Reaching out… reaching in…

Something in me wants like crazy to reach out, to make contact, to connect with another human being on a level that has absolutely nothing to do with anything we know about each other. Not our strengths, not our weaknesses, not our issues, not even our victories.

Something in me craves the kind of connection you can only get with total, utter strangers… the kinds of people I feel most comfortable around, who know nothing about me and will never learn anything more about me, than what the moments we share have to offer.

There’s something clean in that, something pure. Something unadulterated and untarnished. There’s something divine. Utterly, inexpressibly divine.

A weird beetle is flying around my room. It’s been warm, the past few days, and the bugs are coming out again. Grass is growing again, despite the late date. This bug has been in my study for the past day or so, buzzing around, climbing on my curtains, inching closer to one of the three lamps I have on to light my workspace… to light my way.

In some ways, I feel closer to that beetle than I do to many people. It’s an ugly thing, really. Not very attractive, and sort of prehistoric looking. There are lots of them around my place during the spring and late fall. They gross out my spouse, who can’t stand dealing with them, but there are so many of them around, you can’t avoid them. But every encounter I have with them is pure and clean and straightforward: You are in my home. You will not find anything interesting to eat in this place. You should not be in my study or my bathroom or my hallway. You need to go outside, and I am going to take you there. Now.

End of contract. End of story. And no one has been hurt in the process.

How unlike my human exchanges.

I had a very probing session with my psychotherapist today. I suspect they think that I am making up my issues to “game” the system and get money out of someone. I suspect they think that I’m misleading my employer and overstating my abilities, because I need the paycheck. I suspect they can’t quite believe that someone with my history of head injuries can possibly be as functional as I am. I haven’t even told them about the other two from my early childhood that I remembered recently.

My session brought up issues that I have frankly not dealt with, about how I relate to my immediate family. The holidays are upon us, so what better subject for a shrink session? And now I am feeling sick, because the impact of some Very Bad Things that have happened since my fall in 2004 never really sank in.

Until now.

This, I suppose, is the price of increased awareness — increased awareness and sensitivity to all the crap that tends to fly about. Disturbance and distress and falling ill with nervous exhaustion. There we have it.

Part of me wants to crawl back in my cave and not sweat the big stuff that goes on. Part of me wants to go back to pretending that everything is just fine, and that my options in life are unlimited. Part of me wants to go back to not being therapized on a weekly basis. Part of me wants to just get on with my life. But then, there are Very Bad Things that need to be dealt with.

So, I guess I’ll just deal with them. Like all the other crap that comes across my path.

I’ll just deal with it. All of it. And make sure I get enough sleep and take my B vitamins.

Don’t forget the B vitamins.

My solution for TBI/PTSD rage

Anger (or out-and-out rage) is one of the places where my TBIs and PTSD intersect to cause real problems. I’ve been having some rage issues, lately. Getting worked up over little things — getting angry over nothing, really. Just getting angry. Temper, temper…

In the moment, my anger — my rage — seems completely justified. I feel with every cell in my being that I am entitled to be outraged. I am entitled to be angry. I validate my emotional experience, and I end up spiraling down into a deepening pit of anger, resentment, and acting out. Yelling. Making a fuss. Putting up a stink. And getting aggressive with whomever happens to be offending me at the moment.

This is not good. I’ve done it with police officers, and I’m lucky I didn’t get cited. Or arrested. I’ve done it with family members, and it’s cost me plenty, in terms of peace of mind and my relationships. I’ve done it with co-workers, and it strained our connections to the point of breaking.

Not good.

But lately, I’ve been able to pull myself out of my downward spiral before it gets too much of a hold on me. I’ve started doing some basic things that stop the progression of rage before it picks up so much speed it’s like a runaway freight train.

First, I recognize that I’m angry, and I am convinced that I’m right about being angry. This might not seem like a big thing, but I have trouble figuring out how I’m feeling sometimes, and anger is one of those emotions that I don’t always identify well. It just feels like a rush of energy — and while everyone around me knows I’m pissed off, I usually can’t tell what’s going on with me until it’s progressed to a really problematic point. I recognize that I’m angry, and I remember that I need to not let myself get carried away.

Second, I step away. I take a time-out and just walk away. I stop myself from saying what I’m about to say, no matter how badly I want to say it. I tell myself, I’ll give it some thought and figure out how to say it exactly the way I want to say it. I tell myself… anything … just to extract myself from the situation. I step away, telling myself I’ll come back when I’m better able to express myself.

Third, I take some deep breaths.  This helps stimulate my parasympathetic nervous system, which is the part of the nervous system that chills you out. The sympathetic nervous system is what gets you worked up to respond to a crisis situation — and when I get really angry, it’s often because I think and feel like I’m in a crisis situation, and my body is getting all geared up for fight or flight (more often fight). I consciously take some deep breaths to get my parasympathetic nervous system to chill out.

Fourth, I seek out some kind of tactile stimulation. I need to get out of my head, which is spinning out of control, and just give myself a different point of focus. My head is going so madly, at this point, that I cannot even think straight, so I seek out some kind of physical sensation to get my mind off the madness. I press the side of my face against the cold side of a door that leads to the outside. I pick up something rough and rub my fingers along it. I jingle change in my pocket. Or I find something heavy and hold it. The physical sensation, along with the deep breathing, gets my mind off the crazy cycle it was in, just a minute ago, and it lets me focus on a single point — the feel of the cold door against my cheek or the feel of quarters and nickels and dimes juggling among my fingers. Tactile stimulation, like looking at a flame of a candle while meditating, helps me center and get my mind off that crazy downward cycle.

Fifth, I remind myself that my body and brain are playing tricks on me. I am probably not getting angry for the reasons I think I am — it’s my body that’s getting all worked up into a fight/flight/freeze state, and my mind is interpreting that as a real sign of DANGER. And I’m probably starting to panic a little, too. As a matter of fact, when I take an objective look at things, the rage that’s building inside of me might not even be real rage, rather a response to a hyperactive sympathetic nervous system response. It could very well be my body tricking my mind into thinking the wrong things. And I need to remember that I get to choose how I interpret my life. My mind gets to decide how I’m going to think about things, how I’m going to react. And my well-intentioned body, which thinks it needs help, is just misleading my brain into thinking that I have to do something about whatever it is that’s getting to me. When I remind myself that this is a physiological process that’s taking place, I am able to relax… and the anger subsides.

