I’ve written previously about what I like to call Experience Deniers, a term a friend and I coined for anyone who downplays the experience of another. Lately, with the world being as it is, this country especially, I’ve been thinking about how much the denial of others’ experiences has played a role in this mess. This goes in all directions. In truth, some of the most dangerous people I’ve encountered have been highly educated. The problem? They already knew everything and had nothing left to learn.

With all this, I’ve been thinking about how I’ve had the unique opportunity to live in the North, South, and Midwest. In rural and urban areas. Be amongst blue-collar workers and academics, predominantly white communities, and highly diverse ones. I’ve also traveled many places and have the kind of personality that quietly watches the interactions going on around me. I don’t know much, but I am curious, and I notice things and I ask questions.
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So, this is the first of a series of entries about different events I have witnessed or experienced that have shaped the way I understand the world and the way people interact within it. I believe all of these have made me a better listener.

I went to high school in Massachusetts. In my junior year, I took American Thought. It combined US History and Literature and met two periods a day. Having moved there from West Virginia and having family from Arkansas, I was the token Southern girl. As a result, my thoughts on the Civil War were immediately suspect, regardless of what they were. This was incredibly frustrating, especially when you consider how West Virginia came to be a state.

Anyhow, we read Uncle Tom’s Cabin. While I can respect the historical value of this book, I did not enjoy reading it at all. One thing I disliked was that the darker the Black people were, the dumber they were. It was like the amount of melanin was inversely proportional to intelligence. Yet, when I tried to voice this, the class – and teachers – responded as if the poor Southern girl just didn’t understand.

Making matters worse, the discussion went on to the scene when the Ohio River freezes overnight, so Eliza can make her escape. The question was asked if this was something that could literally happen or an example of mystical realism. I answered that it was definitely mystical realism because I used to live on the Ohio River, and there was no way it could freeze overnight like that.

Again, the poor Southern girl responses. It was pointed out that the much smaller river near the school froze over once when it was below freezing for several days.

Never mind that the Ohio is the second largest river in the country by discharge. Never mind that where I lived was several hundred miles upstream from Kentucky, and it was still a quarter mile wide. Never mind that in the early 1800s no locks or other modern flow regulators had been built yet.
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I was from the South. They were from the North. There was no way I could know.

​My insecurity about typos and grammar mistakes goes back to adolescence. It’s a combination of things, the first being that I generally caught on to things quickly at school. So, when I would make a mistake, I’d get reprimanded for being careless without much discussion of the root cause. The second was that I got the idea that I was a bad writer. I wrote about that in greater detail here: https://dorothyjeanrice.com/blog/slow-going.

I now know that most of my mistakes are because I am more focused and interested in the ideas and how they flow together. Writing things out by hand, I often leave out words and sections of words. These are easy enough to address as I revise or transcribe. When I would write things on the board as a teacher, I made it a kind of game with my students when they would catch my mistakes. Used it as a way to normalize being a work in progress.

Admittedly, none of this sounds that bad. I’ve recovered from most of my teenage doubts, and I am confident I can construct a clear, concise, and clever sentence. However, I do make a lot of mistakes. Since my brain got all spicy, the mistakes are more frequent. For example, when I first typed that earlier sentence, I combined ‘clear’ and ‘clever’ into ‘cleaver.’ I do this kind of thing when I speak as well. It’s minor and is easy to manage.

However, the “Fix It Now” attitude of all these AI-driven programs adds another layer of things I need to manage. Remember when I said I want my main focus to be the ideas? It is really hard to sustain that focus when autofill is suggesting all kinds of ridiculousness, and every other word is being unlined. These distractions do not make me a better writer.

The worst is when my words are changed into something I Do Not Want. A recent example is when I texted a friend something benign involving sperm. Autocorrect changed ‘sperm’ to ‘supermarket.’ I can’t even. That was so much of a train of thought killer, I don’t remember the original intent of the message. 
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​On previous occasions, I have changed the settings so that I can run a check when I choose. This is my ideal. (I also fare better when I am able to write out a draft by hand, but circumstances don’t always allow for that.) Unfortunately, the AI overlords do not like this, so every time they initiate an update, they undo this restriction and take over again. It is an ongoing battle.

I once heard someone with a severe stutter talk about how frustrating it is to have people “help” by finishing their words for them. They described the way it interrupted their thoughts and said it actually makes the stutter worse. It’s better for them to push through.

I feel the same way about AI writing assistants. On the days I’m struggling with words and language, I need to push. People and robots finishing my sentences make the problem worse. So, not only does AI bland and dampen creativity, but it can be an ableist jerk.

Conclusion, like any other tool, AI is only as good as its user.
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​I bring this story up, because, about three years later, we moved back to that area. Seeing her again was actually a lot of fun. In our reminiscing, I brought up the Big Fight of Third Grade. She denied having any memory of it. My twelve-year-old self was floored and dropped pretty quickly, REALLY?!?! One of the most traumatic events of my childhood and the key second party claimed to have no memory?!?! My younger brother, who was SIX at the time, remembers how bad it was.

