silence condones, part 1

This is a very long post, but it's a huge truth reveal in several parts. This is not the first time I've written about these things, which can be corroborated with other timestamps elsewhere, so if you see this published anywhere else without my name on it, it's not with my permission.

Since so much is coming to light with underground anons and odd news items starting to break the surface in mainstream medias about how prolific sexual abuse is across politics and entertainment, which seems far away to many of us and therefore not really 'real', I've been thinking about bringing the focus closer to home in the way of personal experiences.

This is a mental health issue. For the nation, for every state, for every city and town, for nearly every household. Definitely for the world. The statistic when I was working on my masters degree in college was three of every 4 people are sexually abused by the time they reach adulthood.

I was personally not traumatized sexually as a child (that I know of or remember, backed up by how ridiculously naive I was about sex right up to adulthood), but I'm surrounded by people in my own household who were. What I'm sharing here is an example of how closely this touches us all, how blind we can be to this being all around us. This is important to grasp because, as a nation hanging on to the 'news', we might find ourselves feeling pretty rattled over the next 6 months as dark information comes to light. This is nothing to be ashamed of. We have all been trained en masse to cover up secrets. Society protects its own, and unfortunately, high ranking society isn't immune from some very dark secrets.

Part 1

I was a virgin when I married a pedophile. I had no idea what that even was. I was in a bad place emotionally after my best friend was murdered and I managed to move forward in very narrow tunnel vision. I was not aware during my 4 years of marriage to this pedo that his nieces and nephews had been accosted, that incest was rampant in that family. There were hints and the usual red flags that never quite came out saying THIS HAPPENED, and I was very normal looking past those because I didn't understand them due to my lack of experience.

My first hint was an old doctor, who was doing my first ever pelvic exam, literally pulling my husband into the exam room while I was still in stirrups to show him I was still a virgin several months into our marriage. I had been feeling pretty sick and apparently was riddled with STDs. In spite of this obvious evidence, that old doctor practically spat me out the door insinuating I was the bad guy, and I went home crying. My husband was completely off the hook while I was completely lost in what just happened.

I gave birth at a local hospital when I was 21. A patient being wheeled down the hallway, who apparently knew my husband, lost his temper and nearly jumped out of his wheelchair threatening to beat him up, alleging that it wasn't cool to knock up 15 year olds. I confirmed I was 21 and married to him. I was too naive to realize back then what that could possibly mean about my husband's reputation. He was a handful of years older than me, and for some reason I've always looked much younger than I really am. I guess I made an unwitting cover for him...

When our kiddo was around maybe 8 months old, I often found her hiding in odd places being very quiet and still, like by the water heater. Sometimes I wondered how she even got in there. About that time, several other things happened. I got my first taste of spouse abuse to the point of permanently damaging a nerve near my left rotor cuff. (Much later, years of physical therapy finally gave me relief from unremitting pain my entire adult life.) Our daughter also went through a spell of severe constipation. One evening after the initial attack on my arm, during my dissociating pain shock, I heard her screaming in the bedroom and wasn't able to respond. I knew my husband was back there and would take care of her so I didn't worry. It never entered my mind that anyone would purposely make a child cry like that. A couple of weeks later I stumbled across a locked trunk he'd always dismissed as junk from his deceased father, picked the lock, and discovered a wealth of the nastiest porn like nothing you ever saw on retail shelves anywhere, including kids. He was so angry with me when he found me looking through it that I became afraid of him. Within another week I had moved us back in with my parents. I was too rattled to tell anyone.

As my husband started establishing with the county health department that he was unable to work (the scheduled visits all returned negative confirmations of his list of problems, which were obviously psychotically based on TV shows and other people's stories of having a metal plate in his head, a rod in his spine, plastic kneecaps, etc.), I got work and we moved back out again. He watched our kiddo while I walked down the street to a drive-through fast food franchise. A couple of months went by before I found out he was driving all over the county with our 2 year old and a friend of his while I was at work. She confirmed years later that he'd been trafficking her to his brothers and other acquaintances, which explains the weird strangers walking up to my daughter and I during grocery shopping and going on and on about what a doll she was and they'd like to take her home. I didn't have a clue what they were talking about, but it felt over the top and creepy.

During this time, the longer we were away from my parents, my husband became more and more hostile to me at home, he and his friend humiliating me whenever I was off work, kicking my butt with their boots and laughing, which hurt. I was afraid to say much because he always had a black powder pistol on him, within reach, or beneath his pillow at night. He took to watching out the window on nights he couldn't sleep, gun in hand like he was waiting to be raided, and maybe he was. He had also started bringing home other people's guns to take apart and blue, hanging them from the shower rod, so I had to skip showers before work. Eventually a coworker approached me about him stealing their gun and I simply said go talk to him, not my stuff.

As our marriage weirdly transitioned into something out of a TV show, our little girl started stumbling a lot. I started paying more attention, worried that she might have a developmental issue, and caught him tripping her, pushing her, even slamming her fingertips in a door. When he thought I wasn't looking he'd giggle or stomp away mad each time. I grew more fearful because his behavior was so strange. One day I walked in from work and he was peacefully sitting on the couch watching TV while our little girl screamed in the bedroom. He seemed completely unphased. I went back and found her turning colors from screaming so hard, her diaper was soaked through, and when I pulled it open I was extremely shocked to find a long pubic hair in her diaper and she looked a little swollen. With a terrified rush, I realized I had confirmation of everything wrong and quickly changed her before he could see that I saw, because I knew in that moment he was not above killing me. He had accidentally killed before during a hunting trip, according to one of his crazy stories everyone blew off. No one ever really believed that, in spite of his expert marksmanship and obsession with guns. I quickly arranged a babysitter while I was at work and demanded the one car we had, saying I'd lose my job if I were late walking again. I made sure only I could access her and pick her up, all without really confronting him, using excuses and acting dumb. I knew we were both in danger.

I wasn't sure what else to do so I went to a neighbor for help, the wife of an officer in our church. She suggested I stop watching so much TV. I was so crushed that I went home dying inside, not daring to cry openly where my husband could see. I tried to hold everything together for about a month until one of my husband's sisters showed up at the door demanding to know if I was a whore or just stupid, and she was really angry. I knew in that split second I had an ally, even though we weren't friends at all, and told her I guess I'm stupid and I don't know who to trust. She sat with me at a clinic to check my little girl out for abuse, but by then she was healed up and no one was able to confirm. I look back and wonder if she showed up because, with my child being more protected out of my husband's reach while I was at work, maybe her children were more at risk from their uncle.

One of my big unmistakable clues that the danger was rising was when he walked in one night, held a stolen rifle to my head out of the blue without saying anything, and didn't move at all until I rolled my eyes and turned around and ignored him. He held that position about ten seconds longer and then lowered the rifle and stomped away down the hallway without saying a word. My heart was thumping really hard but I didn't cry or act freaked out or anything from that moment onward through the rest of our marriage. I knew his crazy head meant it and somehow I called his bluff. If I had reacted at all, I have no doubt I would have died that day. I think he was really pissed because he hadn't had access to our daughter.