The thing I have to remember, when all this is coming down, is that It Is Not Worth It. No matter how justified my rage seems to be. No matter how entitled I am to be angry. No matter how wronged I may have  been. It is not worth it, to get so tweaked over things. When I go off on an anger “binge” I end up feeling really hungover and dumb and numb afterwards, which just makes my life more difficult, once it’s passed.

I’m no doctor, but I suspect that it may be connected with the mechanics of panic/anxiety… all that post-traumatic stress stewing in a pot, and my TBI brain being unable to sort it all out in a timely fashion… My processing speed is slower than I’d like, and by the time I figure out what’s going on, the damage is often done.

So, I do my best to recognize when I’m getting angry, I step away, I take some deep breaths and try to relax, and I do something that gets my body’s attention — like feeling something cold or rough or tactile in some way. And I remind myself that my brain and body are playing tricks on me again. They’ve done it before… and they’ll do it again.

Quick – before the snow flies

I’ve had an increasingly pronounced sense of urgency about getting my affairs in order. Could be it’s the end-of-the-year rush, or maybe it’s this sense of immanent change, or perhaps it’s the realization that my life is changing — yet again — but this time it’s changing for the better, and I need to be more mindful of how I manage my resources and energy.

Since I began my neuropsych testing and evaluation, over a year ago, I’ve been acclimating myself to the idea that disaster is not necessarily a given in my life. I’ve realized that the head injuries I’ve experienced, the mild traumatic brain injuries I’ve incurred over the course of my life (beginning in early childhood), have played a direct role in the course of my life. I’ve also realized that with the knowledge of how my brain functions (or fails to function), I can devise strategies to offset the after-effects of MTBI, and plan alternative strategies. And with the proper amount of mindfulness, I can follow through with them in a certain what that can — and does — help me head problems off at the pass before they become the kinds of catastrophes I’ve coped with my entire life.

Yes, I now have tools to help me make my way in the world. And I need to get my act together, to match the level of my mindfulness-augmented competence.

So, I spent the weekend cleaning and moving. Saturday morning, I cleaned my study. Finally. It’s been on my to-do list for months, now. The last time I cleaned it, two years ago, the space felt truly amazing. I just loved being in my study (where before I had dreaded it). But it’s gone slowly downhill over the past few years, which I knew I needed to fix. So, I worked on that consciously on Saturday morning. And while I didn’t complete the task (which took over a week, last time I did it in in 2007), I did make a sizeable dent. And it’s a deeper sort of cleaning now, than I have ever performed in any of my study spaces.

I really focused on doing it mindfully — cleared out a whole bunch of old files, filled several grocery bags with paper to be recycled, dumped old damaged items that needed to be “liberated” a long time ago, and the proceeded to rearrange the contents of my closet. I still have a ways to go. I’m probably about 10% along the path. But the point is, I started it. (And I continued this morning, cleaning out one of my over-stuffed, disorganized filing cabinet drawers.)

Saturday afternoon, I moved leaves. Raked. Used the leaf blower/vac mulcher. Moved 7 large tarps’ worth of material off the front lawn. I may need to make another pass before the snow starts to fall, but if I don’t, at least I’ve made enough of a dent to protect the grass from the effects of acidic leaves over the winter months. I also moved summer items from outside to inside, and I also fixed the dryer duct, which had  become too clogged for the dryer to work properly.

I should have fixed the dryer duct years ago, but that was one of the things that fell off my plate, after I fell down the stairs 5 years ago. You wouldn’t think that hitting your head on a bunch of steps would completely derail your life, but after that fall, I stopped paying attention to the list of things that needed to be done. I’d had a list I was working with — we’d only been in the house two years, up to that point, and the series of things I was planning to do over the coming years was starting to become more manageable and less clogged. Then I fell, and I stopped working on the list. I’ve been working hard to get back, ever since I realized, about a year ago, how badly I’d let things fall by the wayside.

Now my life consists of a whole lot of remedial stuff. Recover stuff. Rehab stuff. Life as rehab. Each and every mindful minute of paying attention to what I’m doing — and why.

Every now and then, I also get the chance to help someone else out with their list, which is what I did on Sunday. A friend of the family is breaking up with their partner of 7 years, and they needed to move some furniture and reconfigure their living space.

My spouse and I drove out to their place and helped them get a number of large, heavy items out of their living room, as well as from upstairs to downstairs. When we got there, they were looking pretty ragged and depressed and overwhelmed. But by the time we left, they were a whole lot more relaxed and up, and they had their home office set up and connected, so they could get their act together. I’m glad we could help. And it felt great — after several months of regular exercise — to be able to lift and carry the sorts of heavy furniture we were wrangling. Recliners, with all that steel, are NOT light items to move. And trying to angle stuff through two narrow doorways was not the easiest thing. But we did it. And it was good.

This friend of ours (I’ll call them C) has been struggling with getting ahead and staying that way, for as long as we’ve known them.  They make progress, and then they make poor choices and slide back… Interestingly, back in high school and college, C played team sports — the kinds of team sports that frequently result in head injury. In fact, they told my spouse onetime that they had been hit in the head a lot, so their memory wasn’t the best. But whenever I bring up the topic if TBI  — with reference to myself, as I’ve told them about my history — they shut down and stop listening.

The other interesting (and a little tragic) piece of C’s story is that their ex-partner of 7 years was in a car accident within the last year, and they took to the bed with overwhemling fatigue, irritability, wild mood swings… and more. It sounded an awful lot like things were with me, when I had whiplash in the past. Their change in personality was eerily familiar to me.

