BRAIN DEATH

Books that told me bitter but taught me sweet had helped me clarify the questions in my head

“The library is a hospital for the mind.” Anonymous

I was brain-dead. My heart was beating, I was breathing but my brain was dead.

Looking out of the window, I’m remembering those terrible days. With a cup of freshly ground coffee in my hand, I watch the sea, the trees, and the buildings. I don’t see anything clearly because I’m so deeply immersed in the nightmare of my past years. Thinking about those days when my brain was dead, gives me goosebumps. The sound of the evening prayer call mingles with the laughter of my children; I say “Alhamdulillah” and take a deep breath.

I got married eight years ago and with it, I had to separate from my twin sister, my confidante for 27 years. I didn’t just leave her behind. I had abandoned everything that belonged to me and my identity.

The country I’d lived in, the life I was used to, my parents, my friends, my habits, what I ate, and drank, and even everything I was used to wearing. This is a very natural thing to do in Turkish-Muslim culture; if a girl gets married, she flies out of the nest but my situation was a little different.

I left without taking anything from my former life. I was trying to build a new life in a new country, with new people, with new habits. Where I lived, people’s worldviews were very different. I couldn’t find anything in common with them, I couldn’t make friends. In those days, I understood what peer pressure meant. I was denying myself just to be part of the community because I didn’t want to be alone.

I was completely trapped in my own head.

In my new life, nothing seemed to belong to me, nothing! I couldn’t adjust, and neither did anyone adjust to me. My trauma was so devastating that when I looked in the mirror, I wouldn’t recognize myself anymore. I couldn’t look into the eyes of the person in the mirror. I was a stranger to myself and this was terrifying.

Before I got married, I was a very social young girl who loved life. I was highly confident about myself. I enjoyed life, I had big dreams, and I loved laughing. I thought I knew who I was, and I had strict ideas and thoughts about what my life should be like in the future. I believed that I would live the life I envisioned in my head. I got my diploma from the university of my dreams and I was going to practice the profession I wanted. I married the man I loved and whom my family approved.

Could it be any better?

I thought I was ready for marriage, ready for life. I was full of hope but while I was making my plans, life got in my way.

Another incident, which eventually caused my brain death, was added to the shocking sequence of events in my new life: I became a mother.

As if leaving my old life and my old identity behind wasn’t enough, I had to take on another identity. Between the time of my wedding and the birth of my daughter, I changed my identity so many times that I was bewildered. Within a year, I changed my identity from being a student to a teacher, from a German-European young girl to a German-Turkish married woman, and from a married woman to a mother. And I lived these identity changes in a foreign country, with foreign people, in a foreign culture. Within a year, I experienced the identity changes that some women go through within 10 or 15 years. I couldn’t digest this. It was too heavy.

My brain was dead, my body was soulless.

I couldn’t handle all changes at once. When I held my daughter for the first time, I became even more estranged from myself. I was suffering from severe postpartum depression and anxiety disorder. I couldn’t connect with my daughter and with that, my anxiety level had reached its highest level. I couldn’t even go to the grocery store alone, which was 100 meters away from my house. I forgot to live. Everything that was normal in daily life, like going shopping, cooking, driving, traveling, and even taking a shower, seemed like an extraordinary task. Even changing the same things I wore for days was tiring for me. Everything felt heavy and meaningless. There was nothing left from my older self whatsoever.

I had lost myself.

I couldn’t be the mother to my daughter I thought I’d be. Every day, I was in a nothingness where I writhed in pain. The voices in my head wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop them. I was shouting and swearing in my mind but my body was motionless. I was breathing but I was soulless. I was numb, but at the same time, I was running around in the house like crazy to escape from my tormenting thoughts and anxieties.

What kind of pain was that?

Nobody understood me and I couldn’t explain it to anyone. I thought it would never end. For countless days, I was laying in my bed crying. Before I turned 30, I went from doctor to doctor to find healing.

They gave me drugs, not to heal, but to numb me.

I went to psychological therapies, but neither a doctor nor any drug would heal me.

I wasn’t myself. I was in a deep and depressing nothingness. I couldn’t get myself out of bed. The burden of life was heavy. To numb my pain, I’d mindlessly spent my time on the phone, on the TV, with shallow conversations and shallow people. Even though I knew I couldn’t reclaim one second of my life, I let them suck the treasures inside of me like the dementors in Harry Potter.

Like a drowning man would clutch at a straw, I was trying to find something that would rescue me. The more I tried to numb myself, the deeper my pain got.

My brain was dead. It was like I was in a coma.

Tied to the machine, I was struggling to survive.

I was barely breathing on my own. I had lost my will. Everyone was making decisions about my life. Everyone had an idea about how I was going to live and were commenting on my motherhood. Do this, do that. This is how motherhood is, this is how your life will be from now on.

Like a leaf in the wind, I’d let them pull me in all directions because I lost my self-confidence. Everyone was criticizing me and was commenting on my life. People would say that I threw my life away. They’d say: “Look what life she left behind.” My pain was getting even deeper.

Because of my negative emotions, I felt like I was on a never-ending roller coaster ride. I hated people and also myself. I had become an envious, angry, anxious person. I was a confused, restless, and hopeless loser.

I was in search of something. I wanted something to ease my pain, but it was a desperate and hopeless struggle. I was looking for SOMETHING that would heal my sick soul. There wasn’t anything! I ran away from my pain, I didn’t want to face it.

The life I was living was too tight for me. It was not mine. Neither the place I lived in, the people I was with, nor the topics I talked about made me happy. People looked at me like they were looking at a pitiable person. They felt sorry for me and this was distressing me.

“Was this all?” I was asking myself. “ Is this the dream life I had when I was a single woman? Was I going to live like a poor human being that people pitied? Did I and my daughter deserve this life?”

I hated my life and suffered greatly for who I had become. I had a million questions. “Why am I like this? How can I be the mother my daughter deserves? Who do I want to be?” I couldn’t find answers to my questions.

When I got really frustrated with myself and when a normal life became impossible, I realized I had to change! That was my turning point. I didn’t want to be a loser throwing her life away, neither I nor my beautiful blond-haired blue-eyed daughter deserved this. My daughter and I deserved a good and happy life.

Like the awakening of Edna in Kate Chopin’s book ‘The Awakening’, my own awakening came when I dared to pick up my books again. With every page, I began to heal.

Books that told me bitter but taught me sweet had helped me clarify the questions in my head.

I was slowly starting to wake up from my coma. I had lost my identity, myself, but as I was reading, I was rising from my own ashes like a Phoenix. Stronger than ever before.

I was getting stronger than I’d ever been because I wasn’t running away from my pain anymore, I was facing it.

My mantra had always been: “I am the sum of my decisions. I deserve a good, healthy, and happy life, and I will achieve it by making deliberate decisions. I am worthy, I am enough.” I would repeat those sentences over and over until I internalized them.

As I was reading, I was learning.

As I was learning, I was becoming more aware.

As I was becoming aware, I started dreaming again.

As I was dreaming, I was applying what I’d learned.

And finally, the more I was applying , the more I healed.

I, who had been brain dead and depended on the machine struggling to survive and who thought her pain was unbearable and endless, healed my own pain by reading books. I was searching for my identity, and I found it.

I am now a strong, confident, and courageous woman who turned her own pain into an opportunity. I am a mother who can overcome anything she said she couldn’t. I am a teacher who came out of her own darkness and is determined to be a light to others.

I evolved from a person who saw life as a dark place to a book-lover who sees life as a never-ending journey of learning, evolving, adjusting, and transforming.

Thanks for reading :)