After that, I knew I needed outside help as soon as possible. I went to the health department and asked for a referal to a specialist for my child under the guise of developmental issues. I was still so naive that I didn't understand when, instead, they suddenly confronted me about the faint bruises that were nearly healed on her arms actually being cigarette burns (I'd grown up in a nonsmoking household and had no idea cigarette burns could look like that and argued that my husband just gripped her too tightly) and they said they were going to take her away immediately. I negotiated hard and fast, saying I'd have my husband out of the house within a week. I was so fortunate they were slack enough to allow me to leave the building with her. I quit my job that very day and asked for help from a lawyer who went to my church. He helped me map out a legal plan to get my husband out of our lives without rocking the danger boat. First he helped me file for legal separation on the spot, the rest would be waiting a few months for that to pass through court uncontested, and then hopefully proceed to divorce without visitation, and a big part of that sliding through successfully would hinge on not pursuing child support. It would be tricky, a long game, but he defined the goals and coached me how to behave to reach those goals.

After that visit with the lawyer (quite a lot in one day!) I picked my daughter up from daycare for the last time, telling them I quit my job, then went home the rest of the day. I was so glad my husband wasn't home when I first got there so I could set up a play area and get ready to face him. He walked in about an hour later after his friend dropped him off and was very surprised to find my daughter and I both home instead of at work and daycare. I explained to him that I had taken our daughter to the health department for stumbling so much and they were going to take her away on the spot, and here's where being brave gets really hard, and since I've lived it, I believe it when other people say how hard it is to get out of bad situations. I had to lie straight faced and act convincingly naive to a man who was already abusing me and had showed ample evidence he might hurt me very badly or even kill me. I babbled on how I couldn't understand what they were talking about, but I said ok and quit work and said I'd be staying home with our daughter myself and they'd come check on us in a few days, and within a few minutes he was packing, saying he needed a break. I never found out if he thought he might be caught for child rape, but I played stupid and nice and signed the car title over and told him come back when he got his stuff figured out. Once he was out of the house, I started packing myself and moved back with my parents. After that, it was a game of legally baiting him to out himself as a psycho while he signed away custody. He wanted visitation, and on the advice of my lawyer I insisted on a psychological assessment with the condition that he must sign a release for me to visit with the psychologist afterward before he could see her.

While I waited for that to roll out, I did take kiddo to see her daddy one time after he got a place in town, mostly so I could confirm how he was doing. He took me on a tour of the backyard and the house while she played, and didn't seem at all phased to walk me right by an unmade bed with a big pool of not quite dried blood across the sheets. There was no way that was someone's period. I nearly had a panic attack at how blatant that was, how unaware he seemed to be about that affecting anyone. I told him he got lucky, it was a nice house, and he seemed proud of himself. Once we got back to the livingroom with kiddo, he almost started slavering, insisting I go shopping and he could babysit. I laughed and said no, I'm not shopping today, but I brought you the rest of your things, which he seemed happy to see (they were really more of my own things, including his favorite record albums), but then started pressuring again for me to leave for awhile. I rattled on while I ushered our daughter out the door, down the little lane, through the gate, and by the time we made it into the car he was hostile. I don't know how he refrained from putting hands on me, maybe because we were so visible while we were outside of his house. I just kept playing really stupid and got away.

He complied with the request to talk to a doctor at a mental health center, and I was able to visit with that doctor in private another day. From all accounts, that doctor believed everything my husband said, but I had come prepared. I expected that because everyone believed him about everything except when it was something 'ridiculous' like accidentally killing someone, which he didn't bring up with that doctor. Everyone really believed he had suffered through terrible things and horrible surgeries and had a metal plate in his head, a rod in his spine, and plastic kneecaps, including this doctor. The doctor even felt sorry for him, telling me it was a pity that he was unable to work. He was very surprised when I pulled a stack of papers out of my purse, and I started asking questions. Did he tell you when we got married? Yes, he did, and the doctor read the date from his meticulous notes. I laid our marriage certificate on the desk so he could see the date was wrong. Did he tell you our daughter's birthday? Yes, he did... I laid the birth certificate down. I asked question after question and laid down paper after paper. Every single fact my husband had told that doctor was wrong. I made sure that doctor became aware of the health department referral findings about there being nothing physically wrong with him. And when I reached the end of that stack of papers, I put them all back into my purse and said Thank you, that is all I needed to know, and smiled, standing up to leave. The doctor had looked more and more worried through the visit and suddenly seemed very anxious, asking Can you get him back here? He really did look worried, and I hadn't even told him about the guns. And I said, Sorry, I really can't, and I walked out. This is proof that you cannot talk to someone during assessment and know the truth about them, no matter how many professional years a person might have under their belt. This is also proof that my family and neighbors believing my husband's words over my own only shows how naive and gullible people everywhere really are in the presence of a mentally ill person. Society as a whole, in my opinion, is far too trusting. We should all be more aware of our neighbors than saying they seemed so nice and you can't believe they did something that bad when the police come for them.

So, obviously, I was married to a quackadoodle who compulsively made things up continually, confirmed by a number of doctors, and after that I screamed at him that he would never see his daughter again, and he hasn't. All the same, I had to remain very stringent for years watching out for possible kidnap, especially after a niece of his warned me in a phone call that he'd found her school, and she told me a man was watching her on the playground.

None of that helped anyone else believe me about the sexual abuse. Even my own mother called me a liar. So that's a real thing, unless people have literally been through something traumatic or know someone who has, they cannot process it as 'real'. I was alone for years unable to talk to anyone, and ostracized by my church as a divorced woman.

Anyone can be a bad guy and you'd never know it. If someone comes to you asking for help, don't blow them off like they're lying and making up fictions. Never trust anyone with your kids no matter how nice you might think they are, because you. don't. know.

Part 2

You know what, I'm going to put parts 2 and 3 in a follow up post.

A person I know on twitter posts these numbers every single day. I think these are U.S. numbers.

You matter. 24/7 Suicide 800-273-8255 Sexual Assault 800-656-4673 Domestic Violence 800-799-7233 Child Abuse 800-252-2873 Drugs/Alcohol 800-662-4357 Veterans Text 838255 for VA help Trans 877-565-8860 TTY 800-799-4889 Crisis Text START to 741741 for trained volunteers

I also made these links one year on a blog post. They should click out.

If you need someone to talk to right now- *click*
international suicide hotlines
national domestic violence hotline (U.S.)
veterans crisis hotline
24 hour crisis hotline (depression)

If you feel alone and trapped, find ways to let someone know you need help.

Article- Can a black dot on a victim's hand help tackle domestic violence?

that time I spilled (almost) everything about my sex life

Got another one of those random calls from yet another publishing company today, didn't bother picking up, but I looked them up. That snip clicks out if you need to see the screenshots. 😂

I think at this point I've shared so much stuff for free that I may as well share the rest for free, maybe slap a book together another year (or ten lmao).

Years ago, when I first started blogging publicly as an aspienado, I wrote aspie lovin' (recopied here for mobile viewing), which got way more hits than it should have. I mean way more. Back then, xanga had internal tracking available and I was able to see it. I'm not going to copy/paste it here, but it's a cute story if you want to check it out, how crazy mixed up I get with social interaction in a relationship and why the word 'cupcake' still cracks me up.

A few months later I wrote self stim (recopied here for mobile and later shared on Autisable). I'm not going to recopy that here, either. In the comments section in that middle link in the previous sentence, someone commented that they thought they were the only person in the world to have this problem, and I left a lengthy reply with a history of how I 'came out' about my sexuality with link backs, so if you are one of those weirdo full blown synesthetes on autism spectrum and other complications, hi, me too.

