Well, now I’ve done it. I’m out of commission for yet another day. This bronchitis is accompanied by a sinus infection, and between the two of them, I’m not a happy camper. I pushed myself too hard over the past couple of weeks. I worked crazy long hours. I didn’t keep to my routine. I didn’t eat all the fruits and vegetables I usually eat. And I didn’t do my regular exercise. I’m not saying that going off track is the only reason I’ve been out of work most of this week, but it certainly didn’t help me.
I know this time of year is more stressful than most for me. I know that this time of year is a challenge. But I didn’t factor it in, and I fell into the old habits of pushing myself even harder, instead of taking time to pause and really catch up with myself. I fell back into my loner persona, started to isolate more, and I stopped keeping lines of communication open. I got into that I-can-do-it-all-by-myself frame of mind, and it took its toll.
In times like these, I can tell my great-great grandparents were midwestern farmers. They were members of the generation that moved out to the prairie in the nation’s heartland to “open” it for farming. They took with them a rock-solid work ethic and a conviction that they were correct in every assumption and had every right to tear up the prairie and plant wheat wherever it could grow.
With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to see how misguided so many of them were. For the land evolves in ways that sustain it, and when you tear up eons worth of good practice — that network of grasses that kept the soil in its place and fed the food chain that kept the whole ecosystem going — sometimes bad things happen. Storms come. Extreme weather happens. Winds come. And if there’s nothing to keep it all in place, well, it has a way of washing and blowing away.
I’m not sure that ever occurred to my great-great-grandparents, when they first dropped their harrows into the rich prairie earth. They were from Back East, so what did they have to compare the experience with? All they probably saw was miles and miles of rich, fertile, uncharted territory, just waiting for them to drop a plow in and dig up, sow, and then cover with waving fields of grain. I doubt very much that they ever consulted with the local Native American tribes about their plans. The Indians were “heatherns” and were to be either avoided or converted. Converted to their religion, their way of thinking, which included taking dominion over all the earth in order to fulfill their destiny of conquerors and masters of this world, before going to their reward in the next.
Yes, it’s doubtful my ancestors ever consulted with the locals about what they had in mind. Even when they married the local tribal women (as one of my great-great-grandfathers did), I don’t believe the subject of land stewardship ever came up.
This is all projection and conjecture, of course. I’m using my own personal perspective as a guidepost. Personally, I don’t believe that people change that much over time. We may shift and take different points of view, now and then, but our underlying natures stay more or less the same. Different times and different places cause us to draw on different interests and skills and perspectives, but our core nature remains the same… and that holds true of character traits that run in families.
Traits do stay true to family lines, you know. A friend of mine who was separated from half of their birth family before they had clear memory of them, reunited with their long-lost biological relatives a number of years ago, and they said it was poignantly uncanny, the way they all “clicked”. They hadn’t been anywhere near each other for something like 20 years, but they were all so similar in subtle yet important ways, that they just KNEW they were family.
I have the same kind of sense about my own forebears. I have pictures of them, given to me by my grandfather, who is nearly 100 years old, that I keep in my study. Some pictures are stashed in a cupboard, and others I’ve framed and hung on the wall. Austere, earnest, no-nonsense. My ancestors look out at me from across the years, and I can see in their eyes that conviction, that assurance, that they are RIGHT to be doing what they are doing, that they HAVE the right to do what they do, and the one and only antidote for insecurity or lack of confidence is to just Keep Going. Keep Searching. Keep Striving. No matter what, just keep on keepin’ on.
That keepin’ on was firmly rooted in a self-sufficiency that endures to this day in their progeny, myself included. I saw it in both sets of grandparents, who never let anything stand between them and the tasks they were about to undertake. One side of my family stayed in the farming business, and when we went to see those grandparents, the care of the farm and completion of chores preceded all else. I once asked my grandfather why he didn’t have breakfast before he went out to feed the cows, and he responded with a sort of surprised dismay that I had to even ask, “First we feed. First we feed. Then we eat.”
My grandmother’s presence, too, was always marked by the prevalence of work. Most of our interactions with her took place in the kitchen, where she was usually working. If she wasn’t in the kitchen, she was in the room next to it, sewing or folding laundry, or she was out in the side yard hanging up laundry. There was never any question of her sitting down and playing a game with us. Games were for children who didn’t have chores to do. And as we kids played round after round of the one board game on hand, or made up our own games, or ran around in the outside yard, there was always a hint of bemused borderline disapproval, that we kids weren’t doing something useful with our time.