I tried to talk to C a few times about the possibility of MTBI playing a role in the relationship’s degeneration. I said nothing about C’s athletic history, but I focused on the car accident. But C couldn’t hear it. They just blocked it all out. They refused to admit that there had been a real change, or that the change was physical and neurological, rather than psycho-spiritual. C is very much into “energy medicine” and thinks about health in terms of karma and past lives and energy. They think they can address substantive issues with affirmations and intention.

Which is a shame, because they might have been able to get some relief and/or come up with some alternative strategies, by addressing the physical and neurological after-effects of that car accident, and developed real-world coping mechanisms, rather than realinging their chakras.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am a strong believer in chakras and energies and intention and affirmations. But I’m also a firm believer in the power of the brain’s neurology to wreak havoc with one’s life. I know the domain of the brain can be very scary for people — especially people who don’t have good insurance and/or can’t get decent medical care — but by leaving out that very important aspect of our overall health, problematic situations can escalate and become even worse, on down the line.

Unaddressed TBI issues can literally cost you your job, your home, your marriage… and more. Especially if folks avoid dealing with them up front.

TBI — even “mild” traumatic brain injury — isn’t the sort of thing you can necessarily wish away or “clear with intention”. I’m sure there are people out there who are very capable mind-over-matter practitioners, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s prudent to give the brain its due and not just brush off a brain injury as something that time alone will heal. Brain injures don’t just go away. And left unaddressed, they can cost you a lot that means the world to you.

I’ve experienced that myself… And I spent most of yesterday moving heavy things with someone who is experiencing it, as well. My aching back and joints can attest to it.

Well, at least we got things moved while the weather was still nice. And for all the hard work over the weekend, it feels great to be this functional again, after years of ennui and inertia and neglect. I feel like I’m really starting to get back in the game, in many ways. My life and my attitude and my outlook is very different than it was, before things fell apart in 2004-2005. But I feel like my life force is returning — and it’s actually good for something.

By the time winter comes, this year, I might just be ready for it.

Muscle doesn’t build itself

I was talking to my therapist the other week, trying to describe to them the pain that I’m in on a regular basis. They were (understandably) concerned, and I found it difficult to relate the information objectively without alarming them.

I hate when I alarm people, simply by being and living the way I do. I’m not trying to shock them, but when folks become acquainted with my interior life, yes, it can be shocking.

Anyway, they recommended plenty of exercise (which I’m doing), and they suggested physical therapy might be useful.

Now, I can’t imagine that anyone is going to offer me physical therapy that can help my situation. What exercises could I possibly do, to address the myofascial all-over pain that wreaks havoc with my sanity? What specific routines could anyone recommend to ease the aching scream in my joints and the connecting points in my lower back, hips, knees, elbows… you name it…?

It’s not that I dispute it can be addresed — this pain, I mean — it’s just that I’m skeptical of the ability of others to prescribe a suitable solution for me. I’m just not that easy. Or easily explained. Besides, the pain tends to travel. Where is it today? Only today will tell.

What I do not dispute is the benefit of exercise. Daily. Routinely. As part of my waking-up ritual. I get up, and the first thing I do, is get on that exercise bike. Then I stretch. Then I lift. Not a lot of weight, but enough to notice it’s there. Enough to make my muscles burn in a good way, get my heart pumping and my skin sweating. Enough to remind me how far I’ve come, and how far I have to go.

One of the things my therapist mentioned was that physical therapy can help the knees. This I know. You help the knees — joints which can’t be helped directly — by strengthening the muscles around them. You don’t fix the joint. You fix what’s around it, what’s supporting it, what’s holding it together.

And it works. It took physical therapists years and years to figure that one out, and now we can all benefit.

From where I’m sitting, the rest of me benefits in the same way. The weak and crackly shoulders I have, the weak and crackly back I have, the weak and complaining legs I have — hips, knees, ankles — are all improved when I strengthen the muscles around them. Even my neck, which is a wreck, most of the time — pain and stiffness and the third vertebra from the top turning out to be pushed out of place every time I pay close attention to it — is helped by a good dose of concentrated lifting. In fact, when I was doing a lot of heavy weights, back about 10 years ago (and pretty much built of solid muscle, thank you very much), my neck always felt better when I did 70 lbs worth of shrugs.

You should have seen the looks on the faces of the other cubicle dwellers I worked out with, when I walked over and grabbed two 35-lb dumbells off the rack and started shrugging away. Priceless. But it worked like a charm. By the end of three sets of 12, my neck felt 200% better than it had before. And the benefits lasted for days. And the same was true of the rest of my body. I always felt so much better when I lifted regularly. And one of the things I resent losing the most, after my last fall in 2004, was the ability to go to the gym and work out without overwhelm or anxiety. I miss it. I still miss being able to go out and work out. But for now I’m doing what I can in the privacy of my own home.

I do what I can to build muscle. And it doesn’t get built on its own. It takes work and concentration and dedication to a greater cause. It takes persistence that defies logic and human resolve. It takes tenacity and a small dose of fear of what might happen if I don’t do it. Muscle doesn’t get built on its own. But when you do build it, it works for you.

Sometimes you gotta give a whole lot, before you can expect to get anything (no matter how small) in return.

I guess this is what I’m doing with my life, these days –giving a lot to get something back. Building up the proverbial muscle around the weak spots in my life — building up routines and strategies and techniques and tactics, to support the weak parts of my brain, the parts that got broken, the parts that won’t be fixed, no matter how determined I am. I’m re-routing around the burned-out shells of my old domains. I’m blazing trails through the jungle, to skirt the blown-up bridges in my neural network. I’m carving out new pathways in uncharted territory, and I’m moving what deadfall I can from the paths I must tread.

A blown-out knee, in and of itself, cannot be strengthened. It’s just bone and cartilage and connective sinews. But the muscle around it can — and should — be strengthened, and function can be restored to the leg and the body. A broken brain, in and of itself, may or may not heal. The neural connections that get shredded, are frayed for good, and nothing can return them to their original pristine state. But there are other ways of connecting disparate regions, and there are plenty of strategies and techniques available to get from Point A to Point Z in fine style.