So to quickly recap, I was born a mess and it may have affected my brain a little bit but not so's you'd notice that much on an MRI or cognitive testing, right? Except for empty sella and the headaches I've had all my life, everything problematic I've ever gone through growing up boiled down to either me being 'different' (not a compliment back then), or being a weirdo. On the other end of life now, I have some solid research backing up some of the things that have sexually haunted me my entire life. I can't definitively say what caused what, what exactly are symptoms of which thing, but I've got pretty good ideas how to sort it all out now.

So the big problem behind everything that I rarely talk about is spontaneous orgasms and persistent genital arousal disorder, which is hilarious given that I'm super asexual by nature. This is a very tangled up thing that I tried bringing up in therapy, but the push to have to define myself was so odious that I had to drop it. I'm not against defining and sharing, I'm just not that verbal all the time (thank you, autism spectrum), and when I am, I wind up talking too fast (thank you, euphoric episodes). Throw in another person processing the convo and it's really not long till we're off in crazy land arguing about what I'm really going through.

I started out born with deficits. I am socially deficit (whole cheer section in the back just shouted out at me, we all know I suck), prosopagnosia (face blindness) didn't help with building relationships at all anywhere any time in my life, autism lending to self stim (totally normal for auties as, I argue, a compulsive need for tension relief that isn't perceived as sexual by tiny children), and on top of all that, I have some weirdly brain wired synesthesia. I mix sex up with everything.

You cannot orgasm without a specific brain chemical, and once you orgasm, another brain chemical is released. The whole process usually follows a physically logical sequence of events. You fantasize, you touch someone, you enjoy them, you climax.

Not me.

As a child, all it took was someone angrily yelling and my anxiety would pop like a cork and there I'd be grinding on the floor trying to escape. I could vanish in my mind. I was gone. I didn't know for many years that I was dissociating, and that was the fastest way I was able to cope without melting down and winding up being punished for the extra chaotic noise I'd be adding to theirs. That was a coping mechanism to avoid pain that didn't make any sense to me. I didn't connect cause and consequence for years, so I didn't learn how to deal with the environment around me like I should have.

Let's throw in a monkey wrench. At some point, I must have had a back injury, who knows when or how. I skipped crawling. I dragged myself across the floor with my arms, they called it scooting. I have no idea why I didn't use my knees. When I decided I was ready to walk, I just stood up and walked. This back injury has showed up a number of times throughout my life, and each time I have been unable to walk. This is a consistent story in my life. It happened when I was a preteen, I think, all it took was a high jump off something to paralyze me in screaming pain. A chiropractor relieved the pressure on the nerve and I walked out after being carried in. That happened again three more times as an adult, with extensive physical therapy the last time it happened.

That pinched nerve area can be seen in this article. 👈 I've been through years of complications with that nerve, including such rough lower abdominal pain that I ran in to check for bladder infections sometimes monthly. I always turned out fine. I had severe groin pain off and on throughout my life, feeling like I fell hard in a bike accident or something. I never talked about it because anything involving genitals was so taboo back then, especially in our house, that I would have felt like a sinner just bringing it up.

Between tension in kindergarten and elementary school and that compressed nerve, I almost pathologically aimed for swingset poles on the playground. Just gripping my legs around them and pulling myself up to the top was nirvana in my poor brain, and I'd be so 'gone' that staff would have to come get me and pull me back into class crying in full meltdown. Any time I'm asked about excessive masturbation as a child, I feel so pissy that I can barely talk. That wasn't masturbating. That wasn't sex. That was a very small child with no coping skills desperately needing pain and stress relief. If we remember me talking about being born addicted to darvocet and having to live on donnatal (one of the ingredients is a barbituate) just to hold food down as a baby, it starts to make more sense that my brain was hard wired to overfeel everything as pain.

I'm not sure how I made it through puberty, but I severely lacked cognizance of any kind of sexual attraction all the way up through high school and beyond, which would have been very surprising if anyone knew how ridiculously my life was run by spontaneous orgasms the whole time. I saw it all around me, kids schmoozy and dopey all over each other, and I just sat there hiding continual orgasms out of the blue making it hard to think, although I amazed my gym teacher in high school when I shimmied up a rope right into the rafters one day, and jump pressed 800 pounds another day. I was exremely strong from all that private exercise. I would have died if anyone had ever found out. I wasn't shy, but I was brought up to be mortified over anything untoward, as the prudent might say. I had enough stim practice to outlast a nymphotic slut, and just no one ever knew.

I've brought this up before, but I was in my 20's before I realized I'd never visualized kissing anyone. This didn't stop me getting married, which was surreal. Never get married to escape your parents, that's dumb, and it backfired horribly. I was so inexperienced with sex that I didn't realize for years I'd married a pedophile. That's a scrapbook for the ol' burn pile, right?

I didn't consciously realize until my 30s that I was literally being sexually triggered by weather, colors, smells, architecture... It was highly embarrassing to be flipping through a home magazine in a doctor's waiting room and suddenly freeze into hiding orgasms because I saw a certain rock wall in a picture that was a certain splatter of grays and random patterns. That magazine was so spellbinding I almost brought it home. I kept sneaking peeks back at that page. Seriously? Yes, very seriously.

After I noticed that's all it took, I started keeping track of areas inside and outside of buildings that caught my attention. For some reason, certain colors and patterns in architecture (not all the same) set me off without warning, and it's so pleasurable just being in or near that building looking at the colors and patterns that an hour could slip by and I wouldn't notice. Guess what. There's an article.

What Is Sex Like for Someone with Synesthesia?

Given how long ago that was written, I'm surprised I didn't find it sooner. I guess I never thought to look it up, lol. I'm just disappointed that they confine the question to actual sex and not unrelated stimulus.

So you get a person with a pinched nerve, wonky brain wiring, social deficits, and a life fraught with tension and anxiety, and life is one long frustrating orgasm. 😂 I'm sure there are people out there who would pay good money to have this problem. And now I'm looking back on my life processing all the things I went through and realizing the impact this had on all my relationships...

Most of what I did socially for a long time was mimicry, because I don't seem to have a natural instinct for empathy. I'm clueless, so I sit there listening when people yap on about whatever, and I've been told I'm the best listener. Sadly, I started drinking heavily after I divorced the pedophile and wound up in some really stupid places with not very good people. I was still so unaware of myself socially that I didn't recognize red flags that should have been popping up, so I wound up raped a few times and nearly raped even more times. I got smart enough to see it coming and split the scene, but it took awhile to connect all that poor behavior around me to cause and consequence while I floated over it like bubbles on the tide. Because of this, I've walked through some dangerous places nearly unscathed, oblivious. I can't help but be very thankful looking back that I was so asexual that I never hooked up or bonded with anyone else who would have dragged my life down like my first husband. The only real exception was an affair I pursued more out of loneliness than anything, but the fallout blackened my heart so badly that I called quits on trying to have another boyfriend of any kind.

My second husband came from an arranged meeting and friends/coworkers pushing us to go out, and the deepest thought I had on that was surely they would at least have some sense of what would work out for us, because he was kind of like me, socially distant without much of a clue how to go forward after his own divorce. Not exactly a match made in heaven, but fast firm friends. It's been 30 years now since we first met.

