I have difficulty, still, thinking of the pedophile. But some thoughts have come up that are light enough that I didn't have the urge to immediately eject them from my thoughts. The first is the being invited into his room to be friends. I remember him being shy and that I had to try to get him to talk sometimes.

Eventually he showed me porn though. I have no idea how it escalated to that. He had asked me if I knew what it was, said it wasn't bad to look at it, and once or twice asked if I'd like certain things about it... I was uncomfortable and so would leave. I felt like I just wasn't sure how to react?

He wasn't always nice though. He admitted that he thought my sister was prettier, but something hadn't worked out?

I mean, I'm pretty sure he almost killed her with alcohol poisoning and hypothermia. She was 15. I was 10. I think it was an age thing. Not sure. I've started to see myself as pretty though. Recently.

And finally, I know this is a very weird thing to be hung up on, but I'm so confused about WHY it was so traumatic. I wonder if it was the shame from others around me, the fact that it was secret, or his behavior. It's weird. I'm confused about that, wondering constantly if he had treated me differently, if it would have just been a regular first love sort of thing. Maybe normalized? I don't know.

He seemed to change his mind often about if what we were doing was shameful or wrong. Which I remind my adult self, means that he knew it was wrong. But was it wrong in today's society, or was he hurting me? I mean, obviously he was hurting me, though...

I have been taught that children do get crushes on adults, but that they're very non-sexual. I've been taught that it's normal for the mom to get a little jealous (not in a sexual way) especially if it's her first child who has a crush on someone other than mommy. In good families that's normal, and perfectly nonsexual. That's how children think -- nonsexually, unless it's been introduced.

But I've also been taught that children do have a sexuality. They explore their own bodies, and that's healthy (though in some cultures/religions it is considered bad, depending on the context). Pre-teens can get hormones that confuse them. Though that's an older child.

I normally would do more research to satisfy my curiosity. But it hasn't worked well on this subject. Looking up "pedophile" on Wikipedia (to avoid being put on a watchlist for horrible questions like "is it ever okay for a pedophile to love a child") has never gotten me the answers. It's probably a topic I should be avoiding, but unfortunately my mind asks a lot of weird questions.



I'm also worried about B, the ex. I hope she figures out that she was abused by her sibling and step mother and gets help. If I could go back in time, I'd never play along with the fantasy world. Her saying there was a demon in her head. Because then maybe I'd be able to help more now -- but I know that's not necessarily true. Something else would have broken us up and split us apart.

I also wonder why kids aren't considered as responsible as adults in some cases. For instance, B was a child, as was I. But she was cruel. I can't say "she was an adult and was responsible for changing her ways" in that case. I can't blame the same way. But I know what she did was wrong.... and that young siblings can abuse siblings. There are even psycho children out there.

B is an adult now and should be able to get her own therapy. I truly hope she does.

 

[Freida]

And finally, I know this is a very weird thing to be hung up on, but I'm so confused about WHY it was so traumatic. I wonder if it was the shame from others around me, the fact that it was secret, or his behavior. It's weird. I'm confused about that, wondering constantly if he had treated me differently, if it would have just been a regular first love sort of thing. Maybe normalized? I don't know.

I don't think its weird at all. You were a child who was taught to believe that what was happening was normal even though you knew that something wasn't right. There is no such thing as "normal" in this situation. If he had been a decent human being you, as a child, might have had a "crush" on him. That wouldn't be unusual - and like you said, it's just a part of a child's development. But. He wasn't a decent human being. He was a person who took a CHILD and groomed the to be the perfect partner - a child who could be kept quiet through shame, fear and confusion.

He seemed to change his mind often about if what we were doing was shameful or wrong. Which I remind my adult self, means that he knew it was wrong. But was it wrong in today's society, or was he hurting me? I mean, obviously he was hurting me, though...

He knew what he was doing was wrong and he was afraid of getting caught. There is no place in ANY civilized society where this would be considered ok. There are some cultures that force children into sexual relationships and they will say it's ok -- but it's not. Not ever.

But I know what she did was wrong.... and that young siblings can abuse siblings. There are even psycho children out there.

