Having a stroke fixed my brain: let me explain...

well hello there my lovely beautiful internet friends welcome back to my channel real quick before we get started this video is actually restricted to only attractive sexy people who are trying their best so if you're seeing this you made it in good job was that necessary but I want the pillow on the couch it has been a minute since I actually filmed a YouTube video because late January of 2024 I Was preparing for a jiujitsu tournament had a freak accident had a vertebral Artery Dissection doesn't that sound fancy and I had a stroke to the back of my brain made a couple videos about it if you're interested but I wanted to share what life has looked like since that occurred because there have been some very unexpected changes and I've hesitated to make this video because I don't want to be one of those people who is like I had a near-death experience and now I have a rejuvenated sense of life but oh god um I am one of those people I think I'm going to title this video having a stroke fixed my brain and understand that that is a little bit of an exaggeration but though I have holes in my brain and my body is not doing the best something really shifted in me in a very beneficial way I do want to clarify I'm not sitting here like I'm glad this stroke happened my personal theory of life is to not give power to things that don't deserve it so often we hear people being like I'm so glad X terrible thing occurred because it made me into the person I am today my opinion on that this might be semantics is that we're not really giving ourselves enough credit when we say that bad things happen and then we get to make choices with what we want to do in the aftermath and this situation certainly presented me with some opport opportunities to look at life differently and I have and it's been really cool do you have to chew on that right there guys I'm sorry this is the time I have to film a video today so we're just going to have to deal with the crunching when I reference almost dying I don't actually mean the day that I had the stroke or the week and a half in the ICU hospital after I mean specifically a day in early May when at about midnight I started losing control of my body again in the same way that occurred when I had the stroke in incredible dizziness inability to use my hands speech wasn't working my tongue felt super weird and it started happening really fast and the injury that caused the kind of stroke that I had I knew there is a risk of another stroke occurring which is pretty terrifying to me it very much felt exactly like it was happening again I had enough presence of mind to call 911 and that was about it by the time paramedics got here I couldn't really speak getting to the hospital I lost the ability to like move half of my body and a little bit more pretty much immediately after doing a CT they put me on this crazy blood thinner that you can't sit up out of bed un supervised because it makes your blood so thin and so I was hospitalized turns out it was a hemiplegic migraine which kind of masquerades as a stroke very lame of it I might say but there was one particular moment where I remember I was being wheeled into the CT scan couldn't control my body couldn't really form words and I felt myself fading away I very much had an extended moment of being completely alone in my own head and thinking okay this is it I do think another stroke is happening I was told if that occurred I probably wouldn't make it and even if I don't die like this is it I'm just going to see h hospital rooms the rest of my life and I'm curious if anybody else who has had oh my God I'm actually dying like that kind of a moment but it felt so very boring and quiet I kind of always thought in my head there'd be like a life flashing before my eyes moment or like major regrets or realizations and it was just sort of like quiet boring acceptance and a lot of sadness for the people I would leave behind also side notee I saw my dogs like the ones who have passed away I saw them like way for me our brains do crazy things right but I wasn't dying and I made it and since that moment there has been such a massive perspective shift in my life the biggest thing that came out of that for me that has unfolded over the course of months is that I actually want to be alive I think that sentence is a pretty common thing for most people to say survival Instinct it's pretty ingrained in US humans but the age of 20 onward I certainly was alive and lived life but really didn't want to be a part of it I spent every day that's really not an exaggeration for over a decade mostly trying to distract myself from wanting to not be here anymore wanting to distract myself from self-harmful thoughts or suicidal thoughts and that like that was life to me life to me was like survival was trying to like get past the darkness enough to function and I had good days and bad days good years bad years but in the extent of my adult experience that has always been an underlying consistent for me I'm not sure if it was like the almost dying thing or years of therapy that led up to it or maybe maybe all of the above I'm talking about emotional things Sophie how dare you search for Leo's toy she found it like pretty immediately there was this shift in my brain that occurred I think part of it was being like Oh I am going to die right like that is a guarantee it didn't happen that day but it will occur and I don't know if I have 24 hours left or 24 years none of us do right but it became tangible to me damn there's a lot of freedom in that realization part of it was like yeah you'll get your wish eventually like in that that dark frame of mind where I really don't want to be here like that's going to occur anyways but in the meantime I get to do whatever I want with the time that I have and the idea of like embracing Joy when it's there and also embracing the really shitty things in life because they are a reality too I've suddenly been able to do I've gotten very involved in going to see live music I've never been a music person I'm not