Carol's gazionth car crash, other bummers

Well I thought I would real quick post about this since news travels pretty fast and you all might hear through other people that you are in contact with.

I just got in a bad car accident again. Drake and Sadie were with me. At least they weren't hurt. I was, at least a bit, my arm has turned black and blue, the soft tissue is stiff and achy and lumpy, meaning that there is tissue damage and bleeding and stuff, My wrists hurt and my fingers don't move well. Not nearly well enough to play the pic tomorrow for BHoftheR. Bummer. I don't know if the other people in the car were hurt that bad. I certainly hope not. WeThere were ambulances swarming all over.

Of course this whole thing has brought out some pretty big frustrations. I have been having a hard time lately because I knew that I was getting to the point where I am not doing that well, just not that bad. This is where other people tend to start loosing patience with me. They do really well in a crisis but they don't really do well just over the marathon portion of it, as it is really a long haul situation I am dealing with with the sleep thing.

I always find it amusing what I think is good. In a way I realized during the veery first behavioral disruption episode when I first started thinkig I was going crazy I was THRILLED because I knew that I had had a lot of behavior in my past that wasn't voluntary and I really wanted a way to explain it to myself and other peopl. Meaning I had done a lot of things that I knew I hadn't done ON PURPOSE that other people had accused me of of course doing on purpose because a lot of people attribute the worst possible motive to your behavior instead of the best as I would expect that they would. That is what I try to do, because I find thinking bad things about people when I don't have to a great burden.

There were a lot of people, well not a lot, maybe one or two, that were previously close to me in my life that had really had a big problem with me for one or two things that I had done according to them that I didn't even remember doing. They probably thought it was evidence that I was a bad person when I knew that I hadn't done the thigs on purpose if at all, in fact I had no memory of doing them. It was some ridiculous thing.

One thing similar to what I am talking about happened on a day that I got in a wreck like today. After my wreck, and before, I was acting funny because going in and out of sleep is very disruptive. Have you ever woken up and you were very emotionally exaggerated and disoriented? That is what I feel like on these days. One day was at a chess tournament. A lady got mad that according to her I had 'stolen' her son's coat - right in front of her! MEaning I walked over to a chair, grabbed a coat from on the back of the chair, and put it on myself and walked away. I was sound asleep when I did this of course. I went in and out of sleep that day. Jacob had to come and rescue us from Salem that day, too.

The mother of the kid whose coat I 'stole' grabbed me by her hands (I have never been physically dragged anywhere by an adult since I was a child, fun fun) and dragged me to the tournament director (um, why the tournament director would care I have no idea) and started screetching at the top of her voice this lady STOLE my kid's coat! Yeah right. I want some ten year old's coat with some superhero logo on it. Mm hmm. It was very obvious that I was having a bad problem that day, but there was no stopping this lady.

Slade said lady, does it really seem to you from looking at this woman that she is doing ANYTHING on purpose, let alone stealing your son's coat right in front of you? It kind of begs a question about stealing. Stealing is behavior that by definition someone does illicitly. If I had no idea that I was putting on a coat that wasn't mine, would it really be stealing? I had no idea what in the world I was doing.

At the time we didn't exactly know what was going on. But that was right after a car crash like I had today. After my car crash today I was acting strange for quite a while afterward, probably because I was in some state of agitaiton about the car wreck, and partially because I was going in and out of sleep. But I was actually happy when I learned that I was definitely doing things that I didn't mean to do and that it was obvious. That way the people like that lady at the chess tournament and one or two other people, one of whom is actually pretty close to me or was, won't be able to accuse me of doing any deliberately dishonest behavior. dishonest behavior is behavior you are trying to hide. I didn't try to hide that. I had no idea what I was doing. When she grabbed me with her hands and dragged me to the tournament director, I said hey can you stop digging your fingernails into me, that kinda hurts? Slade asked her whether I looked like the kind of person that needed her crap. She has no idea what is even going on right now. He was trying to get her to admit that she was trying to get blood from a stone, but she couldn't see it.

He said look lady, what do you want from us. She has no idea what she is doing. If you want to make her pay, here. He took out four twenties from his wallet and dropped them on the ground in front of her and walked away. Classic Slade move that no one else would think of but him. She started screaming again, this time screaming at Slade, because he had done the unforgivable, he had called her on bad behavior.

Bad behavior is emminently forgivable in our culture. All you have to do is say 'I didn't mean it, I was going through a hard time' and you can get out of anything. I don't think that it really should be that way. For example, as my behavior tends to make people feel like they can be really rude and say whatever is on their minds, kind of like people look at each other with that raised eyebrow look when there is a crazy lady on the bus, they tend to reveal themselves to an extent that they don't really feel comfortable with. Behavioral problems tend to make people feel that they can treat you really rudely and it is justified. People with behavioral problems, for example, don't deserve to be treated well according to a lot of people I know, because they have done some pretty rude things in return.

