The Lesser of 2(00) Evils - Stephanie Selles

This is my neurological anomaly survival story; my write or die.

It was a long-haul following my *presumptive case of COVID-19 incident that I was not neuro-biochemically medically stable. I was sensory processing suffering and with an incurred inability to feel love, I was lost, and found, I was all too open to killing myself.

I couldn't count on the human connection that was 37 years of cumulative love to keep me here. Tormented by neurological glitches converging with no emotional recognition of those whose love was unconditional, it was hard to care to stay for the other bookend of the human condition; death of natural causes.

Like a metaverse mask you never put on yet can't ever take off. Like dentistry sweet air/nitrous oxide you never were given yet can't ever come down from. Like an alcoholic drink you never consumed yet can't ever sober up from.

Like psychedelic drugs you never took yet are stuck in a bad trip of. Like a toothpaste-spatter, smattered bathroom mirror that doesn't matter because you aren't in it anyway.

And with no preexisting history of self-harm ideation... your everyday living is both so confusing and excruciating you're romanticizing 86'ing yourself; The Lesser Of 200 Evils.

To circumvent a suicidal-fluctuating mind, I would have to create an inner-narrative and outer-world in which dissociative wasn't an abuser but my muse. To survive it I would have to and it was in doing this that I found metamorphosis; the Stephoenix; how to turn my pain into my power. 

I feel my memoir is a story of a journey that people living with the difficult impact of neurological long Covid (and other neurological calamities, and/or conditions), could relate to, benefit from but what's more, find the rare comfort in that is needed, currently underrepresented and that I speak to.

*A presumptive case of COVID-19 is a case where a patient's medical record documentation supports a diagnosis of COVID-19, even if the patient does not have a positive in vitro diagnostic test result in his or her medical record. (hrsa.gov)