I’m sure my parents got an earful, every now and then, when my grandparents’ patience wore thin with our leisurely game-playing. Once, I spent a week with my cousins at their farm, helping with haying and milking and work around the farm. I wasn’t much use to them. Couldn’t even manage to get up at 4 a.m. with the rest of them. But then, I was a city kid. Part of me thinks it had something to do with my mTBIs, but maybe it was just me.
Anyway, on the other side of my family, my grandparents were first-time entrants into the world of professionalism. My grandfather had gone to college, while his brothers stayed on the farm, and he’d worked his way up in the world, acquiring more degrees, until he became a full Ph.D. and a leading faculty member at a small college in a rural area. Again, visiting those grandparents was a keen reminder of how much had changed in the world since they were kids. My siblings and I loved to play and run and get into trouble, but my grandparents had every expectation that we would be doing some sort of useful work, if we had free time on our hands. Rambunctiousness was a sign that you hadn’t exhausted yourself at hard labor, and there wasn’t a whole lot of tolerance for this. Idle hands… devil’s workshop…
As a kid, I often wondered at the austerity of their outlooks, but now as an adult (probably about the same age as they were, when they were my disapproving grandparents), I get it. Time is for using. Energy is for working. Life is for making good on some promise you carry within your heart. And if you have extra time on your hands, something must be wrong. You must be underutilized or coddling yourself. You must not be doing the Right Thing.
That’s where I’ve been for the past couple of weeks — feverishly Doing The Right Thing… doing and doing and doing some more… making good progress on getting things done… being ultra-productive and fulfilling my obligations… building alliances at work and identifying priorities and strategies… all this and more. I’ve been in a whirlwind of sorts, a hyper-productive, focused, intent whirlwind of activity — all geared towards the pressing goal of wrapping up all the year-end activities I’ve got on my plate, so I can move into 2011 with a clean slate.
I haven’t had much time or interest in slowing down, frankly. And this is where my mTBI issues come in. I’ve talked before about using analgesic stress to soothe pain and aches and get my mind off my discomfort. Well, since I’ve been picking up the pace at work, the headaches have returned and the body aches have come back. I’ve been in pain, of some kind or another, for a couple of months, probably. I’ve been tired. And when I’m tired, I have pain. And hypersensitivity to sensations of hot, cold, touch. I haven’t been able to be touched on my hands an arms and back for weeks; the contact is too uncomfortable.
And to cut the pain, I’ve been pushing myself even harder. All the adrenaline and noradrenaline and ephiphrine and norepinephrine (and God knows what other good stuff) have been pumping through my veins, focusing my attention on What’s Most Important (work things) and blocking off the distractions of What Doesn’t Matter As Much (physical health things). When I’ve been up to my eyeballs in work, I haven’t noticed the headaches as much, I haven’t been bothered by the pain in my joints and hands and arms and back as much, I haven’t been vexed by the increasing fuzziness in my head… as much.
As a result, I’ve gotten myself into trouble. Pushed myself too hard. This often happens at this time of year. I think that Thanksgiving being the anniversary of several of my mTBIs doesn’t help — it sets me off emotionally. And the holidays, when I’m around friends and family members more, and I have to interact with people in unstructured social situations (where I am more inclined to say stupid-ass things and speak out of turn and sometimes say and do inappropriate things)… well, it all gets to me. I don’t like to admit it, but it does. It really, really gets to me. Even when I navigate well, it wipes me out.
So, I push myself even harder. And lo and behold, I get sick. Right around this time of year, almost like clockwork. My doctor says it’s common, and a lot of people have this happen, since they’re traveling and they come in contact with more people and more viruses and whatnot. Common or not, I can’t really afford it. I know this. I am well aware of this. But I’ll be damned if I can do anything about it.