Yes - yes there are. You couldn't have changed that. You were a traumatized child living in a nightmare --and yet you were trying to help her -- which is amazing. But you could't save her from herself. No matter how hard you tried.

 

[littleoc]

Sometimes I'm pretty sure I'm oversharing, though I can't even bring myself to touch on subjects that disturb me the most.

I try not to be secretive, but it's very difficult. I try to just blurt out everything and mean it, but then I get scared at the weirdest moments.

That's what troubled me about Iceland -- during the six month class before going to Iceland (I was doing research there), I kept it a complete secret -- "it" being everything.

My professor was worried about why I had a service dog.

First of all because I didn't say why, though he trusted me. He didn't push after the first "Will you be okay for rigorous hiking and days camping with shared tents?" when I insisted I'd be fine.

I had recently gotten my tenth major concussion, resulting in a TBI diagnosis, but I wasn't quite ready to admit I was having problems thinking.

When a farmer loses his ability to plan, she doesn't just tell everyone. She keeps working. When a human being, which is what I am (as far as anyone reading this knows... I might be a goldfish, lol), loses a primary function in their field of work, they sure as hell aren't going to just accept that.

I got majorly depressed. My projects in microbiology were becoming increasingly unclear and the PTSD suddenly immobilized me, for the second time in four years. Five years? I had to take a medical leave of absence for it, for six months. I'll have to pay back student loans a bit earlier thanks to that. (Hopefully it will help my credit score.) Then the TBI thing -- my frontal lobe suddenly malfunctioning.

I called a depression/emergency hotline at 3am after that TBI thing got out of hand one night. It was because I couldn't read anymore. I looked at words and I could SEE them, I knew they were words. I could read a couple at a time, and maybe short sentences. But my scientific papers? They were a foreign language. I started wondering if my life as I wanted it was over.

This was after the professor agreed to let me do research in Iceland, even though my one recommendation person (another professor who had allowed me to go to Belize for research in the rainforests and the coral reefs... what was left of them) probably had to admit that I was at one point so disabled in Belize that I literally could not walk.

Belize was fantastic, but boy was I unlucky at times... I even got an infection from a tick, in the middle of the rainforest. The doctor was back in the United States, and one of the researches used up all our internet in one hour.. posting her pictures to Facebook. She literally almost killed me for Facebook. Then the antibiotics I took made me pass out in the ocean? Beautiful view, underwater.

Anyway, even with all the trouble I kept having, my Belize professor apparently recommended me to the Iceland one and that was great. I want to go back to Iceland. Not right now, though. The tourists were literally outnumbering the citizens. And the government there was very... not nice to the citizens, in several ways. Not usually life threatening. It's a long story that doesn't belong here.

Everyone I met in Iceland was nice. Much nicer than the group I went with, in some ways -- but no one in my Iceland group was bad. They just cared way too much about alcohol and partying. To a weird extent.

Also, my body really couldn't handle it, and I secreted my way in. I was honest as possible, but only to the point where I'd still be allowed to go without being considered a liability. Which for the most part I was not.

Iceland's legal definition of a service dog is a dog who herds sheep, so I couldn't take mine. She doesn't herd sheep. She COULD but she doesn't have the necessary training. She wouldn't be allowed in stores, restaurants, anywhere.

The first problem I had I actually did bring up before going to Iceland. I told everyone in that I have facial blindness. I repeated it and made sure it was a normal known-thing about me. I would need them to help me not follow the wrong people in crowds, especially without my service dog.

Fair enough.

Then, in a medical information sheet, I explained in detail every little thing that the service dog does for me, and why. I was promised it would only be opened in an emergency.

I did not tell them out loud what exactly the problems were, as I was unwilling to share. Positive my research would be cancelled completely. I was interested in collection of data, later back in the United States being able to get some kind of result and view even more literature about it.

It worked out well in that aspect, at least. I wrote 25 full pages (single spaces) on the subject. I had great peer support.

Iceland bothers me for reasons of oversharing, though. I feel ashamed and weird about it, like I need to avoid the professors as well. One of them I was with the entire time, because I simply couldn't keep up.