I can sit around and bemoan my fate as an mtbi survivor with a whole truckload of residual issues… I can feel sorry for myself and worry about whether I’ll ever get back exactly the capabilities I had before… or I can take the focus off specifics and focus more fully on results — achieving the same sorts of things I did before, but now through different means.

A lot is possible, if we consider alternatives. But the alternatives won’t come out of the woodwork and make themselves known to us without our direct involvement. And we’ll never find out what does and does not work for us, if we sit around waiting for someone else to tell us what our next steps are.

It was a real struggle for me to get out of bed this morning, and I resented most of my workout with a begrudging resignation. But I did what needed to be done, and by the time I was finished, I felt ten times better than when I started. Day by day, bit by bit, I make headway and I find my way further down the path I wish to tread. Work doesn’t do itself. Workouts don’t do themselves. Muscle doesn’t build itself.

That’s all on me. And I’m glad of it.

Crossing the river(s) when the bridge is washed out

I’ve been thinking a lot about how my brain developed over the course of my life, wondering if/how my early mtbi’s affected me.

I have to say, it’s a bit confounding. It’s hard to see where the differences between me and everybody else are just regular personality differences, and which ones could be related to my falls and accidents and the assault when I was eight. I’ve actually remembered more incidents, over the past few months, most notably an incident when I was in daycare as (I believe) a 4-year-old.

I don’t remember much — just climbing up some stairs when some of the older kids encouraged me to come play… then running and jumping a lot… and then lying on the ground, looking up at an older kid looking down at me… and one of the other kids running downstairs to tell the lady who watched us all that something was wrong… the lady coming at me, looming over me, checking me over… yelling at the big kids… lots and lots of yelling. I’m not sure if my parents ever found out that something happened, but I remember trying to get upstairs a few more times, but the lady who ran the place wouldn’t let me, which really made me mad! It was fun playing with the big kids. I didn’t want to be stuck downstairs with the “little peepies”. I wanted to run around and play with the big kids.

I think that I may have been kept downstairs because I was small for my age. A couple of my younger siblings were actually bigger than me, till I was about 12 years old and I started to grow. I was a little kid, so I think the lady who kept me probably told me to stay downstairs so I would be safe.

Clearly, that didn’t work. If memory serves — and there’s the distinct possibility that it doesn’t. At least, in this case. I was reading a book, lately, about how the brain doesn’t always store the information it’s exposed to. It’s not like a tape recorder or digicam. It doesn’t just take in everything it’s shown. And sometimes it “records” things that never happened. So, I could be wrong about this — yet more fiction about my life…

But I’ve felt for a long, long time that something bad happened to me when I was little — in day care — and I always had this faint memory lurking in the back of my mind. It’s always just been there, I just never paid any attention to it. But then, the other week, all of a sudden, I got this big Wham! of a hit of the sequence of events. Like all of a sudden, they “clicked” with me, and I could see it all happening in front of me, like it was yesterday.

Hmmmm…

I also remember falling down the stairs more than once when I was a kid — one time in particular, I went down and slid the whole way down the carpeted stairs, banging my head on them, one at a time. Similar to my fall in 2004, which anniversary is coming up soon, but when I was little, I hit just about all the stairs on my way down. I can still remember the feeling of my head bouncing off the stairs — bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang — and the dull fog that enveloped me when I got to the bottom.

Man, oh, man…

Well, anyway, I know that I have a long history of head traumas — plenty of them subconcussive, as I was a very rambunctious kid with a lot of energy but not quite as much balance… I was always biting off more than I could chew, energy and coordination-wise. So, I fell down a lot, hit my head a lot, ran into things a lot. I got banged up, bounced back up, and got back in the game. I was game. Totally. Always up for more. Just try and hold me back…

Sometimes, people were able to, like the lady who watched me when I was little. But most of the time, they weren’t.

I showed them. I could do it. I’d be up and at ‘em in no time. Sure! I could do it!

Now, I’m dealing with the after-effects of my (sub)concussive childhood. And I’m wondering if the impacts over the years had a lot to do with how my brain developed. I have to say, although I have some complaints (who doesn’t, tho?) I’m pretty pleased with how flexible my thinking is, and how well I can perform, by and large. I tested very high in my neuropsych evaluation – high 90’s, percentile-wise. In my moments of self-satisfaction, I imagine I’m a genius or a savant of some kind. (Ha – yeah, right – when I figure out how to keep my study clean and get stuff done when I’m supposed to and make it to the train on time, then I’ll qualify). I have to say, though, I don’t have that many of those kinds of self-satisfied, self-congratulatory moments (I should be so lucky), so I try to savor the ones I have.

But anyway, back to the washed out bridge thing. I’ve heard head injury described as a shearing of fragile connections in the brain — the fine connectors get disconnected, sheared, frayed, and generally disrupted. Kind of like the frayed strings in my sweatpants when I was a kid and I wore my sweats to shreds. And the routes that normally connect the different parts of the brain end up having to re-route to find other ways to connect. And that’s where the fatigue comes from. And the constant restlessness. And the agitation. The brain has to work all the harder to do basic, regular stuff. It can do it, it just takes more effort. The ways that are usually used, the pathways that everybody else seems to have intact, don’t quite work the same for us.

So, we mtbi survivors have to find other ways to get down the neural pathways of our lives. We have to find other routes, when the highways and byways of our brains are washed out by the storms that take us by surprise. The traffic of our brains doesn’t stop — not as long as there is life in us. It just keeps coming and coming and going and going, and when it comes to a place in the road where a bridge used to be, or a paved portion is mising from a huge-ass virtual sinkhole that opened up under it, or there’s a huge fallen tree getting in the way, we — the traffic in our brains — have to find a different way of getting where we need to go.

