Broken

Broken

Hello again, today I’m going to talk about the broken parts of my body and mind. Let’s start with physically, when I was very young I was in terrible car accident, my nose was cut in half and I took a heavy hit to the left of side of my head. The lingering effect of this is brain damage to the left half of my brain, which effects the right side of my body, and also caused pretty much system wide nerve damage. My ability to feel any kind of physical sensation is heavily diminished because of this.

I don’t feel heat and cold like normal people, I don’t feel physical pressure or pain to the same extent, and certain parts of my body have almost no feeling. The right side of my body is slightly off compared to the left, a slight droop to the skin, a limp in my right leg, my right arm doesn’t normally move when I walk, and when I smile the right side of my mouth doesn’t lift properly to form a full smile unless I put effort into it, and I mean actual effort that strains the muscles in my face.

One of the common things this effects is something like a hug, the feeling I have along most of my chest, arms, and hands is deadened, so I don’t really feel whoever I’m hugging. I still give hugs to friends and family when they’re needed, but I don’t normally do it because I don’t like that I can’t really feel whoever I’m hugging.

This may not seem like much compared to the next few things, but imagine not feeling the embrace of those you love, not something I like doing a lot. The type of hug I prefer, though this again is more for me, is being hugged from behind, though I doubt this is as comforting to the other person.

I also have delayed ejaculation, the opposite of premature ejaculation, it is difficult for me to actually be able to orgasm, sometimes it’s not possible at all. There are times when I can try multiple times in one day but still not be able to, the longest stretch so far has been three days of active effort, indirectly six days because of it. There are times it is easier to do, since it’s tied to my nerve damage, but more often than not it is large pain and something I’m concerned with in the future as it can cause problems in relationship.

The main problem, aside from all of that, is the fried nerve endings. Though they have little to no feeling, I suffer from something akin to phantom limb syndrome, I’m sure there’s a name for it, but my brain thinks it’s receiving signals from these nerve endings, the last signal received from them before they got fried, which is pain.

Everyday I suffer from pain due to this, most of the time it’s not a major issue, mostly mildly annoying as I’ve learned to live with it. Sometimes it goes past this point to become a nuisance and distraction, and there are occasional flares throughout the day that are painful which make it difficult to function but I can grit my teeth and bear it. Then, there are the very bad moments, which are rare thankfully.

These moments are often brought on by high stress and strenuous physical activity, but when the pain really flares up it’s crippling. It’s so intense that it takes over every other sense, it’s impossible to think or feel anything other than the all encompassing pain, it literally brings me to my knees when it gets this bad, which hasn’t happened in a few weeks thankfully. I’ve recently discovered a pain patch (the Kailo Pain Patch) that I can wear that helps with the pain.

Aside from the patch, there’s a military trick I learned to help deal with the pain. Since this pain is more or less in my head, actual injuries or pain draws the attention of the brain to it, which in turn causes the other pain to subside for the most part. I usually do this by punching something, either a solid surface such as a wall, or if there is nothing around than parts of my body, often my ribs since. I’ve nearly broken my hand a few times doing this, and have bruised multiple bones in doing so, sometimes the muscle spasms brought on by the pain itself is enough to bruise bone or muscle as well.

Before this pain patch, there were basically no feasibly affordable treatments for it, this patch is basically a miracle patch for me. I have yet to tell basically any of my family other than my brother, I haven’t wanted to bring undue stress since there’s nothing they can do. I also know they’d want to try and get treatments, which we just can’t afford.

These are the physical problems I have, and the parts of my mind mirror that of my body. I’ll talk about it more in my next post, but the old me, more or less another person, He was something truly horrific. I use the term monster because it’s more understandable, but living nightmare is closer to reality. I can’t really explain Him, He’s truly alien to most concepts we have and can put into words, but He is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen, and He did terrible, horrible things that haunt me to this day, luckily He’s dead now though, but again, later post.

I won’t go into everything I suffer from, but until recently I had severe depression, I dealt with it for the past 7 years, and I chose to do so alone and without telling anyone else. I struggled every day, hating myself every second of it, wishing I wouldn’t have to wake up the next day. I prayed almost every day that when I went to sleep that it’d be the last time I closed my eyes, but, I refused to ever entertain the thought of ending it myself.

I was lucky to have friends and family that cared about me like they did, because I wouldn’t have survived on my own. I would wake up some days cold and hurting in my heart, I would tearlessly cry until I couldn’t stand it anymore, and then I’d get up anyways and go through the day, then come home and do it again.

Two things kept me going forward, one is that I had to atone for the monster I’d been, to make up for the horrible things I’d done. The second is I refused to be selfish, to give in, I refused to let my grief take over and end the pain and take my own life, because if I did, I would hurt all those people that saved me in ways I couldn’t fix if I was gone.

Luckily, I’m through with that, but I have other lingering conditions, such as OCD and Misanthropy. The version of Misanthropy I have, as there are varying degrees of it, is more or less I don’t like new people, at all. Everyone starts off on the wrong foot with me. Most people are shocked to hear I have this, as I try to be polite and civil to everyone I meet, because I know I have this condition I intentionally fight to ignore it and give everyone a chance, because I actually make friends quite easily.

My ability to process information is also affected by the brain damage, this varies in a number of different ways. I have trouble with my memory, long term retention of things, such as habits like brushing my teeth, can be difficult to impossible, I have an alarm set to brush my teeth in the morning and night because I am incapable of remembering to do so on my own. My short term memory can be quite atrocious at times because of it, I forget something said to me less than 5 seconds ago sometimes, or that I’m doing something even while I’m doing it.

Long term memory has been effected, it is harder to retain certain information, especially if it isn’t actually relevant to my life in an impactful way, which has caused problems since I’m in college and most of the information I have to deal with isn’t really relevant. Other than memory, just understanding what people are saying, or me saying something I understand clearly but is in fact quite confusing to others, which can cause a number of problems during conversation.

There is more, but I’ve already taken plenty of you’re time, so I’ll end on how I feel about all of this. I hate it, I hate being reminded of how broken I am every day, when I have pain flares, when my limp acts up, when I injure myself and can’t feel the injury, or every time I can’t remember something that was just said to me or can’t understand what’s being said to me because my brain can’t process it. I’m reminded every day that I will never be able to have a truly normal life, that my mind and body are broken in irreparable ways.

Despite this, I’m happy with my life as it is now. I’m helping people, I’ve made amazing friends, many of which I consider family, and I’ll learn to not hate what’s wrong with my body and mind someday, so don’t feel too bad for me. I’ll get to a better place someday with all of this, and one day I will be able to afford more permanent treatments for my conditions. Thank you for your time, and I hope you have a wonderful day and night.

For those interested who may be interested in the pain patch, here is a link. https://getkailo.io/offer-01/?lpid=0567&utm_source=1148&utm_medium=9150607322&utm_term=567&utm_content=&utm_campaign=0&aff_id=1148&camp_id=0&sub_id=9150607322&req_id=14d0458fb0cf4467a21f807fb6e7d21b&contract_id=0&oid=567&device_type=PC&country_name=United%20States&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIi7ql4LDa6QIVUfDACh3JdA58EAAYASAAEgLxOvD_BwE