In my youthier youth (I'm still young) I was the fastest walker around. People complained that I looked like I was rushing because I never stopped. I'd walk in circles around buildings and through hallways, off in la la land, going too quickly for anyone to follow.

In Iceland, my injuries and stresses had apparently caught up to me. I had gotten well enough to read fine, but I kept getting lost. Badly lost, somehow not being able to find our campsite nor recognize how to get anywhere.

I lost all my confidence. I felt so helpful, sure that people were going to come up and kidnap me at any moment. I had a stuffed mini-N (service dog) who I turned to for comfort, hoping no one thought it was too childish.

I also dissociated twice. In front of people, both times. I was humiliated. After I remembered who and where I was.

One nightmare I had caused one of my tentmates to be a little afraid of me/awkward for the rest of the time. She didn't know what I had dreamed and I couldn't possibly say it, other than to say that there were deer and forceful sex. I really don't want to know what that was like for her. She was from Nepal, and I had huge respect for her. I was crushed when I saw her keeping a distance.

I started telling everyone there that I had been kidnapped once. I NEEDED them to know, and I have no idea why. I'm very secretive about it... yet it felt good? To tell them. But then I regretted it so massively that memories of Iceland pop up like flashbacks -- which is weird, because honestly I was not harmed in Iceland. I talked to strangers every single day, purposefully initialing the conversations and trying to make friends and have fun. I was excited and also secretly counting down the days until I could go back home.







I told the professor who had to stay with me during hikes that I had been stabbed in the lung. I was embarrassed that I was so behind, so slow, when the hiker in me didn't want to take it slow. Even though my body needed me too, I was rushing ahead until my body was literally burning. It felt like torture, going up volcanoes and mountains. I was fearing the day we'd be climbing the glacier, sure I was going to make everyone upset by having to stay at my pace.

It worked out great though, so I'm not sure why it's bothering me.

It must be the feeling of vulnerability, of being disliked by my own research teams. I hadn't felt that way since I was a child, and I'm coming to the realization that that may have been a huge trigger for me.

I wasn't even that disliked? I think I felt like that one weird kid everyone tries to avoid.

Which was a heartbreaking and confusing feeling. Because it has nothing to do with me. I'm incredibly independent.

So why did I feel the need to tell everyone that I'd been kidnapped once? Was it a safety thing? To let them know that secretly I was afraid it was going to happen again?

And that one professor got to know me too well, to the point that maybe I was boring him. I started feeling like they just KNEW I was lying.

I was not.

But nicely enough, I can now -- since I've typed this out -- realize that what was bothering me has the same theme as things from before. It wasn't Iceland itself that was bothering me. I socialized wonderfully. I was even naked with strangers at least four times (in showers and bathing/clothes changing areas before enjoying hot springs or hot pools).

To the point that I got desensitized enough to be able to shower in public gyms without as many fears.

I never caught myself staring at young girls -- a fear I had, thanks to past trauma. (I am not a pedo.)

Also, even when I dissociated I managed by to do extremely well. My poor professors didn't know what to do, as I had told them I had something "similar to epilepsy" and they viewed it as a seizure thing as a result (close enough!).

I also collected loads of data. I wrote a massive paper. I could also read my massive paper.

The shame I feel isn't even mine, really. This is worth exploring again sometime.

 

[Freida]

So try this on.... .what's freaking you out is how WELL you did. You were honest and open with people, you admitted you had challenges and would need help, you got the research you needed even with the challenge of reading, and people liked you.

sometimes when thing go well it is harder to accept than when thing suck. This may just be a start rewiring your entire view on who you are and what is important to you.....

 

[littleoc]

Doing microbiology also has left me with huge feeing of guilt that most people seem to think is ridiculous.

I empathized with my subjects. Massively. I didn't work with things that had a conscious like I do, nor do they have a sense of morals exactly. They learn but not like I do.

I wonder about why certain things feel wrong to children or animals -- like why we know that when we're being abused, something isn't quite right.

