Existence; Or Deep Thoughts Without Jack Handey
Well, this is significantly later coming out than I had hoped. It's been a whole week since my last post.
There is a reason for this, of course.
Last Sunday, I threw my back out.
The usual question I hear after saying that is, "What did you do?"
Quite simple: I stood up. Then I felt the familiar sensation of the muscles in my back immediately tightening, and that was it. Down for the week.
Well, most of the week. I finally got out and about yesterday, Friday, back to my semi-normal schedule. I've missed all three days of my therapy this week, and got nothing done on Wednesday, when I have a day at home. Thursday I was able to go to the drug store and through the drive thru of Dunkin's with my husband. It was the first time I'd been out of bed, really, in nearly 5 days.
This whole experience really made me quite angry. I mean, here I am, brain damaged, unable to work and be a productive member of society, and now I can't even cook, take care of my house, play video games, or even watch television with my husband. Why on earth can I still get things like this after my brain literally blew a gasket and ruined my life?
Then I was reminded of people who felt similarly about some of my clients, back in the 2010s.
People have this preconception that when we become elderly, we for some reason are magically cleared of our previous mental infirmities. We don't think this in conjunction with high blood pressure, diabetes, MS, ALS, or any physical issue. But mental disorders, there's this misconception that the elderly grow out of it.
Me, I'm sitting over here like, dude, people don't even grow out of ADHD, or learning disorders, or even most physical disorders. There seems to be this prevalent idea that if you have something major already going on, you won't get something else. Like, if you have a major congenital issue, you can't have, say, a major disease pop up. Not all people think this. There are many people who realize that bad things can, indeed, happen to sweet people. Or that bad things can happen to mediocre people. Of course we think that bad things happen to awful people, because we usually believe in some sort of karma.
However, life is more...complicated than that. The Universe at large doesn't always, or even usually, punish the awful, or reward the truly good.
That can be extremely difficult for people to grasp. All the Major Books tell us there is punishment for the wicked, that there are rewards for the virtuous. We have whole afterlives dedicated to the good and the bad with suitable treatment for each. Some even have an afterlife for the meh, which is usually, well, meh.
This concept of rewarding the good and punishing the bad isn't really a thing in this lifetime, though, is it? We see it time and time again.
Not to get too philosophical, but of course bad things happen to good people. Bad things happen to most of us. Even those who seem to have fully charmed lives have their difficulties. While I still don't know if karma does or doesn't exist (this particular fact that I've just related doesn't really negate it for me, though), I still have my doubts that there isn't Something/Someone that guides us through life, as the very least of their duties.
I can't explain my thoughts. I can't even really define them fully, as evidenced in the above jumble of words.
Having the stroke didn't shake them, though. I still very strongly believe in an...infinite spirit. A universal life force, if you will. (Yes, I totally just went to a thesaurus online for those. See? I can't define it.)
Strangely enough--okay okay, it's not strange, it's just a thing--I credit my abiding belief in something greater than ourselves, or anything we can properly conceive of in that way, to my Catholic upbringing and my college literature course. The Catholic upbringing gave me my unwavering belief, just not in what they intended. My college literature course introduced me to Candide by Voltaire, a book about how not everything is for the greater good. It's about much more than that, and is actually the first book I'm going to put on the reading list for this site. It won't make everyone happy. It's satire, and morbidly funny, but also shocking, as most satire tends to be. If you can handle everything we, as a society, hold dear being poked fun at, it might be for you. I suggest an annotated version, as it will help with understanding some of the completely whack nuances of life, the universe and everything. The second book I'm putting on the list is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's also good to get you not to see the world too seriously. I mean, we really shouldn't, you know? Life is kind of ridiculous. There are so many strange things that exist, yet so many things have a purpose of some sort. There's animals like the platypus, which makes no sense, really, and insects like the honeybee, which make dire sense.
When you look at human existence as a whole, it kind of looks like it was designed, doesn't it?
This doesn't mean that I believe in the technical definition of Intelligent Design, but the phrase itself definitely makes sense to me.
I have my reasons to believe, most do.
I very rarely pray for anything, as I have done this in the past, and while I got an answer, and it was "yes," it felt like asking a genie for help. I got an outcome, but not the one I'd hoped for. One of those times was actually not long before my stroke. I had experienced chronic migraine for 8 years. It was a chronic illness that didn't present as a "normal" chronic illness. I was not diagnosed as disabled because of them, though they were disabling. I was on medication for a while that damaged my thinking process temporarily, and when I went off that onto a different one, the new one didn't really help the migraines. I had recently gone to a neurologist for a consult, asked her for help, and had been told something along the lines of "They're migraines. They'll go away when you hit menopause, and there's nothing we can do to stop them until then." I left her office in tears and devastated by her lack of...anything, really.
I was in a hospice volunteer training course around that time, as well. We were asked by the instructor "How would you feel if you were given a terminal diagnosis, and told that you would die in the next three months?"
Everyone else said "I would be devastated, and make sure I said my goodbyes before I died."
I said "Relieved, because that way I would know there would be an end to my migraines, and soon."
I was the only one in the class who answered with a positive feeling.
One day, after yet another migraine I had to somehow work through, I simply asked the Universe to take them away. I wasn't specific as to how.
Then, I had a stroke. Out of nowhere, as far as anyone could tell at the time. After I could recognize existing as a thing again, I had no migraines.
They were just gone.
Now, I cannot say that the stroke cured the migraines. I mean, literally, I can't say that because the doctors can't say that. But I see no other explanation for the lack of maddening pain in my head every other day, which was the frequency with which I got these horrific headaches. They literally disappeared. My husband says I've had maybe one or two migraines since that truly horrible day almost three years ago. I don't remember, because, again, memory issues. I do, however, have more ability to do things now, most of the time, than I did with the migraines. I was experiencing mild aphasia before even having the stroke, where I would just be completely unable to find the word I was trying to say. I had a foggy memory back then, as opposed to just not remembering. I had issues with time management. I was on an extremely strict diet to avoid any potential triggers.
So...like I said, technically, prayer answered.
I'm still not going to pray much, though. I want to be really, really serious about what I pray for from here on out.
Whoever/whatever is out there seems to be very...literal in their interpretation.
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