We are not an average couple. At all. We rarely talk about sex, neither one of us can smoothly initiate, we're both kind of klutzy with anything in the aura of romance, and we're both too naturally honest to pretend feelings about anything. He can't lie to save his life, I always know. I think our biggest challenge, besides coming into another marriage each having a premade kid and all the ways we've been affected by extended family, is that we laugh too easily. Especially me. Everything is funny to me, because it's so cartoony. I'm sorry, but sex is hilarious. Everything about it is so dumb, like living memes or something. I cannot to this day get past the word 'frog' if it comes up in my mind for any reason whatsoever during sex without completely destroying the mood with laughing fits. After a few years of that, Scott told me it takes a brave man to continue in spite of a woman laughing in his face the entire time. Just writing that has me stifling giggles, I can't help it. He's right, he's a very brave man with superior focus.

Sooner or later, everyone on the planet experiences a glitch or problem in the 'plumbing', as it were. Some are born wonky, some develop wonky, some age wonky. Then if you have a sex partner of any kind, they may or may not have their own kind of wonky, and then you top it all off with whatever physical and mental/cognitive challenges we have that either twist things up or just flat get in the way of dealing with wonky.

Dysfunctions are part of life, same as heartburn and headaches. It's not a big deal unless you have attached a big deal to it to begin with. If you are using sex to express love and fail to express love any other way, you're going to have a really hard time when things go wonky. If you use sex as your entertainment and don't have any other diversions for pleasure, you're going to have a really hard time when things go wonky. You can do this all day and fill in the blanks

My life should have come with a warning label, since everything I got through is inside out and backward. I can't even imagine having to be married to me. But conversely, same with my husband. He came with his own baggage, as well. We'd both had previous messed up relationships, and we both had deep secrets about our childhoods involving trauma and abuse. It wasn't sexualized abuse for either of us, but it was every bit as traumatizing, so there were parts of us already closed off to sharing long before we met.

Everything we hear about marriage (and you can apply this to any sexual parnership) is about trust and honesty. You can have surface trust and honesty and still have none inside of you. Since a sexual partnership involves such interaction as allowing a person to learn how not to hurt you both physically and emotionally, it's easy to come into that already behind a fortress of safety. Some of us must operate that way because that is how we survived earlier grievances, but that doesn't mean we can't be kind and mindful of each other, even when we can't seem to share what we really need or prefer or like. Anyone who has been through emotional and physical abuses instantly understands what I am saying if they have consciously addressed processing their past. If you haven't dealt with that yet and shrug it off behind a firmly shut door, you cannot understand any of this because you are too closed off. When you are like that, you are using the other person, not sharing yourself. There's a fine line. You can love someone with your whole soul and still be using them because you have a demand that lines are not crossed, and you may not have even consciously addressed those lines. I think more of us are like this than we are willing to admit. Life on this earth kinda sucks and by the time we finally reach a place where we really long for soul-deep love, we are so closed off we cannot figure it out.

That was the kind of wall my husband and I ran into in our 30s, early on in our remarriage with previous kids, family all around inputting their negative opinions, challenges galore, and me dealing with my health issues while fronting that I could keep up. Which I couldn't, so there was a hurt pride thing going along with judgment from negative outsiders and my husband caught between all that. It was natural at that time that he'd fall back into old behavior patterns. Sex was about the only time we could seem to set some of that aside and just touch each other, so bringing up any more problems in that light was tantamount to taboo at that point, because it wouldn't have taken much more to completely break our marriage. That was our last option for managing to stick through the other challenges we were going through, and even though neither one of us could think wisely on it back then, I see now that our kindness of simply not beating each other up too much over sex fails was part of what saved us. The rest was sheer stubbornness, I think. 😄

But for real, first it was me, then it was him, then me again, and the times where sex was easy and good were rare. I had that back injury flaring up here and there on top of arthritic and other pain and some really monumental headache spells, and he developed a weird ongoing erectile dysfunction that could have gone back to injuries as a kid, and when we both overlapped these problems, sex was rough. His doctor told him the best way to treat his problem was to keep having sex, but there was no more information forthcoming from either the doctor or even my husband. We stopped even talking about it, just did it. It was up to me to establish what the lines were for my own pain, which became so excruciating at times that the only way I could orgasm at all (even on my own) was to grit my teeth and own it. Searing nerve pain ripping up your nervous system right at climax is a pretty big challenge, but there was no other way for 2-3 years. I was at a place where that pinched nerve was so bad that I had to drag in to years of chiropractor and then physical therapy just to keep walking, and that entire time I went through complications that felt like an arrow had been shot through the top of my left foot whenever I simply sat down, horrible sciatic flares, bearing down pains around my pelvic floor, groin pain like I'd been spiked, bladder and uterine pain that had no other cause or malady, just lots of pain. Sex was hard because any kind of new pressure in any direction anywhere increased the pain spikes, and then for some reason, orgasm itself was a fresh hell all on its own.

In reality, sex wasn't causing me any actual harm. The logic of sex, actually, was that I needed the extra strength conditioning to deal with that level of pain. That was before much could be found on internet, before we knew how to state our needs simply to doctors (my husband rarely saw doctors anyway, so we were on our own), and before we both made emotional breakthroughs about our pasts. The most logical thing I could think of to get through it was 1- kindness, and 2- patience, both of which I'm not naturally good at. I focused on problem solving, because that is what I was born for in this brain, and I became a sort of director- move this way, try that, slow down, wait a second while I, and sex became a clumsy couples physical therapy session with a very simple goal of either one of us just making it to climax. I wimped out sometimes, couldn't face my own pain, but I made sure he made it. No more laughing over frogs popping in my head. No more distractions. We literally went through undiscussed sexual workouts with each other for at least two years. Over time his erectile dysfunction worked itself out and he's fine, and over time my back grew stronger and healed from the pinched nerve and I'm fine.

That is what life partners DO.

As more time has passed and we've made individual emotional breakthroughs about our pasts, it's easier all the time to hang out and just be friends. As I've gone post menopausal and he's gone more diabetic, we've both become uninterested in sex together, which is actually pretty normal if you look around, but as far as I can tell, we're still fine. I take care of me, I assume he takes care of himself if he needs to, and we don't fret with each other over it. This house is our sanctuary and I like that we respect each other's space.

So now I'm learning about coconut oil and estradiol, because being post menopausal sucks for complications coming with dryness. It's interesting how treating dryness is affecting the arousal disorder, and that in turn is affecting depression and euphoric spells, pretty sure all these are linked through brain chemical processes. Got my little roller coaster going, but I seem to be doing ok with it.

Beyond that, everything in my head now feels like review. I feel like I'm coming up on the 'final', like when you're in college and the end of semester test consumes you. I feel like it's time to go back over everything I've learned and assess how I did with it, and then come to a conclusion about 'my stuff'.

After sticking through a major commitment to a relationship, I can honestly say I'm glad I stuck through it. Aside from feeling like we accomplished our goals getting the kids raised up right, I feel satisfied that I did my human duty learning how to apply what I learned about becoming a more kind person to the one person I committed my life to. That's not an easy thing. We went through years of wanting to call it quits, long spells of barely speaking to one another, things like that, but as water flows under the bridge, time cycled around and we can look back on that now with a few jokes. I can't imagine it having been better to split up, given all the problems we had that we'd have had to face all over again with new partners. I have to say I've been very lucky because I wasn't stuck through all this with someone abusing drugs or alcohol, he never got snotty hateful with me, never struck or pushed me around. We did have a bad day here or there where I'd be told what a drag I was on his life, and I'm not saying that was a good thing, but it was a real wakeup call for me because I really was a jerk sometimes. He didn't need me being a jerk on top of all the stuff we were trying to get through.