I look at worms -- nematodes -- under my microscope and I empathize with them. I know logically it's ridiculous, and I also know logically that I have my reasons and I view them as life. Which they are. I know logically lots of things, but during times when I've had to kill them, it would bother me so much.

But we have the same genes. Genes don't make us, but at one time I was their size in my mother's womb, and I looked like them. Like a worm. A millimeters long. I can't remember it because at that size memory doesn't work that way.

I can't imagine working with monkeys or other mammals. One professor stated that the monkeys are so human in their reactions that the person in charge of killing them (a vet) usually has to be emotionally distant.

(Some experiments legally require even the cured-of-traumatically-deadly-disease animal's death. The reason is because they can possibly create huge fatal epidemics on accident. It is truly necessary, and done to the extreme to prevent massive traumatic outbreaks to the entire human race. Governments never need to learn this lesson twice and become hyper vigilant, like us.)

I immediately wanted that job -- not to kill people but to be able to show them a little love and sympathy in their final moments.

I've done that before, when I worked on the farm. I even helped cows grieve when their friends (or best friends) were chosen for slaughter, but not them. It felt to me both like te weirdest betrayal and well deserved love to the other people.

Maybe it's my Jewish refuge history. I have no idea. My family knew true horror and evil -- often from people who didn't even want to hurt us. Were forced to. Or they and their families would die.

Then those people ended up having to flee too, when the government finally failed...

I played fun games and brought forbidden treats to the two pigs the day before they were taken to the slaughter house. I miss their excited greetings and their intelligent interactions with my dog.

I wonder sometimes if it's a reflection of what happened when I was kidnapped.

I think this is safe to share. My kidnapper was a Native American. This isn't something I realized easily because for some reason I am incredibly bad at remembering race. And anyway, it had nothing to do with how monstrous this person was. I doubt other Cherakee Americans want to associate with such an awful individual, if they know his history. Unless they're racist against my race, maybe, but that's not the same story.

Certain motifs of wolves and eagles and blue ashy backgrounds terrify me. It was all over his home.

His mom lived with him. She was old. 96 or 97 years old at the time. She liked to sit in front of the TV and watch a show called Charmed. She loved it.

When I was in the house, she was kind to me. She quickly became my friend. I'd sit and watch TV with her for hours. Her son would be isolated in the bedroom, until 7pm when he came out as one of the dogs started to bark, signalling dinner time. He made them a meal of wet dog food, some kibbles, mixed with meat and vegetables. They were fed once a day besides a small breakfast.

If she had to get up to pee, she'd have to decide to go ten or fifteen minutes in advanced. She took a long time to get to the bathroom, which was only the next room.

When the kidnapper pedophile would do what he did to me, I kept quiet to protect her from having to know. I realize as an adult that she knew all along, had to know. I felt betrayed by that fact, yet I understand that she was possibly afraid or just literally unable to do anything besides watch TV with me.

I didn't tell her why I was spending less and less time hanging out with her, making odd excuses about my dad's chores.

A year after I officially got out of that house, I could no longer stand to look at it.

But she was part of the reason I felt I had survived. She befriended me even then, like I was befriending birds and fish before they were served to me as food.

I was told that the pedophile's mom was now dying. She was 98, and had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She had lived a happy but apparently tough life -- happier when her husband had died. She hadnt missed him.

I wanted to go see her before she died. She couldn't come outside. I couldn't go inside.

I never got to tell her goodbye.

Seeing the ambulance in front of her house the day she died... was weird. I didn't know what to feel.

It reminded me of the time police showed up when the pedophie had somehow scared her. She called the cops on him. He hid in the woods, in my safe place. I knew he was there and felt inexplicably scared and went home. Found out that night that he'd been watching me.

I don't know what I'd say to the woman nowadays. A thank you maybe.

Not sure.

 

[littleoc]

So try this on.... .what's freaking you out is how WELL you did. You were honest and open with people,...

Huh... I like that. I'll try that on for the next few days.

 

[littleoc]

I had two weird dreams. One was a nightmare and the other was... nightmareish. I'll see what happens if I record both. It might feel nice to let it go?

