• Member Since 14th Jan, 2012
  • offline last seen Monday

MrNumbers


Stories about: Feelings too complicated to describe, ponies

More Blog Posts335

  • 12 weeks
    Tradition

    This one's particular poignant. Singing this on January 1 is a twelve year tradition at this point.

    So fun facts
    1) Did you know you don't have to be epileptic to have seizures?
    2) and if you have a seizure lasting longer than five minutes you just straight out have a 20% chance of dying in the next thirty days, apparently

    Read More

    10 comments · 432 views
  • 18 weeks
    Two Martyrs Fall for Each Other

    Here’s where I talk about this new story, 40,000 words long and written in just over a week. This is in no way to say it’s rushed, quite the opposite; It wouldn’t have been possible if I wasn’t so excited to put it out. I would consider A Complete Lack of Jealousy from All Involved a prologue more than a prequel, and suggested but not necessary reading. 

    Read More

    2 comments · 504 views
  • 20 weeks
    Commissions Open: An Autobiography

    Commission rates $20USD per 1,000 words. Story ideas expected between 4K-20K preferable. Just as a heads up, I’m trying to put as much of my focus as I can into original work for publication, so I might close slots quickly or be selective with the ideas I take. Does not have to be pony, but obviously I’m going to be better or more interested in either original fiction or franchises I’m familiar

    Read More

    5 comments · 520 views
  • 23 weeks
    Blinded by Delight

    My brain diagnosis ended up way funnier than "We'll name it after you". It turned out to be "We know this is theoretically possible because there was a recorded case of it happening once in 2003". It turns out that if you have bipolar disorder and ADHD and PTSD and a traumatic brain injury, you get sick in a way that should only be possible for people who have no

    Read More

    19 comments · 709 views
  • 32 weeks
    EFNW

    I planned on making it this year but then ran into an unfortunate case of the kill-me-deads. In the moment I needed to make a call whether to cancel or not, and I knew I was dying from something but didn't know if it was going to be an easy treatment or not.

    Read More

    6 comments · 780 views
Feb
3rd
2023

Ansthesia · 11:56am Feb 3rd, 2023

So, a funny thing happened to me while I was getting my jaw cut off.

After nearly two years and four cancellations I finally got that jaw surgery I really needed. In a few weeks, when it all heals up, I'm going to feel incredible. Right now my head looks like a Gordon Ramsay prosthetic, and I feel as bad as that looks. Waking up this morning was the cruelest prank my body has ever played on me.


This Gordon Ramsay prosthetic, specifically

Going into surgery I was pretty fine through the whole lead up. I take three failed IV insertions like a champion, barely wince when they need to run an ultrasound on the crook of my elbow to find a good enough vein, and fish around for that. Slide myself onto the operating table, and that's when the anxiety hits me so hard my teeth start chattering. I'd no-sold blood, pain and operating rooms, but that wasn't what I was actually scared of.

When that fear hits me it's grim, I sound like I'm standing neck-deep in ice water. The anesthesiologist raises an eyebrow at me. "You know you're going to be fine, right?"

"Yeah, it's just, the mind can't imagine it's own non-existence, you know?"

And then I took a long blink.

When I opened my eyes again, the doctor's straight back over to me, genuinely a little concerned. "Hey, so, about that thing you said just- Do you remember saying it? What did you mean?"

Apparently it had bugged him the whole time. Personally I think it bugged him enough they worked extra hard to keep me alive, just so they could get an answer out of me. And then the poor bastard never got one, because it's going to be another week before I can speak.

Anyway. Anesthesia scares the shit out of me. The jaw's not a vital organ by any stretch, but if it's the anesthesia that kills you, then you start that long blink and you just don't wake up from it. You're not going to be conscious for any of your last hours, so you're not going to experience it happening. Just, someone puts the breathing mask on you, a switch flips, and then your frame of reference stops existing.

And the reason it hits me so hard, more than anything else, is because I cannot imagine it. I can suffer a pain, but I cannot stand an itch, and I'm one of those people who needs to listen to a song the whole way through to get it out of my head. Imagine basically any other way to die and you've got details to focus on, something to hold and address and then deal with. One simulated playthrough in the mind theatre, a shudder, and then out with it.