For whatever reason the world has become like it is, we have, as a society, been strongly brainwashed into believing that our sex lives are the measure of our happiness, and that we deserve to sex up ourselves any way we wish for fulfillment. I'm here to say that idea of sex is a drug. It's an addiction. I know what sex addiction is, I've lived it. Thanks to my crazy brain, I never turned that into anything selfish, like many people do. There are loads of people out there whose driving force in life is their next sexcapade, in or out of relationships, and some turn that into money making schemes. They model glitzy lifestyles like sex is all that and a bag of chips so they can make money off others, and boy do they get rich. Many of us fall for the glam of it, even if we don't fall into that abyss itself, and bring that home to apply to our own partner judgments and fails, and that isn't fair.

Sex is the most honest doorway in to your soul. If you are honest with yourself, you can see exactly what kind of person you are, could be, choose to be or not be when you use sex to rummage around in your mind and dig up your past. Why? Because sex is the fastest way our trust and honesty can be destroyed. Even if we are never sexually abused as children, the way we are taught to behave sexually can be very mind numbing to how we really feel in our souls later in life. Because I have this weird sense of self in a weird brain, I can see all this clearly. I can see the rubble strewn path others have to pick their way around just to meet me in the middle and talk about these things.

Kindness is logical no matter where you are in your own path. Kindness to yourself, kindness to others. Failure to be kind is our first mistake in any situation.

(Since 'peaceful protests' are messing up our minds, I'm going to insert that kindness also means protecting your loved ones when others will hurt them. It's that simple when we get down to the minute and second of that possible last breath of life, for those of you still freezing up over making decisions like that based on fear of reprisal.)

I bet you guys thought this post was going to be about all my really weird sex stuff, like object fetishes. 😂😂😂

If you were digging the soul stuff, this vid is pretty awesome.

luxurious

Been awhile since I dug into assessment. At this point, the best word I can find to describe where I'm currently at is luxurious. I don't know if some of you would find this incredulous, but I've not been able to simply lay around in bed in the morning and luxuriously stretch without instant charlie horses, nasty joint pain, or a rush of dread from the chemical cocktails my brain sloshes over me for most of my adult life. Over the last couple of months, those 'early to rise' dilemmas seem to have ALL died down and gone away. Yes, I still have arthritis all over my body, yes, I still have fibromyalgia, yes, I still have mood disorder challenges, BUT they don't smite me first thing waking up. That is luxurious.

I've been very surprised. The only two big changes I've been compliant with my new doctor so far are adding losartan to my blood pressure meds, which kinda sucked getting used to because of the headache thing, and adding vitamin D to my diet. She discovered immediately that I'm D deficient (not just low), which no other doctor has ever checked on.

For years (decades) doctors kept me on meds that rashed me out in sunlight. A few of my worst years were so bad I'd actually break out in near boils within minutes of going outside. All I'd have to do was walk across a parking lot, a real challenge back then anyway, made worse by polymorphous light eruption, sometimes with fevers. Sometimes just a few minutes of sunlight could even trigger an autoimmune flare, and then I'd wind up on prednisone. As you can imagine, I didn't get a lot of sun, especially not enough to get sufficient vitamin D going. 

How to Safely Get Vitamin D from Sunlight 👈 click that

You'd think it would be a given to just take vitamins. I had two problems with that.

1- My mom, in her enthusiasm, gave me vitamin poisoning one year, which later a hepatologist was shocked to learn and he called it child abuse. I was loathe to take vitamins after that for a long time.

2- Doctors back then kept me so medicated with handfuls of drugs that adding vitamins was frowned on as causing interactive problems. In order for the meds to work, I had to back off on taking vitamins.

That's horrible, you say. Yes, I say back. Imagine how many adults are suffering in this world with severe vitamin and mineral deficiencies because the medical culture we wind up trapped in deems it more important to keep adding medications instead of investigating malnutrution with comorbidities like diabetes and stuff.

So I was instructed to take 5000 units of D a day for 3 months, and then go down to 2000 a day. I usually wind up around 3 or 4000 a day. I'm not terribly stringent with my compliance. Still, I started noticing changes within a week, more within a month, and now at two months I'm experiencing so much change that I can legit say the vitamin D has got to be what's doing that. Simply bringing my blood pressure down a little more starting losartan doesn't account for all of this.

One of the first things I noticed was that my gabapentin withdrawal wasn't bothering me any more. For several weeks I sludged my way through the last of my receptor grumbling adapting back to my own normal, but that faded fairly quickly once I started taking vitamin D.

Click this 👉 Understanding GABA 👈 

Gaba receptor meds essentially take over body production and when you withdraw, having to restart making it adds its own level of pain to existing pain, like having raw nerves ringing all day. I've been withdrawing off the last of my xanax, as well, so that is a double receptor challenge. I've done it before, and as ridiculous as it sounds, even a teeny tiny amount is still hard withdrawing from if you've been taking it for years. It's worse than quitting smoking, which I've also done. Much worse. The nerve sensitivity is pretty miserating. Fortunately, it's gotten way easier over the last month to the point where I'm barely noticing it. That's pretty huge for me.

8 Signs and Symptoms of Vitamin D Deficiency 👈 click that. 

Right? That's a pretty spot on list for me. Muscle pain? I am the queen of muscle pain. Hair loss? I've blogged about years of hair loss. Depression? I'm a depression blogger. Bone and back pain? Ha, please, to the point of nearly complete immobility for several years. Fatigue and tiredness? Just shut up already, we all know how fail I am at keeping up with life.

To be comprehensive in a nutshell, I've become so relaxed over the last month for the first time in my life without any meds making this happen that I'm laying around in bed stretching like a cat for the first time since I can remember, with no sudden muscle cramps snapping me back, no sudden pain stabs dragging me down, and no sudden sloshes of weird adrenaline responses springing me out of bed. Just stretching because it feels good to stretch.

That's quality of life.

Before we go on, no, taking vitamin D has NOT cured anything. It's not a cure, ok? It's a nutrition problem solver. I'm still dealing with arthritis and neuralgia in my feet, knee challenges, other joints all over my body, etc. I'm not insinuating that anyone should start taking vitamin D without first checking with your doctor and investigating your current malnutrition status. I grew up on homeopathic 'cures' and can verify not a single thing ever EVER stopped me living a miserable life, so be smart about this, ok? This isn't about curing, it's about living better, feeling better, functioning better. This blog is about using our brains ever since I started it in 2011. If you are new to me, there are many things I've covered on my own healing path.

And I really thought I was getting enough because I'm a big dairy fan and vitamin D is added to dairy. You do not know until you get a blood test. You can see here I was clearly deficient, not just low on it.

I'm not going to go into any more about supplementing and how it works. You are big kids and can find and read it yourselves. Researching is important, but there is more to it than believing you must need it and then self diagnosing and self treating. Go ask for a blood test. This goes for anything you want to know about your body. Nearly everything is measurable, and if you are willing to pay cash for what your insurance won't cover, just tell the doctor that and you should be able to see where you are with your bloodwork.