But when this first all started shaking out I thought to myself well at least all of the confusion about whether I am doing things on purpose will be cleared up the more wrecks I get in. Full head on car collisions are not usually just something people do when they have behavior or personality issues. My problem is medical, I think it is very clear. At least I should hope so, I really am done trying to prove it. Hee hee. Nobody has serial car collisions just because they are in a weird mood. Or because they are doing something mean to someone else. There are a lot of emotional and behavioral problems that are secondary to serious sleep disturbances (meaning once you have sleep disruption the other things follow, but the real problem that is primary is the sleep problem). When I have had sleep and am feeling good I don't do any of this. My problems are at least curable, whereas there are problems I don't have that aren't, so I should be grateful I guess.

It is hard to say whether I would without sleep problems because I have always had a sleep disorder my entire life. And in fact, it is a miracle that I act as normal as I do (consistent high performance on my IQ test, relatively high functioning in certain arenas, not all admittedly) considering

1. I get no sleep
2. I have had a lot of secondary distress over the past few years to deal with after the various huge traumatic problems that I have had to go through after these majorish events.

What has made both me AND Slade have actual REAL AND GENUINE depression (oh you guys know slade has problems with depression, right? He has his whole life. It is just now getting to the point where he admitts it but I guessed it as soon as I knew what to look for. I didn't always know what chronic depression looked like until there was all of this other discussion, now it is pretty obvious that he has been dealing with it in some form from way back. Not fun.)

Sorry need to start over over the past few years related to this has been our serious amount of depression that has an actual anteceedent, which has been OTHER PEOPLE'S less than affirming behavior. Of course Jake and Stephanie have been troupers, available at a second's notice like they were tonight. But in terms of the official channels that exist at least through the church (we have many nonmormon neighbors that have been fairly reliable tho) but those who were officially assigned to us through their capacity in the the church to caretake us (VTs and HTs), we haven't been really especially impressed. Most of the people in our lives have fled for the exits.

We haven't been able to keep HTs or VTs because they couldn't even deal with the irony of the whole charade of saying 'if there is anything we can do for you guys' when our entire lives were falling apart in flames around all of us.

I shouldn't say that considering I know nonmormons read this blog and everything. There have been some people that have specifically made the comment about me that I am 'not nice to the church.' I don't know what I would do if I had a sufficiently good attitude about it. Bear my testimony about how impressed I am that my new VTs come once when they are first assigned to me? I am sorry but I think I will conjure a testimony about my VTs if they come back, only. And I am waiting to be able to. I have had VTs assigned to me three times in four years. I had repeat visits ONCE. Yeah that was the extra year. (But anyone reading this blog ready to pat themselves on the back about how right they are that the church isn't true should be aware that we are still hanging in there. There would be a lot more that we would have to go through to scare us away. We are in it for the long haul, baby. No they can't take that away from me.)

I guess the saying goes that the church must be true or X would have destroyed it years ago? X being whichever you can substitute, the members, the missionaries, the whatever. So we in the church have never particularly thought that the reason this operation seems to be going strong year after year was that we were perfect. The gospel is perfect and all that, but we who try to live it are not. In fact I have a few posts here if you wade through my old ones that are designed at trying to unravel some of the mysteries of Mormon culture. Mormon culture is distinct from the gospel because there has been a particular geographic area where members live annd that regional flavor gets associated a bit too strongly with Mormonism. I think that is unfortunate because several things result.

1. There ends up being an in group and an out group for church practice. Meaning if you speak Wasatch English and have Wasatch dialect you are automatically associated with being more righeous even though many of us who have had to go to Wallmart in Orem on Sunday oh and I am sure that no one that WE know would get a email ring going about Slade's going to the store on sunday even though he wasn't brought up that way, etc. We don't have anyone THAT bad that we know of I am pretty sure that most of our family knows that we have probably had kids with fevers on Sunday in Orem or been staying in hotels on sunday here, etc. I think that most of the people in our family aren't like that but

2. When there get to be a comfortable church culture, they tend to forget that Christ narrowed down the ten commandments to two. You can live your religion with all of the specific commandments if you WANT TO, as LONG AS in the process you demonstrate your perfect ability not to offend anyone else. Because the first commandment and the second, to love others, are pretty hard to live while just trying to LOOK righteous. You can't just LOOK LIKE you are trying to love your neigbor. If you can, it is pretty much just the same as doing it. You can't fake being nice to someone! At least you can, and I invite everyone to fake being nice to me as much as you can. That is why insincerity as a character trait shouldn't get as bad a rap as it does. Being nice when you don't really feel like it inside is what people should do. There isn't anything wrong with it. And being not nice when you don't really mean it isn't possible either. If you act not nice, then you act not nice. There should be a venn diagram here somewhere... The only remaining possibility is trying to fake being nice when you don't mean it and really sending the message through other means. That is very bad. It is when you act nice for the benefit of third parties that are paying attention and try to claim nice behavior when you are really trying to be mean to someone through subtler means.

