I never really followed the show Grey's Anatomy when it was on TV. I know that characterization for TV shows requires a certain level of exaggeration and extremism, and I just could not fully invest in "caricatures" of medical professionals.
I know real people are not actually like the over-the-top characters, and the hospital-based and personal disasters are unrealistic. I am unsure what I lack in life lately, but I have been pulled into this ridiculous medical drama via Netflix.
I started at the beginning and am currently in Season 10. In a "recent" episode, one doctor is addressing a patient who is alive and mentally alert despite either breaking his back or his neck. As the patient had expressed a wish to NOT be kept alive by machines, Dr. Yang is verifying that he does, indeed, want to be taken off the ventilator, which will lead to his own death since he is paralyzed from the neck down and his body cannot even breathe on its own.
The situation is extreme, which both irritates me and entertains me, but the questions really struck a chord with me, and I think they are valuable self-assessment tools for people experiencing a traumatic event AND for people who just need to redirect their efforts for more purposeful living.
The questions:
1. Do you know who you are?
- I remember being asked this when I came out of my medically-induced coma in 2011. I knew my name, address, birthdate. I did NOT have a strong sense of who I was after the aneurysm rupture, and it took quite a while to regain my sense of self.
- I think we should all be asking ourselves who we are because life is not experienced in a vacuum, and we experience, react, adapt, and evolve throughout our lives. Do I know who I am? Yes. Will I be the same person five years from now? Probably not. I'll be mostly the same, but life will continue to shape me just as I will continue to shape my life.
2. Do you understand what's happened to you?
- I recall both my medical team and my parents asking me this question after we determined that I knew who I was. I struggled to comprehend the magnitude of the medical emergency I had just survived, and I certainly was not fully aware of how my life would change.
I felt like I was an imposter wearing a damaged costume (mostly) shaped like me. Intensive physical, occupational, speech and neuropsychological therapy helped to "patch up" the parts that the doctors could patch up.
- In a greater sense, I feel that this question is much more cerebral (get it? brain pun!) since it requires an awareness of the past, the present, and the future to provide context for any hardship we endure, especially during the moment itself.
- In the broad spectrum of trauma (of which I have had plenty...some from circumstance, some medical, some caused by other humans, and some created in my own anxiety-focused mind), the scariest part of this is knowing that some of the worst experiences of my life happened when I was incapacitated and I cannot actually recall everything. I am certain, though, that if I did remember all of it, I would probably have even more issues and triggers. There is an odd peace in missing some of the more horrific pieces.
3. Do you want to live this way?
- No one asked me this question until I was in therapy for trauma caused by another person. After my aneurysm rupture, subarachnoid hemorrhage, and stroke, I was not given a choice. I was told that I needed to get up and try to fix what was newly broken and damaged in me. There was no option to choose a life in which I did not regain my physical, emotional, intellectual, and social determination and independence. By seeing only a path in front of me to slowly gather and glue back together all the pieces of me, I did not even consider that I had a choice to make.
- Living this way made it easy to tell myself I was far more healed than I actually was. I only realized that I was not as okay as I believed when someone inflicted additional trauma on me that left me alone, confused, and scared.
I was referred to a therapist who specialized in this particular type of counseling, and she asked me one day when I was talking (probably ranting) about the anger I felt: Do you want to keep living life this way? She explained that anger feels stronger than fear, but courage is about facing the issues head-on and dealing with the fallout...which will eventually transition into strength and pride in my ability to overcome anything. It took almost two years to work through that pain, and I emerged with a stronger sense of self.
Thank you, Shonda Rhimes and Sandra Oh, for giving me questions to ponder!
Today, I woke up thinking about the unfinished writing in my life.
I manage state-level adoptions of instructional materials for an educational publisher, and I do a lot of form-filling, documentation-gathering, communications with educational agencies, and project management. I do not, however, get to do a lot of writing.
In my last role (which was, technically, a more comprehensive but "smaller" role) with an educational publisher, I did much of the same - form-filling, documentation-gathering, communications with educational agencies, and project management - but I also got to create alignment documents to match educational programs to academic state standards and I wrote business proposals for state adoptions and district adoptions, responded to catalog bids for instructional materials, and I sometimes even partnered with the marketing team to use my creative writing skills to help market educational materials to different clientele.
Since my last writing streak on here:
1. I re-enrolled in my Master of Arts (English Studies) program and finished it in 2015. (What's an extra four years for a degree I had planned to finish the year my aneurysm ruptured and I had to shift my focus, energy, and money to recovering from that?)
2. I moved to Massachusetts in 2017 - lived in 4 different apartments there (one of which was with my now ex-boyfriend Chris, whom I was with 2014 - 2020). I turned my full-time job into a part-time position and have worked in higher education, temporary positions in various fields, and in educational publishing. Both of my cats are gone. Alison died in 2020 at age 18, and Natalie died in 2021 at age 19. Chris's cats Mimi and Creature have also died (both in 2022). They had also been "my" cats in the two years Chris and I lived together.
3. I moved to New Hampshire in 2022 when I bought my first house. It's an okay place; I just feel like I am in the M. C. Escher paiting Relativity because I have stairs everywhere. I'm not thrilled by the HOA and its drama. I still work in educational publishing and still teach part-time. I currently have a new boyfriend. Really interesting part? He's also a Metro Detroiter (and has an abundance of Detroit-specific tattoos to prove it!) living in New Hampshire.
4. My two closest friends are a 70-year-old woman I used to work with at one educational publisher and a 50-year-old man who a former coworker tried to set me up with since we were both single. We hit it off immediately, but much to Jackie's disappointment after the setup, the only thing that sparked is friendship.
5. I still teach English and German online and am also looking for more of that, either at the high school level or as an adjunct faculty member in higher education.
6. I have also started writing a LOT of things but didn't finish. I currently have:
- TV pilot scripts mapped out with some portions scripted for several episodes
- lots of ideas on Post-it notes
- journal entries
- poetry
- short stories and mapped out ideas for books, including a "children's" book series that center on a friend of mine and his dog
- political rants but still no manifestos.
- academic resources that I use in my teaching and others that I sell on Teachers Pay Teachers
- letters
- essays and master's thesis documents, and even some of my own research that has not (yet) been published. Maybe 2024 will kick me in the kiester just enough to submit it to periodicals and journals, as well as for teaching conferences.