There's just something about dying under anesthesia though that just eats at me, because it's the closest I can get to trying to imagine death in its most abstract. But you can't. The mind cannot imagine its own non-existence.

Damned if mine doesn't take that as a challenge, though.

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Comments ( 24 )

That's certainly one way to get your surgeon invested in your well-being, though hopefully no one needs to. Here's hoping for a speedy, complication-free recovery.

Tbh, the line "the mind can't imagine its own non-existence" is raw as fuck and it really doesn't surprise me that it bugged the doctor

I'm so glad you got the surgery you needed at last. Wishing you a speedy recovery!

I had a (much more minor) surgery some years back. My anesthesia came in two steps, first inhaling something that was supposed to make me feel tired and then an injection. My last words were, when asked if I felt tired, "not really", and when the injection started, "yeah I can feel that" as a cold chill crept up my arm towards my neck. Then I was out.

I thought that was funny, but when I told a friend this story he thought it was terrifying. Maybe I'm inured because I first had surgery when I was eight, everything since has been old hat.

Once more, i wish i could fav blog posts. That is some deep pondering you've inflicted.

Hope your revovery goes well but I just wanted to say you've got me stuck. That quote is PERFECT for a haiku, "the mind cannot imagine" is 7 and "its own non-existence" is 5, just trying to figure out a good 5 syllable opener.

Honestly?
It's how i would want to go.
Just . . fall asleep. Curtains.

5711993
Numbers arguably gave us one.

My jaw got cut off.
The mind cannot imagine
Its own nonexistence.

The needle in the arm is better than the mask.

Going under with the mask is horrible.
Your body automatically fights the foreign drive to slow the breathing, resulting in a feeling of panic and desperation just before you start that Long Blink.

The needle is just that cool sensation you described, then sleep.

Here is all the best for your recovery mate!
:ajsmug::ajsmug:

Existential crisis time?

I heartily recommend Propofol, otherwise known as Milk of Amnesia. I've had to get the "You're old so its time for that horribly embarrassing procedure" twice now, and both times I remember nothing between "You're going to feel a little sting" and "What do you want at Taco Bell to eat on the way home, dear." Post-plumbing burritos are my reward for going through the whole process and not kicking up a fuss. Never, under any circumstances, drive yourself within eight hours or so of getting poked. Maybe sixteen.

First and most important, congratulations on getting the surgury. It is good to know you are taking care of yourself, even if doing it scares the pants off you.

Perhaps I am the odd one out, but death doesn't frighten me. I don't want to die and I don't take unnessecary risks, but the thought of my own mortality doesnt fill me with any kind of dread.

That said, I would like to point out that your "long blink" literally was your mind's nonexistance. For that period of time, your mind just... wasn't. And, to me that is beautiful in it's simplicity. When you die, when your brain ceases to function, there is nothing. You don't experience it. It isn't some eternal darkness or endless void. Those require some form of perception. But that which does not exist can not perceive.

I'm going to be "that guy" and say that if a mind can't imagine its own non-existence then it is not sufficiently imaginative.

One of my favorite fiction tropes, especially in fantasy, is when a character comes back to life and reports that there's no afterlife, just nothing. It's not conclusive, but it's close enough that their actions afterward are very revealing.

5712013

I mean that's kind of the thing right. That period in the middle of the blink isn't bad. It's just that... well, actually that is a good way to put it. The difference between that and death is that I woke up at the end to have an opinion on the blink.

5712015

This is a bit like saying you reckon you could lift a bucket you're standing in, because you're strong enough to do chinups.

5711996 5711993

Thank you both for this, got a laugh out of me at a time when it hurts to.

5712026
That is, admitedly, an important point of distinction. The long blink isn't so frightening, it's the worry you might nor be able to have a post-blink experience. Which is fair. Kind of like "you aren't afraid of being alone in the dark. You're afraid of not being alone in the dark."

5712096

That is an absolutely fantastic way to put it

5712026
If you can not imagine your own non-existence then you wouldn't be worried about being non-extant because it would be a concept you couldn't comprehend. By the very act of being worried about not being around you do, in fact, comprehend that your state can go from "around" to "not around".

