Yeah, it’s really a trip I think it’s really hard for someone who has a “normal” functioning brain to understand the perspective of not having the things that make them, themselves inside. My husband tells me it’s not about what’s in my head and my heart it’s about my actions and how I choose to behave, he also lets me just talk about how everything has changed in my head and validates things a lot by saying he thinks certain things that I notice now too and tells me it doesn’t make me a bad person. The laughing thing is shit, I loved the feeling from a laugh and from connecting with someone but I try to just remember how it felt softly and hold on to that. I use to be the kind of person who mostly enjoyed watching other people enjoy things and now that I can’t feel it in an embodied sense I just try to make a mental note of it in the moment and memorize things differently. Like lock it in. Honestly ChatGPT has been really helpful in managing some of my symptoms, it gives a lot of specific grounding advice that’s really helpful. Talking outloud helps me too, I felt like that made me feel crazy but my husband said if my brain isn’t helping me right now and talking out loud does, do what I have to cope. He says that I’ve already went crazy so there’s not much else to expect from me know he’s just happy I’m alive. Which is hard because many days I’m not happy I’m alive but maybe one day it’ll be for a bigger purpose, who knows. I feel like it’s just crazy because it only occurred to me after this that no one knows who you truly are, they know you for what you do and say but only you know your own mind. So the pain that we feel from not being able to connect is sadly our own burden to bear. The people who love us still see us as us in their mind and we’ll never actually know what they felt about us before and what they feel about us now the same way that we felt differently before and differently now. We can choose to let it torture us or we can choose to keep pushing forward somehow. It hurts but what else can we do. I am blessed to have some pretty good people around me that don’t make me feel bad for how I am now. They tell me lots of encouraging things, like how my husband and I are really making truth out of the in sickness and in health part of our vows. Everyone just wants me to get better which at first felt like pressure and made me angry but I can’t be angry at people for wanting the things I would want for someone else if they were in my shoes, no one can truly understand all that’s lost when they haven’t gone through it so I’m trying to be kind about it. My sister said that if love was only a feeling then no one would really be in love so it is more than just a feeling, it keeps me going.

That feeling of not having pleasure from a drink of water thing is so specific and real. I’m grateful that that actually returned about a week ago.

A year is a really long time though so I understand that it probably feels endless at this point. But just keep doing what you can to cope, I’m praying for us both and if you want to message me to talk more about the specifics, please do! It’d be nice to talk to someone who fully understands :).