Till now. One of my New Year’s resolutions that just came to me now is to do a much better job about monitoring my physical health — when things are going well. Now, I’ve been doing really well with tracking my physical well-being over the past year or so, and I’ve made tremendous strides forward, dropping extra weight and keeping it off, exercising regularly, and eating better. I’ve made really good progress, I have to say. But looking back, I see that I was much better and tracking my health choices and behavior when things were not going well at work or in the world in general. When I was stressed with work, I could easily find the motivation to work out regularly and put my focus on my physical well-being. I think that was because work was so dissatisfying and disillusioning for me, I had to find something that was MINE, that I could call My Own. It helped me compensate for tough times on the job. And that’s the place it had in my life.
Now, though, things are going really well at work. I’m very happy with my job and everyone I’m working with, and I’m intensely grateful to have found this connection, this place, this place to call my professional home. And perhaps as a result, I feel less inclined to focus a lot of attention on my physical well-being. I’ve backed off considerably on my work-outs, reducing the focus and intensity, even the frequency. I’ve slipped a little bit, and it’s showing.
My work is very rewarding, and I love the sense of fulfillment it brings me. But my head has been crowding out my body, and that’s not good.
Come to think of it, it’s been crowding out other things, as well. I’ve been spending longer hours at it, so I’ve been at home less. And I haven’t been writing here as much as I’d like. I think part of the lapse with this blog/site has been related to me wanting to just get my mind off my difficulties and not have to dwell so very much on my challenges. When things are going well, who wants to think about fatigue and emotional volatility? When I manage to keep myself from lashing out and over-reacting (by chance, as much as by design), why would I want to think about the inner workings of my impulse control? In a way, I have been getting lucky, lately, and I’ve kind of been faking my way through things, slipping back in to my old patterns of nodding and saying “Uh huh” like I understand, when my mind is really somewhere else, or I’m — yet again — telling myself that I’ll be able to figure out what was just said to me later on. But then I don’t.
I want to do well at this job. I want to do really well. And I can’t bear the thought of mTBI getting the way of my success.
So, like my one grandfather, I take care of business first. I push myself to take care of the tasks that sit before me, and I take care of myself later. The main thing is to feed. Feed the stream. Feed the lake. Feed the flow of work and activity and occupation that creates the world around me/us. Feed the yawning, never-sated beast of “productivity” that is a chasm that is never filled, an ancient Roman at a feast who gorges on delicacies, then throws up the lot, so they can return again to the feasting table to gorge on yet more.
It’s an interesting mix, that combination of austerity and indulgence. Self-sacrifice and disregard for your own well-being has its own rewards, hidden in the deepest recesses of the soul that seeks its perpetual salvation through the cleansing purge of hard work. Work, work, work some more. Extend yourself and break yourself and wear yourself out, for that is what is called for. That is what is required. And if you do any less, you will be Less Than. A burden. A hindrance to all others who manage to do their parts — and then some. The work is never done. How can it be? Seasons come and go, and there will always be a new turning of the year to bring need of new sowing, new tending, new reaping. These cycles never end, whether you are on a Kansas wheat farm or sitting at a keyboard in a cubicle in a converted mill in Hoboken.
They never end. Ever. It’s up to us to manage the whole business.
Manage… When I think about managing the whole lot, it both piques my interest and dismays me. Because I don’t only need to manage my workload and my professional responsibilities. I need to manage myself, as well. I’m not saying I’m the only one — plenty of people have issues they need to manage (and the world might be a whole lot better place, if more people did that, in fact). Anger management. Stress management. Post-traumatic stress. Recollections from past jobs where similar situations went badly, and you’re trying like crazy to not let that happen again.
But with mTBI/post-concussive syndrome/head injury (whatever you want to call it), it’s a whole other situation. Not only are most people unaware of the issues you’re managing, but the one person who IS aware (you), is the one who was impacted, and while you may have just a little less resources and energy to work with, the fact remains that the full responsibility for managing your emotional life, your behavioral expressions… is YOU.
And while that can be a very empowering place to be (putting the power of choice in your hands), it can also be tremendously scary and frustrating and self-defeating. You need help. You have to have help. But maybe nobody can see what exact help you need, except for you — and you’re the one who’s struggling. The one person who is able to communicate your needs to the rest of the world, is the one who’s impaired. Maybe you can tell what help you need, maybe you can’t. It’s never certain, never simple. And it’s totally unescapable. It’s kind of like being out at sea in a leaky boat, and having no place to get supplies to make repairs, except a collection of distant islands that you might be able to row to… but you’re not sure which island has the supplies you need, and once you get there, you’re not sure if anyone will be willing to give them to you. Even worse, is when you’ve got other people in the leaky boat, who are depending on you to get where they need to go.
