Snow
It snowed pretty hard most all weekend. I ended up not doing much of anything that I had planned because of it. I probably should have tried to, but something my husband said kept running around my head. He said something about not being able to live through me having another accident. I understand on a lot of levels but it is not pleasant to hear. We have agreed that 3 accidents is plenty and that I am done.
None of them were my fault and he was with me in 2 of them. The middle one was trivial. The first one was tough, but I worked through it after a month or so off. The third one and brain injury changed my life.
Some of the change has been good, much of the change has been change - neither good nor bad, and some has been bad. I do miss who I used to be sometimes. Or at least who I remember I used to be.
It's a confirmation to me that most people are too busy with their own lives to really pay attention to mine. (Which is fine, I am too busy with mine to pay much attention to theirs.) I experience being me as a different person. I still look mostly the same, so folks seem to flow with the new person and not ask too many questions. I guess. I don't know. Maybe they don't notice. See above.
All I know is that after many years of feeling like a stranger in my brain/emotions that either things are getting back to "normal" or I have "normalized" to how things are now. I suspect the latter as I compare my life activities between then and now.
I used to teach a lot. Mostly herb related classes but also historical based skills classes. I don't do that much anymore. And when I do, it a whole different way of teaching. More interaction less lecturing. I feel the "blank outs" more when I am in front of a class than when I am sitting at my bench.
Lots less social. I guess that is what got me thinking about things was the whole "lots less social" thing. I don't know if I would have gone ahead and gone to the Holiday party that I skipped due to the weather or not. But I suspect that I would have braved the snow to hang out and have fun.
The other thing that I have been mulling about is the blog my younger brother has written about his injury. It is so hard to read about. http://www.buchele.blogspot.com/ His music is so joyful and brings so much pleasure. He played a really cool song that he had written from a Bible verse at our wedding. I will pray even harder that we get to hear it again.
I don't know when I was going through the worst of my brain injury that I had any thoughts about better or worse. I was really pinned to the right now and sometimes even the right now went away. I remember it was really important to me to go and sit every week in the waiting room of the brain injury clinic. I got to see the continuum of folks better than me and folks worse than me. One of the things that has stuck was that it was hard for me to validate how badly I was hurt as I wasn't physically harmed.
I am grateful for that and many other things. I could be much worse and more damaged or even dead.
I think about the parallel worlds theory of zillions of worlds spinning out from the decisions made and think about how it is that I am in this one at this time. I remember playing Barbie with my older sister when we were kids one time. It must have been New Years. I remember calculating how old I would be when the year changed from 1999 to 2000. I remember being struck dumb with the ancientness of me at that time.
There are days when I feel that ancient. Today is one of them. The gray skies, the snow, the isolation, the suffering of my kin, and running out of chocolate.
None of them were my fault and he was with me in 2 of them. The middle one was trivial. The first one was tough, but I worked through it after a month or so off. The third one and brain injury changed my life.
Some of the change has been good, much of the change has been change - neither good nor bad, and some has been bad. I do miss who I used to be sometimes. Or at least who I remember I used to be.
It's a confirmation to me that most people are too busy with their own lives to really pay attention to mine. (Which is fine, I am too busy with mine to pay much attention to theirs.) I experience being me as a different person. I still look mostly the same, so folks seem to flow with the new person and not ask too many questions. I guess. I don't know. Maybe they don't notice. See above.
All I know is that after many years of feeling like a stranger in my brain/emotions that either things are getting back to "normal" or I have "normalized" to how things are now. I suspect the latter as I compare my life activities between then and now.
I used to teach a lot. Mostly herb related classes but also historical based skills classes. I don't do that much anymore. And when I do, it a whole different way of teaching. More interaction less lecturing. I feel the "blank outs" more when I am in front of a class than when I am sitting at my bench.
Lots less social. I guess that is what got me thinking about things was the whole "lots less social" thing. I don't know if I would have gone ahead and gone to the Holiday party that I skipped due to the weather or not. But I suspect that I would have braved the snow to hang out and have fun.
The other thing that I have been mulling about is the blog my younger brother has written about his injury. It is so hard to read about. http://www.buchele.blogspot.com/ His music is so joyful and brings so much pleasure. He played a really cool song that he had written from a Bible verse at our wedding. I will pray even harder that we get to hear it again.
I don't know when I was going through the worst of my brain injury that I had any thoughts about better or worse. I was really pinned to the right now and sometimes even the right now went away. I remember it was really important to me to go and sit every week in the waiting room of the brain injury clinic. I got to see the continuum of folks better than me and folks worse than me. One of the things that has stuck was that it was hard for me to validate how badly I was hurt as I wasn't physically harmed.
I am grateful for that and many other things. I could be much worse and more damaged or even dead.
I think about the parallel worlds theory of zillions of worlds spinning out from the decisions made and think about how it is that I am in this one at this time. I remember playing Barbie with my older sister when we were kids one time. It must have been New Years. I remember calculating how old I would be when the year changed from 1999 to 2000. I remember being struck dumb with the ancientness of me at that time.
There are days when I feel that ancient. Today is one of them. The gray skies, the snow, the isolation, the suffering of my kin, and running out of chocolate.
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Tigeroo