So if you have the being nice to people thing down, then you can live a more complicated moral system if you want. It is easy to engage in complicated religious ritual, though, for reasons other than the first commandment, loving God. That should be the reason that people live religious ritual. The first and only. It shouldn't be to make one's self feel righteous. So people could go to the temple three times a day and if it is to merly live religious ritual for patting one's self on the back, it availeth nothing.

That is why they added the second commandment onto it. Because people can say that they do all kinds of things for the first reason, when they really don't. They can quilt and can and avoid caffinated beverages and all kinds of things. But if its for kudos, then you don't get credit for it. That is why I think it is very significant the culture that Christ lived in. I think he picked a good time to come because the way the people lived when he was on the earth is illuminating. Christ came at a time where there were lots of people living lots of religions with some pretty harrowing requirements. There were a lot of people that we act so smug in saying that they getting themselves to heaven because of how righteous they were being, it was a tower of Babel situaion.

They were operating with the assumtion that by eating or not eating specific foods, and methods of dress, sabath keeping, etc., one can prove righteousness. Obviously Mormons have the tendency to create all of those specifics in our culture, and then judge others by it. Of course the second part is the bad thing. None of us that were raised not drinking caffiene think it is any particular sacrifice to not drink caffiene. Except we occasionally congratulate ourselves about the fact that we are able to avoid caffiene while other people aren't. Things are cultural, and there really isn't any reason to feel superior to someone that wasn't raised to be in this culture. It is easy to be a cultural Mormon once you are one.

Just go to a Walmart on a Sunday in Orem and you will see lots of people who any cultural mormon would feel very superior to. We have yes unfortunately had kids with fevers on sunday in Orem and also been staying in hotels here). Not like I think that anyone is getting ready to get the email rings going, I think that our families are pretty good about not being judgmental. I really doubt that we would have anyone sending alerts when

But adhering to a rigorous list of thou shalt nots doesn't make someone able to be a better person. Of course if all of those shalt nots are done for the first great commandment they are, but many times they are to be like Paul cautioned in his letters. Paul said people listen, you can live your religion if you want. But living a complicated system of religious ritual and shalt nots is only ok if you have the second commandment down pat, too. You can't fake the second commandment. You can't live the second commandment for selfish reasons. Either you love people and show charity toward them and avoid judging them, or you don't. Actually, fake it if you must. Be insincere about it if you must. God doesn't really care if we really mean it, he expects you to be nice anyway. Actually, isn't that what being a 'nice person' is in the first place, doing things that are specifically for the purpose of being kind to others, even if we might not really want to?


I shouldn't say all of this in public. I will get accused of not saying nice things about the church. Of course I am not really sure what I should say. I wish I could make it seem like our official caretakers were doing there jobs. It would be much more lifeaffirming for us if through this thing we had discovered that people were better than we thought they were. We haven't. Not yet. But we are still hanging in there with our testimonies. We have way too strong of testimonies to make bad VT stats discourage us. I think actually the bishop got his radar all alerted to it. I think Slade said something in a joking way about something. It would have to be joking, because Slade doesn't ever even HAVE bad feelings about ANYONE much less ever voice them. Slade is truly without guile. It wouldn't matter what anyone did to him, he wouldn't get upset about it and he wouldn't cease to be charitable. It wouldn't help his depression, because he tends to go inward when someone does something that's not nice.

Well anyway, that is kind of where we are with all of this. I wish it was better than I can with confidence say it is. It isn't good any of it. We are really having a hard time with life at the time being. But one thing that I was telling the kids today, was that we are at least learning some things that are good. We have learned what an amazing guy their dad is, even if he personally is having a hard time. Ever since I have known him he has been prone to bouts of depression and really bad anxiety attacks. He tends to take the world on his shoulders and never cuts himself any slack. But the kids and I have really learned his capacity for kindness and understanding. We have learned the extent to which he can selflessly take care of all of us in a way that if I hadn't been ill, and if we hadn't had logistical and financial problems we wouldn't have learned. If there had been all kinds of people lining up to do their jobs and help us out we might not have ever learned that about him. If I hadn't bee sick we wouldn't have seen the extent to which he is really amazing.

A lady that gave me a ride to the store today, a perfect stranger, told me that her husband suffered similar problems to mine. In fact exactly. And the were suffering really bad because he couldn't keep down a job. We aren't doing that well with money because of how expensive life has been for us, with me crashing cars and not paying bills and getting services shut off and all kinds of things happening there are definitely money problems. But at least he keeps his job and holds things together pretty well for us. All by himself. And even with his own problems with depression and anxiety (again that no one would know about because he doesn't make his problems public, in fact you could torture him with knives and he wouldn't even tell you his problems, much less milk them for sympathy) Slade is all about saying and doing things to make other people feel better, not to have them help him.

Drake and I were both remarking about how much we have learned about their dad through all of this. Unfortunately we will probably learn more before it's over, but at least we are ready to look on the bright side of it.