a musician I like music music right I made a short video about this but a lot of the triggers for a lot of the stroke deficits are lights sounds flashing lights people loud environments all of that so I started going to concerts locally here in Denver there's like concerts constantly many of them are super cheap some of them are free I did this as a way to to kind of exposure therapy my brain to deal with the symptoms to hopefully overload it enough that it would start creating new Neal connections and heel and it's actually worked and I've had so many moments of of like standing there in the crowd with new friends or old friends or just by myself and basking in how incredible it is to be alive I wish I was better with words so I could accurately convey what a difference in perspective this has been for me I don't even remember feeling like happy or joyful to be here when I was a kid people will talk about like think back to when you were little and the joy and like what you wanted to be and I don't have those memories I didn't have like a super dark horrible child childhood or anything like that but there was always a heaviness that has followed me as long as I can remember and that got worse as I experienced actual trauma and mental illness and things like that and life has not gotten easier in fact it has gotten more challenging but I am okay and even when I am like desperately not okay I'm still okay so many of the mental restrictions that held me back from both enjoying pieces of life and fully embracing that moment and also maybe more importantly in really feeling the depths of grief and anger and rage and sadness I'm like okay bring it on not trying to hold everything at Bay all of the time not trying to like button myself up and hold myself together and do the right thing and follow all the shoulds in my brain like they've just to a large extent dissolve I feel so much more comfortable with myself and I always used to have this line on repeat in my brain that went something like none of this matters none of this [ __ ] matters and I still have that same line on repeat in my brain except the tone has changed and now it's none of this matters like none of this [ __ ] matters incredible that means I get to make it whatever I want it to be and love the people around me and build a life that I want to be a part of and not care that much about what other people might think or say or what I might think or say like to actually invest in myself and I am fully aware of the fact that I am 9 months out for the stroke and like 6 months out from this realization and I'm probably still riding a high of being able to do life I'm not going to lie it is still incredibly difficult especially trying to return to work I feel very dumb a lot of the time because my brain does not work the way that it did before it's like I'll know what I want to say but I can't form words or I get completely lost in conversation or I'm conversing with very smart intelligent successful people and I feel so behind there have been a lot of tears and a lot of sobbing or yelling in my car by the way huge recommend scream it out in your car where no one can hear you chef's kiss great it's also made me a lot less tolerant of things that I don't want to deal with or treatment that I don't believe that I deserve I now say that because I'm like damn dude we're all going to disappear we're all going to fade into history and memory within a handful of a dozen years so why would I stay in situations that I know are damaging or not good for me I'm not interested in doing that anymore I mean this really just feels like a very self-indulgent video where I'm like ah my perspective has changed but specifically if you have been a part of this community for any length of time I was watching back old videos last night when I couldn't sleep sleep that I had made years ago and I can watch them and remember what I felt like in those moments and the heaviness and the depression and the Darkness and the hopelessness and the Hope right and that I'm going to keep going the the trying to be resilient doing my best and I now look back on those versions of myself with love and compassion instead of judgment and it felt important to me to share this piece of my mental Journey because there are those of you who have been so incredibly kind to care to listen over the years and I have shared when I am desperately not okay and I wanted to also share when I really am like I said things are pretty challenging a lot of things are in flux I deal with a lot of physical stuff that is very difficult and I am still trying to figure out how the hell to do that haven't figured it out probably never will we're all doing our best The Struggle Bus beep beep is real but so is like so much joy love and a lot of freedom and with that I'm about to leave you cuz I can feel my brain stuff starting to act up because now everything gets kind of wavy and I can't really see straight and that's like a good indication that my words are going to stop working pretty soon so I'm going to lay down but I would like to make weekly videos until the end of the year as my body allows and I have some ideas but if there's anything you guys would like to see or hear about in particular let me know in the comments down below because gosh darn it I'm very grateful to this community to you guys there is anything you would like to see or hear me share I would love to do that you have done so much for me truly the amount of support that I received from this community in this healing Journey could not have done it without without you continually thank you from the bottom of my heart let me see if I can remember the outro that I've used for like 6 Years to you watching this video right now thank you so much for spending a few minutes out of your day here with me and the loud puppies today you could be anywhere else in the world doing anything else but you chose to hang out with us for a few minutes and I really appreciate that I love you guys I'm thinking about you and I will see you in the next video bye guys thank you for listening