LJ Idol Topic Week 12 - My Most Annoying Personality Trait
o/` "I was always in a fight
'cause I can't do nothin' right
"Every day I fight a war against the mirror
I can't take the person staring back at me
I'm a hazard to myself
"Don't let me get me
I'm my own worst enemy
It's bad when you annoy yourself, so irritating
Don't wanna be my friend no more,
I wanna be somebody else" o/`
----- "Don't Let Me Get Me" performed by Pink
o/` "Do I stress you out
My sweater is on backwards and inside out
And you say how appropriate
I don't want to dissect everything today
I don't mean to pick you apart you see
But I can't help it " o/`
----- "All I Really Want" performed by Alanis Morissette
"Did not!"
"Did too!"
"You're wrong!"
"I'm right and you know it!"
"Bitch!"
"Bastard!"
"I'm not talking to you!"
Unfortunately, anyone who knows me well has probably had one of "those" conversations with me. It's inevitable...and unfortunately, it's something I can't help doing. The details of the disagreement --- with whom and over what --- seldom matter. It all comes down to a small difference of opinion over details and you can bet that I'm probably the one in the wrong.
When I was eight years old, I contracted bacterial meningitis. There was no cure for it at that time and little treatment save for comfort measures. I was considered terminal and so little effort was made to keep the fever down. I somehow survived but the damage was done. The advent of better technology such as CT scans and MRIs would reveal a seemingly insignificant band of dead brain tissue four centimeters long and one centimeter deep in the left temporal lobe.
There's just one problem with that: my brain didn't know those cells were dead.
I had my first grand mal seizure when I was nineteen years old. I don't remember much about it and the things I do remember are unimportant. I was, wearing my favorite nightshirt, a glow-in-the-black light design of a cartoon Bassett hound dressed like Humphrey Bogart singing into a microphone. I'd somehow fallen into the corner that held the lazy Susan in the kitchen, but I couldn't remember what I was doing in the kitchen. I do remember the ambulance ride because a former high school classmate drove the rig and I was dying of embarrassment because he'd seen me in my panties.
Lots of unpleasant things, involving the revocation of my driver's license and being reduced from a brilliant young adult with a future to a moronic child who couldn't tie her own shoes, happened next. There were doctors, many of them, and tests. I was shocked, deprived of sleep and then tortured with a strobe light, and had small tack-like pins driven into my skull for the EEGs registering my responses to these indignities. It wouldn't be until the late 1990s that my diagnosis went from "psychotic attention seeking drama whore" to "epileptic". Apparently the damage extended so far into the brain that an EEG couldn't register the abnormal activity. The CT and MRIs could at least record the scar tissue.
The temporal lobe controls, among other things, emotions and memories. Having that scar there was the equivalent of having a dead block of data in the FAT table of a computer...with no reboots and the same devastating results. The brain, not realizing it has a dead section in its data, attempts to talk to the neurons which once resided there. When it cannot contact them, the electrical impulses start randomly jumping until they connect with a neuron which will respond. The end result was often a seizure. These were different from the type of seizure with which most people were familiar. The labeling has changed through the years --- they were called psycho-motor seizures when I was diagnosed --- but they're now called complex partial seizures. These types involve physical repetitive moments such as picking at clothing combined with repeat phrases. Seventeen years of these has produced cumulative memory loss...my most annoying personality trait and the reason for all those stupid arguments.
I do not, as some people have alleged, lie or exaggerate intentionally. It happens because of the brain damage and memory loss. Recent events --- things which happened days or weeks ago --- suffer the most erosion. I can clearly remember my early childhood and other events up until the time I was eight years old. Everything else has disturbing holes in it. When my brain tries to retrieve a memory, it does indeed act like a faulty computer. It scans itself for the memory it wants and if it happens to be stored in the damaged area, it starts skipping neurons. Often in the process it will collect bits of isolated information from partially damaged areas which seem to match the data it's looking for. The end result is a false memory, something which has bits in common with the original memory and may even contain bits of the correct memory in it...but it isn't that memory and never will be.
Events involving numbers and dates suffer the worst; I often can't properly remember when I met someone or exactly when events occurred. Facial recognition is almost impossible and often if I've met the person I can't place them. Sometimes it seems like I've met the person and it's a first time meeting. Both people get angry that I've misplaced them. The most common misunderstanding leading to disagreement is whether or not the person I'm talking to and I actually said something. I often find that my memory of having said something never happened at all or my brain has substituted a previous conversation for the one which actually happened. I have absolutely no way of knowing which events are true and which are not.
Most people don't hang around to find out the explanation, but I'm grateful for the friends who have. They don't let the fact that I can't remember their faces and I have to ask about when I met them or what we were doing when we met last bother them. They understand when the details don't match up and help me sort it out until the memory and the event match.
Honor and integrity are important to me. I hate this trait because it makes me into a seemingly chronic liar.
Written for the therealljidol writing competition. If you like the entry, please join the community and vote for me when voting opens Friday. Also, please check out my fellow authors. They're awesome!