The first dream was about B. I was not me, but the fungus, A. I was telling her that she doesn't consider it this way and therefore technically doesn't know, but she was sexually abused as a child and later she was neglected and had her life threatened. Those are things I believe -- that A believes -- in the real world. In the dream, i had collected professional therapist's information on how to deal with it, though apparently that was urging to go see a therapist to get new coping skills, and maybe work on that trauma itself.

I know in the real world I feel responsible for her well being, to the point that I knew more about B than I did myself. She expected that. When we first became friends, that was how it worked. Although at first she returned the favor. By the time we got to the point where we were having sex, the relationship became about how strong my shoulders were, and what I was willing to do to keep a friend and keep her happy. Even going to the point of forced sexual acts. She'd never return the favor. She told me I was disgusting and diseased. She could tell by my injured vagina.

Her happiness was literally my responsibility. Sometimes I would try to get her to care about me but it would backfire into me being called crazy or schizophrenic (which I am not). She was increasingly clingy, after she broke up with J, B's ex. I had broken up with B because of clinginess reasons. She then used me to fill in that empty place that J had left.

She told me she was no longer gay.

So... I'm guessing that's why the dream ended with her trying to have sex with me while I was trying to back off and tell her, as A the fungus, that she needed to get help. As A always is gentle, i was trying to be gentle. But she also wanted sex with A. She always turned my characters into sexual adventures for herself. Which I suppose under different circumstances would not have been necessarily bad. Just fantasy.



It makes me think of this other dream from when I was actually still with B. In the dream, I was giving a strange woman oral sex, definitely against my will because I hate oral sex do much that B got tired of trying to get me to do it. The strange woman was on the phone, not even paying attention to me. She even mentioned casually over her phone that "some girl is eating me out" like it was a regular Tuesday manicure.

It's pretty obvious that that felt like reality to me. I was back to slave status.

Man, that was hard to type. I better take a short break, lol.

 

[Freida]

Remember --- you are very, very brave......

And yes - letting this out will help if for no other reason that you will see no one is going to condemn you or think poorly of yoy for what you've done in a dream or in real life.

I know in the real world I feel responsible for her well being, to the point that I knew more about B than I did myself. She expected that.

Her happiness was literally my responsibility.

The only person you are responsible for making happy is you. Because when you are happy others around you will be happy. They will see your good energy and know they can do the same. You won't have to do the work for them. You will be their role model - to show them how it is done

 

[littleoc]

Thank you, @Freida -- I agree with that. I'll remember it.

Okay. So... The actual nightmare.

I was in a public space with my friends when suddenly a group of men in black started shooting. I knew that they were looking for me, so I started running and trying to hide. They killed one of my friends right in front of me -- or tried. They didn't quite get the mark. Her scream woke me up.

That's a recurring one, though lately America's bogey man ISIS frequently takes responsibility in my dreams. Such as one dream several months ago -- ISIS left me a letter in my college dorm room saying they were coming after me, to behead me and also shoot everyone down.

I tried to run away and warn everyone at the same time before they arrived with guns and started shooting.

I always wake up to the screams, unless the service dog notices and wakes me up. Then I turn on all the lights. I'll feel like nowhere is safe, and I need to hide. But I'll never have a good enough hiding spot.

When I'm out in my 3-mile walks with the service dog, I'm always terrified that someone is going to shoot her. They'll really be coming after me, but anyone I befriend is in danger just by being in proximity to me.

I think that stems from my friends dying rather frequently, but it's not usually by gunfire. One year I had more than ten family members die from cancer.

One of them was my uncle who was out of his mind. He woke up that way when he was 16. He was dyslexic but lived in a time where teachers assumed you were just stupid if you couldn't figure out how to read. He lived with an abusive father and woke up literally insane and never could be brought brought back. No medications seemed to work -- he had the rarest type of schizophrenia. The kind where you never know reality ever again.

I assume it had something to do with his trauma. It changed his brain so much that when the schizophrenia set in, it suddenly had full reign.

I grow up in my teens terrified of sleeping, afraid that my brain would shift as I rested and I'd wake up completely insane. It made me suicidal and scared, even more scared than my dad's actual beheading threats.

He had promised to put my head in a car trunk.

