When Perjury Isn’t Enough

“Crazy people don’t sit around wondering if they’re nuts.”~ Jake Gyllenhaal

It is hard when you watch someone that you’ve become to know for so long start to lose their marbles… in the most literal of sense.

Such is the case for the one that I will refer to as Super C.

Super C moved here to this complex around the same time that I did my first time in 2005.

Like many who live(d) here: Quiet, shy, withdrawn, anti-social.

But Super C was actually cared for by a few others and eventually Super C would see the errors of her ways and how life was just slipping away from her by her sitting inside of her dwelling day and night. She was shown the light that her ex-husband was a complete and total douche nozzle and she finally learned how to stand up to him and tell him where to go and the quickest way to do it.

She participated more and more and suddenly found herself with FRIENDS. WOW!! Who would have thought it?!?

However, Super C just like everyone else around here has her own sets of challenges and problems. Medicines and appointments with doctors and things to keep up with in her life.

As of lately the rest of us neighbors are finding that she’s unable to control it all. Either that or she just does not handle it well at all.

How many times has she had to go back somewhere because she left her glasses or wallet or purse or keys or cell phone???

A few years ago she suffered what the doctors called a mini-stroke. But she was back at home within a week. Her best of friends are no longer living. Her attendant has come to end of her rope with Super C. Her children do not visit. Her medicines are often rumored to be scattered everywhere in a pile of atrophying disarray and indecency.

The worst of it is not yet to come. I think that the worst of it has arrived and is living among us within Super C.  It is also safe to say that everyone has made an effort or two or twelve to get her life back on track where its not so much a disaster. As soon as one person fills in with a complete system that is going to be helpful in the end, Super C slips up ONCE and then she’s back where she started. 

I can see the will to help her has left the building. Or property in this case. Its no longer there within anyone.

People are literally afraid to deal with Super C any more. They are afraid that if they get involved too deep that they too will “end up just like her” and as shitty as that is to think or say… it is what it is around here.

Some say that the mini-stroke doomed her. Other people had faith in her that she would recover from her mini-stroke. And even more people seem to think that she might be too far gone because she lost her best friends in the world in the time span of about a year and a half.

It appears as if the simplest of life’s tasks has become monumental for her. As if she was looking at an entire valley of mountains and instantly believing that she will never make it.

Her latest tale is her supposed journey of walking in the pouring rain one morning where she began to tread with a walker 3.7 miles (5.95 km) by herself to return home from an appointment in which she was denied because she had an outstanding balance. And she had gone that far without her wallet.

She’s been called out on it and other alleged activities that she has been telling everyone who would listen to her.

A 70 plus year old woman with a walker isn’t going to walk nearly 4 miles…. in the rain. And then expect us to believe it when she’s not soaking wet, dragging in water with her shoes and her walker and just have a few raindrops on her back. She should have been drenched and dripping. But she was not.

Everyone tends to want to run away from her when they hear her begin a conversation with the words DID I TELL YOU…..??

Plus the fact that you and another person could be holding your own conversation and she’s going to chime in. Just like her friends did before they both died. In this case, it was something she was taught that she never should have been taught. 

This morning’s episode was all about standing water in the rain water collection barrels. And that just isn’t possible as all of the barrels have screened filters on them. So there’s no standing water anywhere. She was quickly called out and she left the community room rejected and denied.

Calling her out isn’t going to help her state of mind. All it does it automatically say to her that people think she’s lying.

I don’t know though. It is just really really difficult to watch this progression. I am sure there are people out there who know what I am talking about. And probably deal with worse circumstances as they have watched a loved one slip away like this. I do not envy anyone of this.

Thinkology

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” ~Albert Einstein

The brain is a very complex and intriguing thing. For the most part, we’d all have to agree that it still is one of the most misunderstood parts of the human body.

How humbling and fascinating the brain can be, when we realize just how much we use or don’t use it.

Medical science still has a very long way to go to actually grasp what all the brain can do. Although I think that it is pretty safe to say that we DO know tons more about now than we did say; one hundred years ago?

The subject that comes to mind here is the brain’s power and the usage of thinking. How long do we think? How do we think? Do we ever stop thinking?