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The next thing I'm dealing with is wrestling with comorbidity control. A comorbidity is any variable that makes a health outcome worse. When you add up comorbidities, you can basically project the potential complications you can die of.

One very strong comorbidity variable across all diseases is a person's weight. Being too skinny or too fat greatly increases the likelihood of not recovering from illness or not surviving a disease process well. Learning how to use a BMI calculator is my latest challenge. I'm right at 35%, which isn't the worst I've seen when I look at people around me, but still projects me into congestive heart failure with my diabetes and arthritis challenges, even well controlled.

As I age, my body can only keep doing so much. My new doctor is currently watching me for diabetic kidney disease. We have evidence that there is a level of damage that likely occurred in the past and hasn't yet gotten worse. That makes sense because I've had some very ill years in the past, oddly, no one back then addressed that kidney damage could have been happening.

As you can see, no other doctor has ever checked me for kidney disease before, despite a rough medical history. This is the only microalbumin test I've ever had despite years of autoimmune flares.

Know Your Kidney Numbers: Two Simple Tests 👈 click that

But that is an anomaly at the moment because my history of creatinine is fine.

Again, this new doctor is the first one to do really rigorous testing. No one else ever checked for the deeper impact and now we're going to watch and see if the microalbumin test is for real or a one time catch.

From What is a microalbumin creatinine ratio?

If your microalbumin creatinine ratio shows albumin in your urine, you may get tested again to confirm the results. If your results continue to show albumin in urine, it may mean you have early-stage kidney disease. If your test results show high levels of albumin, it may mean you have kidney failure. If you are diagnosed with kidney disease, your health care provider will take steps to treat the disease and/or prevent further complications.

If small amounts of albumin are found in your urine, it doesn't necessarily mean you have kidney disease. Urinary tract infections and other factors can cause albumin to show up in urine. If you have questions about your results, talk to your health care provider.

So there you go, possible big comorbidity with my BMI and diabetes. BMI is correlated with higher blood pressures, which I've had for many years, and higher blood pressures are correlated with kidney damage. It's high time I got all over this.

Another big comorbidity with BMI and diabetes is liver disease. Let's look at my current basic tests. You can see in the past that I had liver enzyme spikes.

My liver has been watched a long time. A doctor in 2010 brought up possible autoimmune liver disease, which would have killed me by now, and my new doctor recently ruled out hepatitis again.

My problem around the 2010 time frame was actually cytomegalovirus which is 👉 tested thusly. 👈 This is part of my medical history and it's very important because if it ever flares up again, I am somewhat high risk for death. Most healthy people have no idea they even have this virus, they don't get real sick. I was very ill for months. This is one of my main concerns for getting as healthy as I can and not fail into poor health again.

I also had a condition called NASH, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis that went even more years back into my history, originally caught in a different medical system after about a decade of very strong meds for continual autoimmune flares. An endocrinologist warned me to get off those meds, which left me with about a one inch long hard spot on my liver that showed up like neon on MRIs and CTs. That spot was there for years and has now resolved and the condition was dropped from my list of current health problems. However, I still had that problem when I got the cytomegalovirus infection, and I'm sure that was part of what made me so ill with it.

So I've had two liver diseases in my history, both cytomegalovirus, which inflamed my liver, and NASH. The hard spot resolved after I lost 50 pounds in 2011. So far I've not seen that return, but as I'm aging I'm having a harder time with slower metabolism and more arthritic challenge, so again, my BMI comorbidity with my diabetes needs some serious thought if I'm going to continue aging more gracefully. Obviously, my weight ratios are having a big impact on organs, and I'd be silly to dismiss it. I've already experienced how painful and crippling organ involvement can be. I may be hovering just above 200 pounds, which probably sounds laughable with so many people over that nowadays, but if I'm already experiencing health impacts, I know you will, as well. I'm sick of being sick, as it were. Keep in mind that many people don't have symptoms before they find out what's going on inside their bodies. Never hurts to go get a checkup.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As my D deficiency is being addressed throughout my body, my comorbidity control is coming into focus. I'm finding myself more capable, although I was still having so much trouble continuing a mild daily 30 minute workout that I could barely move my feet the rest of the day and it was very painful walking afterward. I'd have to lay down with my legs up to get relief. It was like when I was young and trying to roller skate after I'd sprained my ankles. Every step felt like so much extra work.

Intro new shoes. These are Asics Gel-Kayano 26 in 'Voilet Blush Dive Blue'. They are currently on sale direct from their website, not paid to link it. I'm really loving the color, it feels more autumn than the seafoam green next to them. You can tell I take really good care of my shoes, the green ones barely look used at all, but I've had them well over a year. Ah, yes, I mention it in June 2019.

I'm frugal. I'm horrible to not spend money on new shoes, even though I know I really need to stay on top of that if I want to keep walking, per my podiatrist. I'm commanded to keep my feet in top of the line athletic shoes at all times. I'm bad to not wear them around my house unless I'm working out, and then the workout increases my foot pain so badly that it's hard to walk the rest of the day. Guess what. That means it's time for new shoes. If your top of the line athletic shoes are no longer helping you through workouts, they're probably worn down enough to no longer be supportive. This means they aren't good for you any more. Junk shoes are like junk food. They make your health slide down that slippery slope to more misery.

I put the new shoes on yesterday and my workout was. a. breeze. Total validation for new shoes.

It's really important to keep walking to keep up healthy elasticity in the veins in my legs. Congestive heart failure creeps up slowly, basically starts with fluid in your legs getting stuck down there, and other comorbidities don't help that at all. Diabetes shreds veins, and higher BMI means there is that much more work getting those fluids back up. It's a horrible and very painful way to die, and I can say that after my dad dying from it. He wasn't diabetic at all and lived to 90, but that didn't make it any less excruciating. I have comorbidities he didn't have, so I'm higher risk to die earlier than he did, plenty of incentive now that I've seen it.

In 2011, all I had to do was stick to 1500 calories a day and 50 pounds melted off me over 4 months without any exercise at all. That's not happening this time. Even when I cut to 1400 calories a day, I'm not losing weight. When I look it up, aging does that. Metabolism slows down. There are ways to stimulate it, like with doing weights and other core workouts, so I am modifying my workouts again. I'm also looking into 👉 intermittent fasting. 👈 I have days where I'm naturally not hungry, especially when I'm going through euphoric episodes, and I was trying to make myself eat to keep my moods more even. I've decided that now I'm off meds, I need to pay more attention to my body, biorhythms and whatnot, moods. If I don't feel like eating, I can always sling a small protein shake down sometime during the day with my vitamins. Instead of just counting calories, I'm further spacing out the snack thing on hungry days.

I counted calories last month and noticed that even stopping at 1400, just snacking through the day seems to keep the weight on. I think I need to cut that out. No more something in my mouth every couple hours, which, if you are diabetic, is really normal because glucose drops are rough. Even when my glucose stays level, I crave to eat. The only way that stops is to just stop eating. The dangerous part of that is not realizing when I'm sliding into a hypoglycemic state, which doesn't have to be actual low blood sugar. For diabetics, that kicks off abnormally because the entire disease is about living with a broken feedback loop concerning digesting carbs in general. It reminds me of my drinking days. I was hardcore into alcohol in my mid 20s and was able to drink around the clock and still hold a job. I got really skinny doing that, so yeah, that's tempting but I'm an alcoholic and don't dare. That steady every so often alcohol intake made life bearable back then, and I've been noticing diabetes is exactly like that, a steady intake of carbs feels very much to my brain the way taking a drink every little bit did. It's a brain chemical feedback malfunction. It's a terrible lie I live with, thinking it feels better to nibble and not getting anywhere truly healthy with it.

