4:20pm November 30, 2012

Body stuff illusion stuff etc.

Everything on my body hurts. My neck is being weird, and is shooting pain down through my arms and legs. Now I remember why I get nerve blocks regularly, I missed one while in the hospital. And I’m wiped out. And I’m breathing through my bipap even while awake to give my lungs a break. Months without nebulizer treatments due to sensory issues isn’t helping, I hope the silent nebulizer I ordered comes soon.

Fighting tendency to see myself as bad for saying stuff about my body working how it does. Not sure what the big deal is.

I’m also really tired. No I said that already. My brain isn’t functioning how it should due to all the rest of this. Things have been very weird today.

I’m trying to learn that wherever my body is, is where I am. I know that’s supposed to be really simple information but for me it’s not. It’s really important though. Believing otherwise makes me susceptible to all kinds of Really Bad Stuff especially during delirium or shutdown. I was starting to be more aware of my body before the hospital happened. But this isn’t just awareness of it.

It’s being aware that when I go to sleep, I don’t go anywhere else, and that dreams can be about real things but are not real things. It’s being aware that when I lose awareness of my surroundings, my surroundings haven’t gone away. It’s knowing I don’t have to try to build a copy of the world in my head for it to still exist when my natural awareness of it is diminished. It’s knowing that when I’m delirious enough to find myself trapped in a white place, I haven’t gone anywhere and am not trapped anywhere. It’s knowing that flashbacks aren’t a form of time travel. That neither I nor the world can vanish just because my awareness vanishes. That basically, reality isn’t controlled by my subjective experiences.

I’m also afraid to admit the extent to which I tend to think if I experience something it’s there, and if I don’t it’s not there. It’s one of many basic things most people grasp and I never did. And it’s far from a harmless belief. That became obvious when I experienced delusions as part of the delirium when I was in the hospital with pneumonia/gastroparesis recently. There were hallucinations that supported the delusions and they seemed absolutely real. It was really hard to convince myself they weren’t. But everyone is subject to illusions even if never ones that obvious, and it made me realize that my tendency to think everything I perceive exists and everything I stop perceiving vanishes, just supports me being susceptible to illusions.

Anyway now I’m really exhausted from writing this and it’s almost soup time so I’m going to post it.

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