From the research that I’ve read and collected, as far as the question of “Do we ever stop thinking?”, the answer is no. At least not while we are conscious. I’ve not yet fully grasped whether or not the brain ceases to think when a person is unconscious. But that is not the focus for this post.

So then, what are we to do when we believe that our minds are thinking TOO MUCH??

The perfect example would have been myself about twenty minutes before I began to write this. Thus the spur of the moment late night blog post.

In a span of sixty seconds or less, I literally was asking myself these questions:

• How hard is it supposed to rain tomorrow?
• Would it be okay to ask a neighbor to take me to the grocery store in rain come tomorrow?
• Will my friend call me at some point tomorrow?
• Do I have the right to ask for a definition every single time that I feel confused about what someone has said to me, in order to understand what they are meaning or feeling?
• Will I have time tomorrow to get some laundry done?
• How do I know when someone is being sincere if I cannot hear their words with their own voices?
• Is there a way that I can determine if someone is being sincere without inflection?
• Will it stop raining long enough tomorrow for me to actually do some laundry in the laundry room?
• Is someone thinking of me tonight?

Congitive Distortion rodeo, anyone?

I  just about had to say to myself outloud: STOP THINKING!!

So then, how do I do that? Because if I had continued to ponder these questions in my head then I probably would drive myself crazy. Mainly because I will not be able to get any answers for these questions UNTIL tomorrow!! And you know what they say, “tomorrow never comes”. But for sure the answers to these questions are not going to come until after a period of several hours of slumber.

There had to be a trick in order to stop myself from “stinkin’ thinkin’ “. That trick obviously had to be me saying “STOP THINKING!”. But only then, did I come up with the question: Does the brain ever stop thinking?

That question right there, caused enough distraction and re-focus to stop me from worrying and pondering about the previous set of questions that was going on in my head.

If we are worrying ourselves into an early grave because of questions we don’t have the answers for and drive faster towards that grave by dwelling on it, then we must find a way to shift the focus of our thinking. Since the brain never stops.

The best way to do that, is to some how or in some way distract ourselves from the original point of thinking, and concentrate on something ELSE.

If we are unable to do that, then I suspect that we’ll all be having appointments to talk to strangers while laying down flat on a red leather couch once or twice a week for the rest of our lives. Or if we know how to change our ways of thinking and just let it run free, then in time we could possibly expect to have our wardrobes cut down tremendously to where we are only wearing white jackets that zip and buckle in the back.

If you find yourself frustrated because you cannot stop thinking about something, look away at something else. Focus on that particular thing or object that your eyes just glanced at.

Another thing that you could do is to concentrate on a sound. Perhaps the soft sounds of your own breathing. Concentrate on maybe on a soft noise that is happening outside through a window or something going on in the other room. Concentrate heavily on that sound and go through everything in your head about what it is you hear. Begin to think about the different things that you are hearing.

Most of my own personal problems in thinking happen a lot at night. And I kind of believe that is a majority of my insomnia problems when they arise. If I can lay in bed and shift the focus on something else, then I shouldn’t have too much trouble with whatever it was that was causing the issue. But I am sure that for many, it’s easier said than done. It will take practice.

I know that I get totally frustrated when I am laying down and supposed to be sleeping and my mind will begin to think about certain blog topics that I feel that I would want to write about. The frustration comes in because I have to battle with myself about whether or not I really want to get up out of bed, turn on the lights, turn on my computer and then set everything up just to get that particular thing off my mind? I don’t a lot of the time because it will cut into the time that I could be sleeping. And so often times I will believe that I will save that for the following day. But a majority of the time after I have awoke, the desire to write about what I was stirring about in bed the night before is gone or I have completely forgot about exactly what it is that I wanted to write about in the first place!!

But this particular blog post caught me as I was getting ready for sleep tonight. So I thought that I would write about it now, rather than lay in bed thinking about writing it and then losing the desire to go ahead and try it in the morning. And I probably should go to bed now that I have written what I wanted, before my best friend reads this and gives me hell for being up so late.

So the key I think is distraction and the shift of focus whenever we begin to feel tense because of the fact that we feel that our brain just won’t stop thinking about certain things that drive us up the walls.

Training the mind to do that, will eventually release us from our temporary state of insanity.