My uncle starved to death while everyone watched. He didn't understand why.

He had had colon cancer before, but they got rid of his colon and gave him one of those bags. I try hard not to think about that bag. Being unable to understand what was gross and what wasn't, he'd often show it to people or try to empty it in the bathroom sink.

This time its reemergence was marked as a terminal end. He could no longer eat. He asked for food and people would explain over and over again why he couldn't eat. He'd say, "Well I'll get better, won't I?" He'd already had the worst kind of cancer. He was vaguely aware of that, even if he had trouble recognizing his adult siblings (he expected them to be the age he was when he was 16).

He was my mom's brother. In a paranoid fit once he had poured boiling water all over my mom. My mom had her back turned to the hot water. Was doing dishes. So he could do it too quickly.

He wasted away and got tinier and tinier. It was horrible. He was allowed to drink Sprite but he wasn't allowed to be "euthanized" to prevent this massive suffering. His body slowly failed him. He saw more and more angels, but some of them were mean. His brain went into a survival mode after a while, but that failed him too.

One morning he "woke up" but never came back. His brain was so starved that it had shut down "nonessential" functions, for good. As if he had been slowly drowning for the last several months, and his brain had been starved of oxygen.

He didn't react to much of anything. He opened his eyes and saw and he stared. His frontal lobe had died. Starved. So he just stared and didn't think.

It was the worst thing I'd ever seen. My mom didn't want me to see it so I didn't visit him again. He died within the next couple of days, due to organ failure.

I remember during a human dissection once, testing individual neurons in the dead man's brain and realizing that they were still alive. Still "thinking." Probably reliving its childhood or something.

Death is a process, and can be reversed up to a certain point. This person was irreversibly dead. But his brain was still trying anyway, for several hours after his death. If we could have brought him back, we imaged he'd tell us wonderful stories of what he saw. Maybe he'd freak us out with knowing what we were doing. That had happened to one of the doctors there. The patient had an out of body experience -- which he showed us where in the brain stuff like that happens -- and had seen the doctor cutting into him from the ceiling. He explained to us that he personally was a bit religious and firgured that it being located in a certain part of the brain was both relevant and irrelevant at the same time.

Freaked me right the crap out, thinking back on my starving uncle. I know what it feels like to go hungry, but not to die from it. Not for my brain to decide that the thinking part of me can be let go and starved and killed in an emergency.

If someone had brought back my uncle, he'd be a vegetable. But his body wanted to live and it betrayed his own thoughts. We are not just our frontal lobes, not just our thoughts, but it still frightens me anyway.

Another uncle died from a brain tumor a few weeks later. He was my dad's brother and had sexually abused his children. He would message me over Facebook and tell me to keep it a secret from my mom, who likely would not approve -- especially because his brother, my dad, was legally not allowed near me at the time.

I told my mom immediately the first time he said to keep it secret.

As the tumor grew, he stopped being able to control his own body. Again, horrible to see.

He spent his last days staring, also.

I have a feeling that these are affecting my dreams, though I don't know why yet.

 

[Freida]

I have a feeling that these are affecting my dreams, though I don't know why yet.

ya think??? Darling reading that would give anyone nightmares! And I didn't have to see it, live it, be an up in front witness to this suffering. Of course it will give you nightmares. Now lets add dads threats to behead you (seriously - who tells a kid that?!!) and yea..... nightmares.

As to why its happening right now...maybe because you are ready? Replacing the terrorists in your own life (dad and such) with the terrorists in the news? Replacing shooting with beheading? Might be a good conversation to have with your T

 

[littleoc]

My best qualities are what I gave a fungus to work with. I'm a human being, not a fungus, and on the opposite spectrum I am not a slave. Though, I don't mind fungi. We get along. Their behavior is interesting and shockingly intelligent, willing to learn. I respect them on another level.

I respect them because I am human, with good human qualities, thinking about this in a very human way. Getting by with stories and vague explanations of reality, while constantly seeing reality from a safer distance. Zoom too close, and nothing ever makes sense.

Fungi are perfectly aware of that, but it doesn't frighten them the same way.