'cause I can't do nothin' right
"Every day I fight a war against the mirror
I can't take the person staring back at me
I'm a hazard to myself
"Don't let me get me
I'm my own worst enemy
It's bad when you annoy yourself, so irritating
Don't wanna be my friend no more,
I wanna be somebody else" o/`
----- "Don't Let Me Get Me" performed by Pink
o/` "Do I stress you out
My sweater is on backwards and inside out
And you say how appropriate
I don't want to dissect everything today
I don't mean to pick you apart you see
But I can't help it " o/`
----- "All I Really Want" performed by Alanis Morissette
"Did not!"
"Did too!"
"You're wrong!"
"I'm right and you know it!"
"Bitch!"
"Bastard!"
"I'm not talking to you!"
Unfortunately, anyone who knows me well has probably had one of "those" conversations with me. It's inevitable...and unfortunately, it's something I can't help doing. The details of the disagreement --- with whom and over what --- seldom matter. It all comes down to a small difference of opinion over details and you can bet that I'm probably the one in the wrong.
When I was eight years old, I contracted bacterial meningitis. There was no cure for it at that time and little treatment save for comfort measures. I was considered terminal and so little effort was made to keep the fever down. I somehow survived but the damage was done. The advent of better technology such as CT scans and MRIs would reveal a seemingly insignificant band of dead brain tissue four centimeters long and one centimeter deep in the left temporal lobe.
There's just one problem with that: my brain didn't know those cells were dead.
I had my first grand mal seizure when I was nineteen years old. I don't remember much about it and the things I do remember are unimportant. I was, wearing my favorite nightshirt, a glow-in-the-black light design of a cartoon Bassett hound dressed like Humphrey Bogart singing into a microphone. I'd somehow fallen into the corner that held the lazy Susan in the kitchen, but I couldn't remember what I was doing in the kitchen. I do remember the ambulance ride because a former high school classmate drove the rig and I was dying of embarrassment because he'd seen me in my panties.
Lots of unpleasant things, involving the revocation of my driver's license and being reduced from a brilliant young adult with a future to a moronic child who couldn't tie her own shoes, happened next. There were doctors, many of them, and tests. I was shocked, deprived of sleep and then tortured with a strobe light, and had small tack-like pins driven into my skull for the EEGs registering my responses to these indignities. It wouldn't be until the late 1990s that my diagnosis went from "psychotic attention seeking drama whore" to "epileptic". Apparently the damage extended so far into the brain that an EEG couldn't register the abnormal activity. The CT and MRIs could at least record the scar tissue.
The temporal lobe controls, among other things, emotions and memories. Having that scar there was the equivalent of having a dead block of data in the FAT table of a computer...with no reboots and the same devastating results. The brain, not realizing it has a dead section in its data, attempts to talk to the neurons which once resided there. When it cannot contact them, the electrical impulses start randomly jumping until they connect with a neuron which will respond. The end result was often a seizure. These were different from the type of seizure with which most people were familiar. The labeling has changed through the years --- they were called psycho-motor seizures when I was diagnosed --- but they're now called complex partial seizures. These types involve physical repetitive moments such as picking at clothing combined with repeat phrases. Seventeen years of these has produced cumulative memory loss...my most annoying personality trait and the reason for all those stupid arguments.
I do not, as some people have alleged, lie or exaggerate intentionally. It happens because of the brain damage and memory loss. Recent events --- things which happened days or weeks ago --- suffer the most erosion. I can clearly remember my early childhood and other events up until the time I was eight years old. Everything else has disturbing holes in it. When my brain tries to retrieve a memory, it does indeed act like a faulty computer. It scans itself for the memory it wants and if it happens to be stored in the damaged area, it starts skipping neurons. Often in the process it will collect bits of isolated information from partially damaged areas which seem to match the data it's looking for. The end result is a false memory, something which has bits in common with the original memory and may even contain bits of the correct memory in it...but it isn't that memory and never will be.
Events involving numbers and dates suffer the worst; I often can't properly remember when I met someone or exactly when events occurred. Facial recognition is almost impossible and often if I've met the person I can't place them. Sometimes it seems like I've met the person and it's a first time meeting. Both people get angry that I've misplaced them. The most common misunderstanding leading to disagreement is whether or not the person I'm talking to and I actually said something. I often find that my memory of having said something never happened at all or my brain has substituted a previous conversation for the one which actually happened. I have absolutely no way of knowing which events are true and which are not.
Most people don't hang around to find out the explanation, but I'm grateful for the friends who have. They don't let the fact that I can't remember their faces and I have to ask about when I met them or what we were doing when we met last bother them. They understand when the details don't match up and help me sort it out until the memory and the event match.
Honor and integrity are important to me. I hate this trait because it makes me into a seemingly chronic liar.
Written for the therealljidol writing competition. If you like the entry, please join the community and vote for me when voting opens Friday. Also, please check out my fellow authors. They're awesome!