Being unable to lift yourself in a bucket is a physics a issue, not a matter of strength or will. Not being able to contemplate your own non-existence is a lack of imagination and conceptual reasoning. But loads of people lack imagination and conceptual reasoning, or even just the ability to think critically.

To me it just boils down to being able to accept that you are not the center of realty and once you stop existing things continue on for others, just without you around. It is accepting that you are not eternal. Some people just can't cope with their own mortality. That is what "being able to imagine its own non-existence" means to me so unless you mean something else and we are having a communication and understanding issue... .

5712208

Ah, I see.

Okay, when i say that, do you think I mean I can't imagine a world without me? Because that's easy. What I mean is I can't imagine what it feels like to not-exist. My PTSD refuses to accept that, forcing me to keep trying until I can be prepared to deal with it - that's why I worry about something I 'can't comprehend'.

And then the poor bastard never got one, because it's going to be another week before I can speak.

Hopefully you can send the poor bastard an email.

5712210
Ah, I see.

I somewhat have the two concepts coupled together because that's what I desire death to be: cessation of existence. I do not WANT an afterlife of any sort and just wish to STOP. I often just desire to not be, to truly rest and some times strive to just...not think, not do anything. To stop existing for a brief moment.
So, yeah, my brain often contemplates it's own non-existence and I find it enjoyable when I can reach that perfect state of non-being. I've rarely gotten it and it never lasts long mostly in between one heartbeat and the next because in that state it is woefully easy to hear it. That reminder of life.

I can see how PTSD and other such non-normative mental conditions can make stuff like that hard to impossible. It isn't that you can't imagine such a thing but that you are not allowed to do it because of how your body reacts to the thought and shuts the line of thought down hard.

If it helps, which it probably doesn't, I don't think you can't not wake up. And I'm an atheist, for the record.

Glad to hear you're okay. :pinkiesmile:

5712210
5712258

It's less to do with intellectually understanding something and more to do with trying to simulate an experience that's self-contradictory, and therefore impossible for a mind to do. Like, you can intellectually understand the idea of there being more colours than the ones we conventionally see, but now try imagining what that strange new colour would look like. See?

With that self-contradiction in mind, I think it's more along the lines of "Don't think of a polar bear!" Whereupon the mind automatically checks that you're not thinking of a polar bear, which means knowing what to look for, which means thinking of a polar bear.

Same with trying to imagine your own non-existence, which means using your existence to simulate a simulation that doesn't exist.

The intellectual attempt is fine, but the experiential attempt automatically invalidates itself by its very nature.

5712687
I'm not sure of that, because like my one ultimate primal fear is Oblivion. Like, that's what my Non-Existence would be, in the end. An absolute void of nothingness so complete the void itself isn't even there.

And I remember, as a kid or teen, trying to resolve that paradoxical concept, and the only way I can put it is it's like there's this oblivion event horizon - where as I approach understanding of the concept, that moment of truly /connecting/ with it, there is the most intense surge of fear, anxiety, and primal panic I basically every feel and at some point I will instinctively, defensively yeet myself away from further comprehension, which I suspect is necessary because it feels as if something extremely terrible will happen if that moment of true, ultimate comprehension occurs.

Even writing this all out is profoundly uncomfortable because it requires going near, and to keep the black hole analogy up, even if I'm keeping the starship well away with the engines at full, I can feel the pull of it and being in the general mind-space is just Not Fun.

And this, despite the fact that in some way, every sleep is itself a little oblivion that I emerge out the other side of. A trip through that nothing-place before the lights come on again. The universe passing while my consciousness is on pause, apart from what dreams occur in that time.

5712998

That sounds like a strong case of thanatophobia, but then lots of people don't like thinking about oblivion after death, or about death generally. It's understandable.

Still, I think the "event horizon" concept is revealing, because the notable thing about black holes with their physical event horizons is that the usual laws of physics as we understand them - even the laws that govern the behaviour of light - break down beyond said horizon. Intellectually, even, physics currently has no firm idea of what it's "like" inside a black hole at all. It's essentially a void.

There's also an essential difference between approaching a thing, having an inkling of what might be there (or "there", in this case), and actually experiencing it. You can get as uncomfortably close as you like to a black hole - inches from the edge, even - but still essentially no closer to seeing what it's really like. That's what I'd argue, anyway.

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