Am I human?

I had an experience when I was very young that not many people can honestly say has happened to them. I died.

My mom had left me with a friend of hers for some time. I am not sure if it was a couple of hours or a few days. He and I were out walking and I fell into a canal. And drowned. Even though I was only two at the time, parts of it are still very clear to me.

What his place looked like or how close it was to the water, I could not tell you. But I can tell you that I had an out of body experience unlike anything else I have ever heard of anyone mentioning. Typical examples of astral projection mention being able to leave your body and experience being somewhere else. What I experienced was being in two places at once something that everyone says is impossible. It doesn't change things though.

I clearly recall being in the water, on my back looking up while, struggling to stay afloat and seeing a slightly transparent being a few dozen feet above me.  I was crying out and asking it for help. And I also was the transparent being looking down at the child in the water. I remember not feeling any sense of attachment to the other as either being. As the transparent being I was thinking that it would be a shame if that child below me died and thinking that someone really should help him out. It was this odd loop of me looking up at me looking down at me looking up at me. But neither me felt that the other was me.

And then the child in the water died. And the transparent me had a completely different unbelievable adventure of it's own that I will tell another time.  The drowned two year old was eventually rescued from the canal and taken by ambulance to a hospital.   I had not taken a breath for nearly forty five minutes.  Nobody could survive that long without breathing. Irreparable brain damage starts to happen after about five minutes.  The doctor was filling out DOA paperwork, when I suddenly started breathing again, weakly I'm sure. I spent the next month or so in a coma and nobody knew if I would survive. The doctor told my family that even if I did one day wake up, I would likely  be a vegetable. I would probably never be able to dress, bathe or feed myself. I might never walk without help or learn to talk or read. I would certainly require someone to take care of me every day for the rest of my life.

Well one day, I did come out of that coma. And the doctor could not have been more wrong. I have become one of the brightest, most adaptable, capable people that I have ever encountered. But, my brain certainly does not work in the way most other people's does. I do not have certain stumbling blocks that other people do. They are just not there and have never been.  People often say well if I can do it then anyone can do it. I do try to use those examples myself. But somehow it always ends up that I am the exception that proves the rule. Things are just different for me. Most things come easier to me than other people and sometimes I don't even know the stumbling blocks exist until other people point them out to me. I am not better than other people, just different. A lot of my time has been spent pondering the why of it.  I think when I fell in the canal I was just an average kid. When I awoke from the coma and every day since, I have been well above average.

Two different theories have occurred to me.  One is that my brain was damaged when I drowned, and against all probable odds, it was damaged in only positive ways. The other theory is one that students of astral projection might enjoy. There is a strongly held belief that the body is just a house for a spirit. Naturally humans occupy the house meant for their bodies. But when one astral projects, their spirit is believed to be exiting the body and going off on an adventure. It is commonly believed that when the shell is empty any other spirits nearby can come and take up residence. That is primarily what demonic possession is supposed to be about.  What if the child really did die that day and never did come back and the reason I was in a coma for a month was a new possibly non human spirit entered my body  and it took that long to take control of its new house?