And I think about all the times when I was a kid, feeling like I was so far behind, just struggling to keep up with what was going on around me, hassling and hassling and hassling over every little detail… all the while seeming to be fine, because I learned pretty early on to be stoic and not let on when I was having trouble — and anyway, I was a tough little kid who didn’t take shit from anyone — and I think about my brain and how hard it was working to put two and two together…

Man, I have to hand it to myself for not going crazy. Granted, I was a strange kid who went off on horrible tantrums, beat up on my siblings, and had all sorts of weird habits, like rubbing through the satin edge of my blanket because the feel of the satin between my fingers was the only thing that would calm me down enough at night to get to sleep… I won’t go into the hiding in dark corners and talking to myself for hours on end and tearing out clumps of my hair — that’s a tale for another time. But all that disturbance aside, I actually came out okay. And nobody I know seems to have noticed there was something really amiss with me.

Of course they didn’t. I learned a long time ago, to hide what goes in with me. In fact, it wasn’t until I realized I was several hundred thousand dollars poorer than I’d been three years before, and I couldn’t explain to myself exactly why or how or when that had happened, that I noticed there was something amiss with me.

Crazy.

Anyway, something must have worked, because here I am, relatively normal, as far as anyone else can tell, testing well, for the most part, in my evaluations, and able to hold down a job and advance my career. Maybe I’m just fooling myself and I’m in for a rude awakening, when I find out that I’m not nearly as competent as everyone else seems to think I am. Maybe I’ll crash and burn. Maybe I’ll self-destruct. I don’t plan to, and I don’t think I will, but you never know.

All I know is, all these years, whether because I’ve kept busy or just kept moving, I’ve been able to re-route my brain around lots of obstacles, and find other ways of getting where I need to go. I may have had all those falls and all those injuries, but if anyone is a testament to neuroplasticity, I am. I’m serious. All the crap that’s gone down in my life, and miraculously my brain has managed to adapt, grow, change, and not show up horribly deformed on my MRI or register more than slight abnormalities on my EEG. For all I’ve been through, for all the crap that’s been done to me, and the wrecks I’ve survived, I’m doing okay.

Even if the bridge is washed out in places, there’s plenty of territory to discover while I’m bushwhacking my way through the underbrush. And if I’ve learned anything from this life, it’s that if you just keep going and use your good sense and you don’t go out of your way to do genuinely stupid stuff, you can find your way back to a beaten path of some kind. It might not be the road you left, and it might not be the road you were looking for. But sometimes a detour is the best thing for us.

Just keep going.

Poor Memory + Anxiety = Too Much To Do

I had a revelation the other day… they just keep coming…

One of the reasons that I end up with too much on my plate is that I literally forget that I have things going on already.

That’s not a terrible thing, in and of itself, but when I get nervous and/or excited, I tend to seek out things to do, and if I forget that I already have a full plate and don’t keep in mind the things I need to get done, I take on more things that excite and enthuse me, but are completely new and different and have no bearing on what I’ve already got going on.

So, I pile up more and more things, forgetting that I already have more than enough to do, and I end up with a huge stack of stuff that needs to get done, but that cannot possibly all be taken care of in a timely manner.

That leads to overwhelm, which leads to ineffectiveness, which leads to discouragement, which leads to ever decreasing self-esteem… which makes it harder and harder for me to function properly, or feel good about myself when I do function properly. It’s hard to feel good about what you’ve accomplished, when you continue to have a massive backlog of crap that still needs to get done.

And I’m tired of not being able to enjoy my successes, because of my self-imposed “failures”.

Now, for years, I thought that the main reason I got into new projects before I finished the old ones was that the old ones simply bored me or didn’t hold my attention well enough, and I lost interest. But when I look more closely at the pattern of behavior, it’s not that I lose interest. I’m keenly interested in what I’m working on, at any given point in time. The things is, I literally forget what I’m supposed to be working on. I lose track of what steps to take, I don’t have all my materials in front of me, and I can’t remember what I’m supposed to do next.

I do have a lot going on, on any given day. And objectively looking at what I have happening, it’s actually quite exciting to me, on many levels. That’s why I get into these things — they interest me, and I love working towards and achieving my goals. And it’s so frustrating to me that I get so few of them accomplished, relatively speaking.

I could never seem to figure out how to keep myself consistently on track. I tried all manner of things to keep my interest engaged. But now I realize, it’s not my interest that fails me, it’s my memory. My mid-term memory for the in-between steps that are getting me to my ultimate goal. It’s not that I stop caring about what I’m doing; I stop remembering what’s next. It’s not boredom that’s getting in my way, after all. It’s forgetfulness.

Which is helpful to me and my understanding of the issues I face. All along, I thought that I was basically unable to sustain interest in what I’m working on. I thought there was something wrong with me, that I would start these really involved projects, and then drop them for no apparent reason. It’s happened to me, ever since I was a young kid. I would start exciting projects for school, or start a yard cleanup job for a neighbor, but then I would get distracted or get pulled away to some other activity, and I would never go back to the project I was working on before. It used to drive my parents and teachers and neighbors crazy. They just didn’t know what to make of me and my behavior.

They seemed to think I was stupid or lazy or I didn’t want to do the work. I can hardly blame them, when I would walk away from a job… forget to go back to it… then remember I was supposed to get paid and show up at their door, expecting payment for a job I never finished. How else could they have explained my inability to complete special school projects that I, myself, had designed and decided to do? I would get all enthused about something, then get swamped in the details, then go off and do something else to relax, then I would literally forget what I was originally supposed to be doing, and either nobody was there to help me remember, or the people around me would not realize I needed to be prompted, and they’d get angry with me for being lazy or contrary or undisciplined.

Ugh!

Well, anyway, now that I’ve got a clue about how my crappy memory has made my life miserable and ineffective, all these years, now I can do something about it.

I’ve put together a list of all the things I’ve started, but either forgot to complete or put off finishing. It comes to more than 50 items (I’m at 51 and still adding).  Some of these things are very important to do, and I’ve got to keep them in front of myself. Some are nice-to-have’s and I can let them wait. But there are some particular projects which I cannot afford to let drop — especially ones for work. I’ve got to cultivate better work habits and use some of my tools more aggressively to right this bad trend.

So here’s what I’m doing about it:

I’ve made a list of the most important, most vital things I need to do, and made notes about exactly why I want/need to do them. I have prioritized them and I am tracking them as I take care of them.