I've noticed also that when I skip a meal and stay really engrossed in writing or gaming, I don't miss food at all, and I generally feel better through the afternoon and then sleep better that night. My body doesn't seem to miss the skipped food at all. I don't put anything into my digestive system to trigger the faulty feedback. That's a simple way of looking at a complex issue, but it's helping me see how I can try moving forward another way.

Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern. I think I need to study that some more and try it for a few weeks. If I'm naturally doing it anyway on my own when I'm not paying attention, maybe I can adapt it into a lifestyle. I just need to be smart about it and pay attention to how my diabetes responds. I'm the kind of person that can suddenly experience hypoglycemic symptoms out of the blue even if my glucose is still in the 80s or 90s, so being smart about this means not taking off to run errands or starting a workout if I've skipped meals through the day.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Since I was shopping for vitamin D, I decided maybe it's time to add a good supplement back into my diet. I found a basic multi for 50+ with all the Bs, C, D, E, zinc, selenium (supposed to help with hair problems), calcium/magnesium kind of thing. I also picked up CoQ10 on the advice of my new doctor. She said it's to help with the problems taking statins can cause, but I'm taking it anyway. Haven't started the statin yet since I'm already dealing with fibromyalgia. A doctor long ago put me on a statin and I didn't do well on it, so I'm taking my time for now. After 30 years of meds with a full range of side effects and intolerances, I'm enjoying being on so few meds for awhile. As long as I don't eat junk and watch my calories, my cholesterol won't be getting worse.

Since I brought up supplements, remember not to take them within two hours of thyroid and blood pressure meds.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm kind of in limbo in psychological assessment. I'm taking a big break, thanks to covid, just really sick of the whole 'we gotta wear masks' push and how stupid it is to be told in an empty waiting room at a mental health clinic to keep my mask on, and you tell me how in the world that is a psychologically healthy 'mandate' for people who are already messed up with fear porn and hypochondria. And then my psychologist was ok with masks being off during therapy while the whole covid thing was a hot mess, but once it all settled and the world went to mandating masks even harder, he suddenly became glued to his mask but kept moving it over to sip a drink while we were talking. That is worse than trying to have private phone convos with other people in my house.

So yeah, taking a long break. I've been privately working through some more of the progress I started making on depersonalization and dissociative issues on other blogs, and I'm not in the mood to talk about them here yet. This blog, weirdly, is seen more prolifically lately than my other blogs, probably because of covid, so I imagine a lot of us are working through all kinds of things with all the 'me' time on our hands. I think I'd like to reach a place where I feel more solid with some conclusions than I currently feel. Consensus, though, is that this explains a *lot*.

Hope you guys are doing ok. I'm staying busy. 🙂

face blindness, calories, instructions, horses

Researching possible connections between prosopagnosia (face blindness, which I was born with) and dissociation (possible trauma induced prosopagnosia development), I ran into other research connecting empty sella syndrome (which I have) with high blood pressure headaches (which have landed me in ER and hospital more than anything else). I'll just copy/paste the entire thing over. Original post is here.

Things I'm still struggling with that I never talk about-

1. Despite all the vids I've shared and movies and shows I've seen lately, I cannot see Tom Cavanagh's face in my head unless I'm looking directly at him. The prosopagnosia is strong with that one. Joe Flannigan, no problem. I mean, I can at least get a forehead and eyes on him and I'm not even into Joe Flannigan. But yeah, I'm having as much trouble memorizing Tom's face as I had Scott's face and never admitted it for years. Imagine being married for 15 years before you even confess you can't picture your husband's face when you close your eyes and you're sitting right by him. I was born with this deficit, which would explain a lot of my childhood lack of friends. I don't usually think about it very much, but I'm wondering now if this could be related to my weird height projections when I watch TV, although I feel those are more trauma related and the prosopagnosia seems to be a hard drive problem, so I'm not sure how they could be related unless the prosopagnosia is also dissociative somehow. I think the reason this popped into my mind today is because my ENT doctor is very tall and a bit handsome and I'm always surprised like I'm meeting him for the first time, even though I've seen him a number of times over several years. (btw, appointment went great, yay) I can't picture him right now, either. I concentrated hard today on trying to remember, the way I finally got Benedict's face down after a couple years, but it's not working. Some faces just don't stick, even in small sections. I can usually zoom in on something like an eyebrow and then eventually reconstruct like puzzle pieces, but some faces are so slippery they fall out of my head like the Silence as soon as I turn away.
2. I still can't do simple math since the brain fail in 2004. My reading has finally snapped back fantastically, but I can't even keep a simple calorie count because I mangle the math so badly. My math dyslexia since 2004 is still really off the wall. Remember, I passed college algebra on the first try using an ink pen so I couldn't erase, which the teacher got after me for, citing I was intimidating the other students. I still can't keep addition columns straight. I can multiply in my head if I focus really hard, but I can't add in my head, something I'd been doing with ease since the third grade, or even on paper. Forget subtracting. Dividing seems to work just fine. Not one doctor in all these years has expressed an iota of concern or curiosity. I've asked for help a number of times, and aside from finding out I was being GAF scored by a psychologist, any kind of testing has been brushed off beyond having to remember a set of three or four words for a couple of minutes, and I even messed one of those up and was still pushed out the door.
3. I can't retain simple instructions from a doctor about anything unless I meticulously write it down. I don't mishear, because I do sometimes remember bits later in the day and realize I got something wrong, but trying to convey this challenge doesn't seem to connect up to how they have to repeat things to me several times because I'm obviously already getting mixed up, and I've been known to call offices back for instructions because the instructions on check out papers were so vague. Despite being able to retain loads of research (visual learning), I can't seem to retain audio instructions.
4. My short term memory is still horrible, but I'm getting better at hiding it or covering for it. I've been wondering if the memory thing has been a dissociative problem I've lived with all my life but was never aware of it till my brain flopped in 2004. I'm having to work so hard all the time on continuity since then that I can't help thinking I was about as oblivious as a person can be before 2004. That's gotta be why it took me years to pick up on the relevance of my GAF scores. I'd be very interested in what they'd have been pre-2004. Possibly worse? I was living with such restricting mind blinders that everything was black and white, and being a dissociated autism spectrum high IQ kid with PTSD triggers didn't help. I think I've arrived to a place where I can look back and see everything about me was about reactive survivalism.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~took a break

Out of the blue it hit me to look up dissociative prosopagnosia. THAT got interesting. If you like weird brain behavioral studies, I hit the jackpot.

Prosopagnosia: a double dissociation between the recognition of familiar and unfamiliar faces. (Interesting PDF.)

Prosopagnosia as a Type of Conversion Disorder (So prosopagnosia is becoming a broader field of study, very interesting.)

Does anyone experience dissociative symptoms? (I was so relieved to find other people talking about this.)