It’s like being out in the desert, running out of water, looking for an oasis, and seeing all sorts of images in the distance, but not knowing if they’re mirages or not. Even your camel is struggling, as you press across the blazing hot sands. But you can’t tell if you’re going in the right direction. Heaven help you, if you’re at the head of a caravan with women and children depending on you.
Sometimes, all you can do is pray. And press on.
And again, I think back to my ancestors on the prairie. What was it like for them, when they arrived there? It must have been exciting and terrifying all at the same time. The place looked completely different from what they were used to. Lots of opportunity – for good and for ill. I grew up hearing lots of stories from my grandfathers about farming accidents and falls from high hay mows, so I have to wonder how prevalent TBI was in that world. Indeed, one of my great-great-uncles “got hit on the head and was never the same again”. TBI, to some degree or another, was not unknown to that world.
But proverbially out at sea in their leaky boat, what distant shores did they have to row to? Who can say? There was no one out there to help them. The nearest doctor was a day’s ride away, and even if they brought him, there was only so much he could do. Hospitals were not in abundance, and even the closest house was hours away on horseback. They lived on the frontier. It was every man, woman, and child for themself. And if you pressed your neighbors for help with things that you could do yourself and drained their precious resources, you endangered them, as well.
Self-sufficiency. It was the lifeblood of the family unit, the lifeblood of the community. Where certainty failed, religious faith stepped in. It’s no coincidence that my ancestors were deeply religious people. In the frontier world, who could afford not to be? You had to have something — something bigger than yourself — to keep your spirits up, and convince you that all this work was Worth It.
And looking around at the world of TBI recovery, I see so many similarities and correspondences between that frontier world and my own world. I live in a slice of reality where real help is not readily available, and even if I go the distance to fetch a qualified expert, they may not be able to help me. There’s only so much anyone can do. I’m out in a world that’s made new on a regular basis, in part because my memory for the old world fades more quickly than I like to admit… in part because I’m in the largely uncharted territory of actively recovering from multiple mild traumatic brain injuries in a culture and society that is largely oblivious to my situation and deeply intolerant of my kind of difficulties, not to mention deeply pessimistic about my odds of success.
And yet, here I am. Here I stay. Like my great-great-grandparents who weathered the intensity of locust swarms, bitter cold prairie winters, and the constant uncertainty of next year’s crop, and stuck it out, I’m sticking this out. My ancestors may differ from me in that they chose to head west, they chose that way of life, and they took that on consciously as a life-changing decision, whereas I never chose these injuries. But the decision to deal with this all… well, that IS my choice. And it’s one I make consciously (almost) every single day.
On bad days — like the past few — I lament my plight and cry to whatever force is out there that This Is Not Fair! I beg for relief and petition for help — though I can’t quite put my finger on what kind of help. I rail and rant and curse it all.
But that doesn’t budge anything. And it doesn’t help. Ultimately, I come back to the place where I am right now — humbled by my failed attempts at “normalcy”, observing myself in this place, in this life, realizing how far I’ve come, trying to remember how things used to be, so I can value how things are now. I try to right myself in my little leaky boat and row a little harder towards the shore I’ve chosen. I check the direction of the wind, I bail water out of the hull, I stretch the cramps out of my arms, and I press on. I press on, anyway.
This land of TBI is a new frontier. Each and every day. And to the extent to which I recognize and remember that my injuries were not by my choice, but my recovery IS, I have a chance at making my life new. Each and every day. I can step up to the challenges of this uncharted territory and renew my resolve to move forward. Some days are better than others. Some steps take me farther than others. But so long as I just keep moving, and I keep balance in my mind and hope in my heart, I have a chance.
I have a chance to not just survive. But to thrive.
My ancestors were some of the European immigrants who stripped the prairie of its self-sustaining systems which had made a complex web of life there possible for eons before they arrived. The changes my ancestors wrought had a hand in harming the land and changing this nation for the worse. Now, on a much smaller individual scale, but perhaps with greater awareness, I have a chance to repair what damage I can find in my own immeidate world, and make whole some of the things which were once torn asunder.
My forebears were pioneers, and so am I.
Wagons, ho.
Broken Brain - Brilliant Mind 