Cause and Cure

“What is your damage, Heather?”
-Heathers

With thoughts of my impending surgery swirling around my head, I’ve been thinking a lot of about the possibility of complications/short-term to long-term side effects of surgery. Sure, it’s not a big surgery but my face is still going to be cut into. I’ve heard that anesthesia can kill brain cells and affect brain chemistry and that provokes some slight paranoia within me. What if I don’t come out the same? Wait a minute, would that be such a bad thing? Oh, yeah, it could, I could come out worse. Crap. This whole thing about brain functions really makes me think about my own and whether I’m healthy. I know, it seems like a leap, going from anesthesia to mental illness but sometimes I honestly don’t think I’m all there in the head. It’s the things I think about, the physical things I do, the stuff that pops up into my mind that just feels crazy to me. If not crazy, at least somewhat impaired. I worry about anesthesia and unconsciousness affecting my brain but has something else gotten there first? Is there some kind of traumatic event, some kind of accident or incident that forever fractured my fragile psyche?

I remember when I was a little kid, I was walking around the house while simultaneously enjoying my View-Master. Naturally, because of my obstructed, yet enjoyable view, I ran right into a nearby door frame. Hard. Uhh, I’m not proud of sharing that, haha. I can't believe I was walking around the house, basically blind, thinking that was okay. See, I've been weird from the start but anyway, I was left with a large hematoma on my forehead. I remember it being huge and funny at the time but what if that accident caused my brain to slam into my skull, destroying the portion responsible for sanity and security? If that wasn’t potentially harmful enough, Mom told me recently that when I was younger, I was running around the house, sans View-Master this time, tripped and fell right into a hard corner of the couch, hard enough to send me flying backward and creating a significant gash in my forehead. What if that was the day my brain sloshed around in my skull enough to do some real damage? And if that doesn’t do the trick, what if this upcoming anesthesia sends my sanity over the edge? I mean, sure, general anesthesia seems safe enough but what if I have some underlying problem inside of me, something that the anesthesia will trigger? It happened once with my deviated septum and branchial cleft cyst birth defect. All it took was a good slam in the nose and I was never the same again. Who’s to say I don’t have some other affliction floating around inside of me somewhere, just waiting for something to come and slice me open and unleash it?

With all of this talk about altered brain chemistry and chemical imbalances, it makes me wonder if anyone is truly in control of themselves. I know we are all ultimately responsible for our actions but can we control our impulses to act a certain way? And, well, how much responsibility should we claim? If your brain is the main machine that makes you who you are, yet it’s damaged, are you really who you could be and can you really say that you are in the right state of mind? But, then again, what is the right state of mind? I’m sure we are all damaged to a certain degree but it’s just so confusing to me because I try so hard to understand why I am the way I am and I have come no closer to finding out.

When you take into account the whole nature vs. nurture issue, I’d have to say maybe nature takes the lead in messing me up because I cannot recall any outside influences irrevocably ruining my head. Unless there was some truly traumatic event that happened in my early years that I managed to block out, I had a fairly regular childhood. The only thing that I can think of that could have been potentially harmful was the fact that my parents fought a lot when I was younger. They yelled a lot and that always made me really uneasy. Of course, I don’t think that is the main cause of my craziness. Sure, it did affect me and I still have issues with people yelling and generally acting raucous. It heightens my anxiety greatly but I don’t think that situation is responsible for how I am now. But, what is? I even asked Mom if she partook in a little smokey smoke or drinky drink while pregnant with me and she denied ever doing such. However, she did smoke after I was born. I remember regularly sitting on her lap while she lit one up. Maybe that second hand smoke killed some developmental brain cells, cells that never formed and left me with all these empty spots in my head, spots that have since filled up with wacky. I’ve already uncovered the fact that I was fat and insecure and depressed when I was younger and that has directly influenced how I’ve turned out at this point but it doesn’t feel like enough of a revelation, doesn’t feel like that’s the magical bonkers button that was one day pressed against my will. No, there’s gotta be more but I can’t seem to recall anything.

So, maybe I was just born a little loony and it’s just slowly been manifesting itself over the years, much like that cyst in my throat. It lies dormant until it finds its opportunity to strike. That just brings me back to the whole question of whether or not one should be fully responsible for him or her self. Like me, for example. I know a lot of people think I’m negative and cynical and a giant emo whiner and I would definitely agree with them but is it my fault? Can I truly control how I feel? Can I change my ways, turn the tables on my thinking? How do you do that when your brain dictates how you think, how you process information and how you behave? I’m not in charge, my brain is and it’s calling the shots and right now it’s telling me that I am depressed. I mean, how can you just suddenly shift your perceptions, realize that you’re thinking has been warped this whole time and now you have to reevaluate everything you’ve ever felt and believed in and try to assimilate to a new system of thinking and behaving, something that’s taken you years and years to grasp up until this point?

And if I can change my brain chemistry, get to behaving differently and generally overthrowing my thinking, how do I go about doing that? I’ve tried talking to God, finding my chakras, realigning my meridian lines, centering my chi, yoga, running, screaming, crying, writing, counseling and nothing works. That emptiness still enslaves me. It’s quite ridiculous because I realize, rationally, that I should not be this overdramatic, that I should not be this dead inside for no good reason. There are so many people out there who are less fortunate than I am. People are penniless, paralyzed, abandoned, orphaned, homeless and hurting and yet they're still trucking along. How absolutely disgusting of me to dare act like I’ve got it bad when I know good and well I don’t. If anything, all the “bad” things that have happened to me are more like unfortunate situations, nothing earth shattering or straightjacket worthy. Thinking about this kind of stuff makes me feel like crap because I wonder why I’m so depressed, why I feel so dead inside because I really have no reason to feel that way at all and it frustrates me because I must be feeling this way for some sort of reason but I can’t identify that reason and it angers me. And it just all goes back to that idea of brain chemistry and how we perceive things and not being able to control that. Maybe I don’t have the right to feel the way I do but my brain says otherwise and I can’t help that. Am I just a hopeless case, a lost cause doomed to decompose daily? How can I get better when I only feel bland and bitter? I feel like I'm walking through the door frame of life with a View-Master of mental muddledness causing me to crash into every possible obstacle. I gotta find a way to put down the distracting pictures so I can see clear enough to find my way but it's just hard, ya know, seeing as how the toy is Gorilla Glued to my face.