Prosopagnosia Information Page

Prosopagnosia is a neurological disorder characterized by the inability to recognize faces.  Prosopagnosia is also known as face blindness or facial agnosia.  The term prosopagnosia comes from the Greek words for “face” and “lack of knowledge.”   Depending upon the degree of impairment, some people with prosopagnosia may only have difficulty recognizing a familiar face; others will be unable to discriminate between unknown faces, while still others may not even be able to distinguish a face as being different from an object.  Some people with the disorder are unable to recognize their own face.  Prosopagnosia is not related to memory dysfunction, memory loss, impaired vision, or learning disabilities.  Prosopagnosia is thought to be the result of abnormalities, damage, or impairment in the right fusiform gyrus, a fold in the brain that appears to coordinate the neural systems that control facial perception and memory.  Prosopagnosia can result from stroke, traumatic brain injury, or certain neurodegenerative diseases.  In some cases it is a congenital disorder, present at birth in the absence of any brain damage.  Congenital prosopagnosia appears to run in families, which makes it likely to be the result of a genetic mutation or deletion.  Some degree of prosopagnosia is often present in children with autism and Asperger’s syndrome, and may be the cause of their impaired social development. 

My mom told me years ago that I was born with water on the brain, which is called fetal hydrocephalus.  I never received follow up care or checkups for that condition, despite my mom describing how round the top of my head was with fluid after I was born, and naturally no mention of surgery. I'm sure my dad would have prevented any and all interference in my 'natural' development.

Around my late 30s, an ER doctor revealed I have empty sella syndrome, which I've always assumed was a result of that fetal hydrocephalus. 

The most common symptom potentially associated with empty sella syndrome is chronic headaches. However, it is unknown whether headaches develop because of empty sella syndrome or are simply a coincidental finding. Many individuals with empty sella syndrome have high blood pressure (hypertension), which can itself cause headaches if severe. (My adult history is rife with high blood pressure and nasty headaches.)

Researchers believe that a defect in the diaphragma sellae that is present at birth (congenital defect) plays a role in the development of primary empty sella syndrome. The diaphragma sellae is a fold of dura mater (the outermost layer of the membranes that line the brain and spinal cord). The diaphragma sellae covers the sphenoid bone where the sella turcica and the pituitary are located. In some affected individuals a tear in the diaphragma sellae allows the underlying membranes to push through (herniate), which allows cerebrospinal fluid to leak out and accumulate in the sella turcica. The pressure exerted by the fluid can flatten or enlarge the sella turcica. 

Prosopometamorphopsia and alexia following left splenial corpus callosum infarction: Case report and literature review (This is unrelated but shows how damage can cause distortion recognition, and if you think about it, I may have had a little damage during development or birth (there were no MRIs back then), although no one has ever noticed splenial infarction on my MRIs.)

Prosopometamorphopsia is known to be caused by splenial corpus callosum infarction [14]. In this case, prosopometamorphopsia likely occurred because facial recognition information was interrupted by the splenial infarction as it was being transferred to the facial fusiform area after being processed in the face perception areas of the occipital lobe.

I had a very very nasty headache in 2004 that lasted for several months (worst part was 6 weeks of sleeping only 2 hours at a time and unable to lie down during that 6 weeks), followed by brain changes that included losing my ability to do simple math, not being able to read for several years, not being able to drive for 4 months, accentuated memory problems and time disorientation, plus cranial nerve damages that resulted in loss of taste and smell for at least two years, unable to make tears in one eye for four years, and continued altered taste and smell. Did I already have a headache syndrome from empty sella that made bell's palsy exponentially more painful?

It was during that time that my prosopagnosia became so noticeable that Scott had to keep an eye on me because I'd follow other people around while we were out shopping. I had never told anyone before that time frame that I'd been unable to remember faces through my whole life. I'd always been smart enough to cover for all my flaws, or didn't even realize I had flaws because I'd already adapted so well. 2004 changed all that. I lost being smart.

So, as I'm sure you can imagine, I'm intensely curious about these brain changes and why I could never get any kind of doctor anywhere interested in finding out more of what was going on with me around 2004. MRIs from before that happened showed no obvious damage other than the incidental empty sella finding, which suggests to me that I was born this way and that all it took was one *something* (illness? poisoning?) one year to cause so much catastrophic loss for me, and it truly is catastrophic when you consider I got a 32 on an ACT test and now I can't even add and subtract correctly, and I couldn't read and retain for several years, much less the memory problems. I have been physically and psychologically dependent on my husband for 16 years because of this. The disability I was granted in 2009 didn't even reflect any of this. I was already autism spectrum with social deficits and severe depression and had been living with fibromyalgia for years before that even happened, and then in 2007-8 I grew so ill with a cytomegalovirus infection that I needed nearly round the clock assistance with everything I did for months. Notice I didn't even bring up the year I was ejected from a flipping car. Piece of cake, right?

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So this week I caught myself remembering my secret horse world when I was a kid hating being human. While other kids daydreamed about socializing and becoming someone, I was deep in a fantasy world in which I was a horse. I started a horse board on my other pinterest so I could dig around looking for what I used to daydream about. I'm into black liver chestnuts with fiery manes, although I like them super flaxen, too. The more jet black the chestnut, the better. I had whole families of horses set up in my head during grade school. 

The original page for that is at https://www.wiebke-haas.de/gallery/outdoor/
Very load heavy, had to use a different browser to handle it.

Or here's one.

Here you go, have a playlist. I'm making supper now.

years later...

I didn't realize how hard my hair post was getting hit all this time, it's all-time top post ever on this blog from all over the world, so I guess quite a few of us are having hair issues with illness and aging.

Here is my hair right now. I'm in a healthy phase with some regrowth after a really rough fall and winter with continual loss that got so bad I chopped my hair again in January. Stress was horrible while my dad was dying and extra family in my house, all is much better now, especially as I'm getting back to fresh raw veg and lots of quality protein and hydrating better. I also tapered off gabapentin, huge changes all over as that happened.

You can see top in front is still a little thin.

But I'm able to use a small puff of mousse nowadays (not near scalp) to help fluff a little.

Finally got some real gray coming in, sure took it's sweet time.

Remember, you are the one who controls your health. Don't despair, ok? If I can come back from a decade of health fail to the point of becoming crippled and losing my hair, you can too! It takes time, in my case, I've been dealing with this since 2004 when my health started crashing hard and didn't make a turnaround until 2008, and didn't really show much improvement until 2011. Since then I've had ups and downs but as long as I'm stringent about avoiding carb loading and sweet drinks, I seem to be able to stay in control overall and have never (yet) slid back into full health fail.

You can do this. 💖

hi

I guess it would be nice of me to let you guys know I haven't croaked off yet or anything.

I'm actually in pretty good shape. Between getting completely off wheat and controlling seasonal allergies (these are the two things that seem to be the mile markers), I haven't had autoimmune flare since 2014.

Blood pressure definitely tied to pain level, salt, and meds. Pain level tied to diabetic neuralgia and controlled with diet and physical therapy, nearly completely off all pain meds now, nearly done with gabapentin taper.

My stress level and PTSD is coming more to light now, see latest personal blog, should be in the right column. Memory problems possibly related to dissociation from traumas. Working on that.

After some of the illness fails I've been through, I can't imagine covid being any worse, and I mostly stay home anyway, so I'm not worrying.

But yeah, still here. Just lazy. 😄