I copied my list onto a large stickie note and put it in my daily planner in easy view each day, where I see it each time I open my planner to the day I’m on. When I complete an item, I check it off, and I remind myself regularly that I am making progress, and how important it is, and how good it feels to do it.

I also plan to make a wallet card of the most important goals I have, so I can carry it with me and look at it frequently. The purpose of it is not just to remind myself of what I need to do, but also remember what I have accomplished, so I can move forward with confidence and self-regard.

It’s  a process, of course, but at least I’m getting somewhere. And at least I realize one of the root causes of my ineffectiveness over the years and I don’t have to beat myself up over it (quite as much) anymore.

It’s all good — and getting better!

Writing lots to keep things simple

I had an epiphany today during my morning exercise. I realized that one of the reasons my life tends to fill up with all sorts of activities and I get swamped by so much to do – and spread so thin, I can’t focus fully on what’s in front of me… is because I forget what I am supposed to be doing. Not only that, but I forget why I am supposed to be doing it.

Someone wrote to me the other day that they used to feel like the guy in “Memento” who has to write everything down, because he can’t remember, from day to day, moment to moment, what he’s supposed to be doing.

It got me thinking… and I realized that I’m like that to — not on so extreme a scale, but this Swiss cheese memory of mine is problematic. And with my constant restlessness, I have so much energy, that I have to be doing something, but I don’t remember what exactly I’m supposed to be doing, or why, so I end up launching into another bunch of activities without realizing I’m forgetting something.

It’s like I have a rushing river in my head, and the gaps in my memory are like big boulders in the river. I’m in a boat that’s headed down river, and because all these boulders are in the way, I can’t go in a straight line. I end up flying downstream at top speed, but I get spun around, I bump into things, I go way out of my way on tangents, and I have to paddle like crazy to keep upright.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is paddling downstream in rivers with far fewer rocks, they are better able to keep upright, and they arrive at their destinations a lot less exhausted and bedraggled and frazzled than I do.

Literally, when I get up in the morning, it’s like I’m starting a whole new day. That’s great for my optimism and general cheerfulness, but it’s not so great for my effectiveness. I tend to not think about what I was doing the day before, and how it ties in to what I’m supposed to do today. And if I’m not careful, I can get caught up in a whole lot of stuff that I don’t need to be doing, and which keep me from finishing what I’m working on, but which seem so interesting at the moment…

It’s been a huge problem for almost as long as I can remember — and even more so, since my fall in 2004. It’s impacted my work and my family life and my self-esteem, and I can hardly believe it’s taken me this long to realize this fact and the impact that it’s had on me.  No wonder I can’t get anything done in a timely manner — I keep forgetting what I’m supposed to be doing. But at least now I am aware of it. (It’s amazing what happens, when you communicate with another human being.) And now that I’m aware of the problem, I can devise a strategy for dealing with this.

My strategy is:

Keep a running list of the really important things I’m supposed to be doing, and make sure it is in easy view of me each and every morning. Keep that master list with me throughout the course of the day, and keep checking back with it.

I have to refine this, certainly. I have to figure out how to prioritize and manage my items, so I don’t get completely overwhelmed. A spreadsheet will probably help. I have one that I use for the Big Things I Need To Fix in my life. Now I need to come up with a way to record and track the everyday things I’m working on. I may also use a handwritten list. I’m still working it out, as I learn more about how my brain does — and doesn’t — work.

I do know that the more I write down about what I’m supposed to be doing, the simpler it becomes to get things done. My writing (especially in my journals) extends beyond the list-making and into the story-telling aspects of my life. When I write things down in detail (tho’ I have to be careful of getting swamped in the details), it helps me envision where I want to go and what I want to achieve — and why. The more I can work out in my mind, ahead of time, what I want to do, the less I have to think about it later. I can just look at my list and, step by step, get things done that need to be done. It’s important. Very, very important.

Well, it is a process, and it’s one that keeps evolving, as I get more and more information. The bottom line is, now I realize that having holes and weaknesses in my memory is one of the root causes of my ineffectiveness over the years. It’s not because I’m a loser or lazy. It’s because I literally forget what I’m supposed to be doing, but I have so much energy, I can’t just sit there, so I start other things… and then forget to complete them. It can be maddening. But that’s where tools and strategies come in.

It’s all a process. I’m just relieved I’ve realized how this aspect has impacted me. After all, you can’t fix something if you don’t know it’s broken.

Then again… not being smart about my energy levels

One of the persistent issues with this recovery business, is how good days can very easily lead to bad ones.

Example:

I am having a banner week. The job situation is improving vastly. I mean, vastly. I am actually in a position to take my work to the next level, and move into a better pay bracket. I’m going to be starting a new position doing something I’ve been wanting to do, literally, for years, but never had the nerve to start.  Now I have the nerve. And I’ve been offered the opportunity.

Dude, I’m so totally going for it.

Also, I’ve had some other opportunities come up around some freelance creative work I do. I’m in the running for a contest that will showcase some of my best work to date. Even if I manage to show, not place, I’ll get some good exposure, and I’m totally stoked about the opportunity.

I’m also having company this weekend, with some of my favorite relatives coming to visit. We’re cleaning and prepping the house so it looks nice — and is nice. We’re planning to spend time driving around “leaf peeping” at the fall foliage, which is just gorgeous this year.

And I have been able to read again! I’m so excited. I had checked The Bourne Identity out of the library, to see if reading action adventure would help my attention and reading abilities, and — wonder of wonders — I was able to read four chapters in one sitting. And I got it. (I think.) At least, I didn’t have to keep backing up every few pages to see what I had read earlier. That is huge progress for me. In the past five years since my latest accident/injury, I have had a hell of a time reading and comprehending what I was seeing on the page in front of me.