That day, when I got back to family and told my mom about her lack of memory, I was sobbing. I didn’t understand why it cut so much, but man that sucked. Now I know the term gaslighting (great movie, by the way), and there is a lot of public discourse on how it is used as manipulation an abuse tactic. That’s not the goal of this blog post, though.

Before I go further, I do want to pause to wrap things regarding my young frenemy. While I will never fully understand why she denied remembering our fight, she was 11, and 11 will 11. As for what happened in 3rd grade, from things my parents have said about her upbringing and my own adult perspective, she faced a lot of why-can’t-you comparisons. To be frank, my third-grade year was stellar. I was involved in some really stand-out extracurriculars that would take at least 257 blog entries to do justice. Even with how she treated me, it was by far my best school year. In conclusion, she’s not someone I wish to ever see again, however, I wish her well.

Back to why I’m writing this blog: Those events were important because they heavily contributed to my decision not to let people get close enough to hurt me.

As you may have guessed, that didn’t go well.

Among other flaws, it turns out our brains are beautifully made with a limbic system and is intricately designed to manage and process emotions. It is anatomically separate from the more cognitive portions but integrated with overall network to allow for the processing of memories, motivations, and other complex thoughts. Like anything brain-related, we are only just beginning to understand how this all works, but this is one thing the scientists seem to agree upon when it comes to the function of the limbic system: EMOTIONS WILL BE EXPRESSED. We can only store them for so long, then they start coming out one way or another.

In other words, we cannot choose to erase our own emotions.

Lately I’ve been wondering how choosing to pretend events never happen affects the denier. In a way, it’s more rational than emotional, but since the limbic system contributes heavily to memory…? Is this why some people suddenly become overcome by guilt?

Recent events have me wondering how erasure affects people at the cultural level. Think about it:

1. Culture is formed by people and has a lot rational and emotional traits in common.
2. Claiming witnessed events did not happen “that way” is a form of gaslighting. Therefore, it is bound to have an impact on members of that culture.
3. EMOTIONS WILL COME OUT, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.

 
Now that I am at the end, I realize I needed to tell that story from my childhood to arrive at the following question: when you consider the way we are designed – our brains, DNA, trees, fungal networks, the interconnectedness gorgeousness of absolutely everything – how could history possibly be erased? 

Keep telling the stories.

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​The ambulatory EEG didn’t pick up any epileptic activity while I was experiencing symptoms. This is very common during focal aware seizures, which is what I am most likely having. They can affect only a tiny part of the brain and that can be hard to catch. Additionally, my symptoms experienced during the study were fairly mild; I’ve had much stronger.

The next step is additional medication. It’s being added incrementally and should reduce seizure symptoms. So, if it does – yay! – focal aware seizures it is!!! If not, it looks like I may have developed some kind of headache disorder. Evidently there is a significant overlap on the Venn diagram comparing the two.  Migraines, or the like, are not a desired diagnosis as that just would be another thing to have to deal with. No thank you.
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Looking into a comparison of both, I am confident enough I’m experiencing focal aware seizures to tell people who ask that is what’s going on. It not being official is frustrating, but I understand why the neurologist can’t give me an official diagnosis yet. The data is too qualitative. They need to make sure they’ve verified everything. And I respect that.

Now that I’ve reached the end, what are focal aware seizures exactly? They are a form of partial seizure that affects, as the name implies, only part of the brain. The person also maintains a certain amount of awareness. The auras many people experience before a large seizure are a focal aware seizure that eventually expand to affect the whole brain. However, they don’t always do this.

The symptoms of a focal aware seizure vary with the person and with it’s focal point within the brain. Very often, it’s a strong feeling of déjà vu or jamais vu. I have this. It’s weird, disorienting and scary. If, as a child, you ever had a really high fever, and, that night, you had a hallucinating nightnmare about Mary Poppins , that's the kind of disorienting and scary I'm talking about.

Sometimes words get really hard. I can’t form them or find them. Picture a brain fart with constipation. Words can also suddenly change their meaning and spelling, so my sentences no longer make sense. Other symptoms include strange acts of clumsiness, absentmindedness, or feelings of numb tingles. 

In summary, brains are weird. It’s no wonder that it takes time to figure out what’s going on.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I know I could benefit from the discipling of sharing regularly. On a personal level, I’ve been in a dysregulated tumult since mid-December (see previous post). Writing about my progress and setbacks would likely help me gain more stability. It might help others, too, but I’m not in a place where that should be my focus.

On a more universal level, there’s a lot of concerning and confusing things taking place right now. I’m in a unique position of having interacted with many of the conflicting groups. I think a lot about simply telling stories about the things I’ve learned and experienced. This feels heavier and more important than writing about my health. I feel a tension between wanting to do justice to the stories shared while being 100% okay if no one ever hears what I have to say.

To summarize, I am simultaneously holding the understanding that this will benefit me personally, concerns about presentation to an audience, apathy about an audience reaction, and feelings of pointlessness if no one sees it.
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Rather ironic to post all this on a blog that nobody reads. However, a routine posting schedule here is also the best place to start. So future person, how did I do?