So, there’s lots of great stuff going on. Only problem is, I have a hard time knowing when to stop. Knowing when to say when has never been my forte, but this week, especially, when so much good is happening, I’ve pushed myself to the brink of nervous collapse. I mean, things have been falling together so well. I’ve been feeling awesome, thanks to my daily exercise first thing in the  a.m., and I want to just soak up every last bit of normal-feeling-exhilaration I can get. It’s been so looooong since I felt this good, and now that I do, I’m reveling in it like nobody’s business…

To the point of full-blown anxiety attacks. I had a little one last night, and then overnight, I had another one at 3 a.m., that woke me and my spouse up and totally screwed up our night’s sleep. Plus, now I feel that sick, shaky post-anxiety-attack “hangover” that totally knocks me out. All that progress, and I go and blow my wad for the fun of it.

I so hate when I do this. I feel sick and depleted and deficient, and the worst thing is how I get so down on myself. I feel like a steaming piece of  crap, and it makes me nuts. I need to talk to my neuropsych about it. I’m going to be seeing them tomorrow to go over my progress and whatnot, and I need to discuss this with them, so I can come up with some decent tactics and strategies for not killing my buzz.

So, while some days I can figure this stuff out and be smart about it, as you can see, it’s all too easy for me to screw the pooch by overdoing it. Overstimulation is overstimulation, whether it’s good or bad. Too much of a good thing is … a bad thing.

Protecting the ones I love… from me

I’ve been thinking a lot, lately, about how well people respond to me, when I am bold and brave and daring and don’t let anything get in my way. I seem to have a sort of mystique about me, that causes people to have innate trust in my capabilities and “powers”… even if they have only just gotten to know me.

And likewise, when I am less than my best, when I am faltering, when I am struggling with my life, and I am in full contact with my failings, people around me tend to get miffed. As though I am intentionally being that way to piss them off. Or I’m being a lazy-ass and slacking off. Or I’ve decided to intentionally not live up to my potential.

What’s more, the people closest to me have an extremely bad reaction when I don’t take the high road — they get a bit anxious and agitated, as though I’m about to eat them, or something. It’s an either-or, all-on-all-off thing with me, this adoration of my “secret powers”, and frankly, it kind of irritates me, that I’ve always got to be superhuman, or I can’t be anything at all.

Over the past week, I’ve been deliberately sticking with my mystique thing – being the bold old soul I used to be, before I had my fall in 2004, and my life went to shit. I guess I just gave up on trying to be sensitive to my own needs, and I jumped off the bandwagon that a lot of my therapist friends are on — getting into the victim mentality and concentrating on my needs… my wants… my hurts… my… my… my…

Okay, so I was a bit into that frame of mind for a while. My previous therapist was really into “helping” me get in touch with my own needs and all that, for fear that I was being trampled by the all-too-needy world. My current therapist is on the opposite end of the spectrum — they’re really into me not going off on my sore spots and getting all mired in them. I’ve been re-adjusting, over the past six months or so, and I think it’s been really good for me. Sometimes, I do wish I could get a more sympathetic ear in my current shrink, but I’d rather deal with a hard-ass than someone who coddles me and turns me into an infant, ‘cuz my inner child needs attention.

Actually, I have to say, I’m a whole lot happier now, and I’m a whole lot more functional — and leaning towards increased functionality — than I was for about a year. That whole victim orientation makes me a little nervous, and I also have to say that getting in touch with my needs is vastly overrated. To tell the truth, I’m so self-obsessed at times (I credit my right-hemisphere brain injury) that the whole rest of the world takes a back seat to my needs. The weird thing is, half the time, I don’t even realize it, ‘cuz I’m so deep in my own crap, I can’t see the fact that I’m being pathologically ego-centric. Truly, I have so many needs, there is literally no end to them… and the more I “get in touch” with them, the more I find I need, and it rapidly becomes an endless cycle of identifying my newest and most novel needs, and trying to figure out how to get them met. Which is a never-ending cycle of self-perpetuating ego-centricity of the highest order.

Sigh…

Anyway, what I’m realizing more and more all the time, is that sometimes it’s not such a great idea to focus on myself. And in fact, if I want to do my friends and family a favor, I’ll take the focus off me for a little bit. Or a lot. When I’m given free rein, I can be petulant and childish, foolish and self-serving, needy beyond words, spiteful, bitchy, cranky, and aggressive. It’s not pretty.

So, this trip I’m doing now, with being the strong silent type and holding my shit, even when I feel like I’m about to come apart inside… (which, by the way, is a trip I was on for many, many years, until some well-meaning but head-injury-oblivious person encouraged me to start thinking more about myself and consider what I wanted in life. Then, my literal head jumped on that bandwagon and we were off to the races)…  well, that old stoicism, that warrior composure, that ability to just remain calm in the midst of everything… it’s actually a very good trip, which has really good consequences, and it gets me back on the good foot, even when everything around me feels like it’s going to pot.

And this self-sacrificing trip also lets me keep my friends and family from living with a madperson, a crazy-ass nut-case who jumps at every sound and attacks their own shadow. When left to my own devices and allowed to act like a child, there’s a part of me that will jump at the chance. But when someone — like my current shrink — pushes me to buck up and grow up… well, even if that costs me my warm-fuzzy in-touch-ness with all my feelings, it does make me a better person.

And that’s a good thing.

Taking a break from my brain… or?

I just got back from a week-long vacation at the beach with family and friends. Some of them know about my history of TBIs, while others of them don’t. It was an interesting time — it was good to spend the days with people I love and care about (and vice versa). And I did really well, overall. I only came close to melting down once, and then I was able to pull myself out of the tailspin before things got too out of control. My partner complemented me on how “well” I did — clearly, they were not aware of the turmoil I was in, much of the time.

Overall, it’s true — I did do “well”. But it was also a little dicey at times. Like when I kept slamming into things and injuring myself — scraping the skin off my left forearm on the sharp edge of the screen door latch… getting several bruises from furniture that protruded out into my wobbly path… and various nicks and cuts I don’t remember getting, but discovered later when they started to sting under hot running water.

It was a pretty physically rigorous time for me. I had been lugging all the bags of foodstuffs and various creature comforts my spouse likes to take with us, when we go. Things like the specific foods we eat, the different changes of clothing, the binoculars and bird book, the hats and boots and coats, the books and CDs and various electronic gadgets we can’t seem to do without, not to mention the laptop(s) — one for my personal use, one for work — and the associated work that I brought along with me to look at, at my leisure. All in all, I hauled a whole lot of stuff — in a lot of small bags — into the 3-story condo we rented, a short walk from the beach.

I know I pushed myself too hard, but I wanted to. I was so sick and tired of taking it easy and backing off on my activity, just to pace myself. I was sick and tired of stopping to rest and monitoring my energy level and the food I was eating and the ebb and flow of my emotional self. I was so sick and tired of limiting myself and being sensible about everything. I was sick and tired of being mindful of my mind, of accommodating my broken brain. I just didn’t want to be less-than-functional (by choice) while I was on vacation. I wanted to be free, goddamn it. Free.

But there was a price for all that freedom. No matter how I tried, I kept running into things. I was off balance, and my sense of where my body was in relation to the world around me, was not good. I had a hell of a time judging where to put my feet, how fast to move, and how much distance to put between myself and objects I was passing. What’s more, I tended to injure myself when I was deliberately trying to avoid another hazard — stepping around a small fan my partner put on the floor near the bed, I slammed into the sharp corner of the bed frame and got myself a half-dollar-sized contusion that swelled up and turned a nasty shade of purplish-yellowish-green. I still have it, a week later, and the purple border around it is spreading wider like a ghoulishly blooming flower. It was bad enough, when I hit it the first time, but I couldn’t seem to navigate the space between the bed and the fan and the wall, so I hit the corner a couple more times. Dang! I hate when that happens!

Anyway, pretty much the whole time, I was really off balance and had a hard time coordinating. I had to move pretty slowly at times, and I felt dense and thick and foggy a lot of the time. Nobody seemed to notice — I was my usual self, as far as they were concerned. They’ve always known me as this quiet, “introspective” person… a person who would rather say nothing than open their mouth and have everyone realize that they don’t have a clue what the hell is going on. I’ve always erred on the side of caution, when it comes to social interaction, and it’s helped me “pass” as neurotypical throughout most of my life.

I know it works, so I fell back on that behavior again. I was just so out of it and tired and turned around, I couldn’t even begin to navigate all those social waters with any level of personal authenticity. True to my past form, I spent an awful lot of time keeping quiet and keeping busy, covering up my difficulties and going along with what everyone else wanted to do, so I wouldn’t get in the way of everyone’s fun. Everyone was having such a good time — why spoil it with my slowness, my warnings, my whining?

Yes, everyone had a great time, including myself, for the most part. But I spent a lot of time feeling out-of-it and numb. Like I was swimming underwater. Like I used to feel all the time, before I got in touch with my TBI issues, and was still constantly scrambling, trying to stay on top of what was going on around me, without paying any attention at all to myself. I just wanted to relax, not “ride herd” on my issues. So, I spent a lot of time pretending they didn’t exist — to others, and to myself.

I really wish I could have been more present for the vacation. I’m still pretty numb and out of it, in fact. It’s going to take me a while to get back to where I was — not quite as off balance, and a lot more clear and present. I’m going to have to take things pretty slowly, I think, if I’m going to regain my footing. But everything is going 100 miles a minute around me, these days, so I have to keep up… I still have to keep up. And learn what I can, as I go.

Here’s what (I think) I learned from this vacation:

I think the first thing that got me in trouble was, I had been going 200 mph for a number of days before the trip, trying to get ready to go away, tying up loose ends at work and packing my bags, getting scheduled tasks taken care of ahead of time, and doing all those things that needed to be done in preparation for the trip. My spouse did most of the nitty-gritty preparations, bless ‘em, but it’s so hard for me to go away and take a break from my standard routine, that it was a pretty stressful time, leading up to this “vacation”.

In addition to going 200 mph for about a week prior to the vacation, I got behind on my sleep and my work. I hadn’t been sleeping well, for a couple of weeks prior to the trip. I am concerned about my job (who isn’t?) and I am concerned about not having a decent financial safety net in place. My cost of living is going to jump in 2010, and I need to figure out what steps to take to safeguard my family’s health and welfare. There is really no one else who can help me — my extended family are all as tapped as I am — nobody has money, and nobody understands the kind of work I do. I’m on my own, and I haven’t been 100%, lately. I haven’t even been 70%… at a time, when I need to be at 99%. And it worries me.

Being worried has contributed to my sleep problems, which has also complicated my work situation. I find myself having a lot of trouble reading and understanding what I’m reading. It’s taking me literally months to “get” information that used to take me a few days (if that) to understand. This is maddening on so many levels — not only is the material I’m reading not that complicated (according to folks whose judgment I trust), but it’s also much more critical than other material I’ve read before. I’m working at a higher level — with higher-level requirements and bigger consequences, if I mess up. But my brain is not cooperating with wrapping itself around the material.

But despite my difficulties, I have a hell of a time being able to ask for help. Part of the problem is my pride — part of me is too vain to admit that I have trouble just reading a full paragraph. Part of the problem is not being able to understand the exact nature of my problems. And another issue is that the people I need to ask for help, don’t think I need it. I got several “lectures” over the course of the week from friends and family who know about the issues I’ve been following up on, but none of them really takes this seriously. They told me that I was just paying too close attention to myself, that everybody has these problems, and that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. I should relax and just cut myself some slack. (Even my psychotherapist, who knows about my TBI history, has been urging me to not work so hard — just at the time when I have to work even harder.)

All my friends and family were giving me this “encouragement” through a dense fog that had settled over my head a week ago, last Friday… as I really struggled to follow what they were saying. I’m sitting there in the sitting room of the condo overlooking the beach, smarting from a number of minor injuries I’d sustained because I was so off-kilter and out of whack, only getting about half of what folks were saying to me, totally freaked out because I’d been trying to read, early that day, and I couldn’t get more than a page’s worth of material into my piecemeal brain, wondering how the hell I was going to complete this critical task at work that requires I learn material I can’t seem to get my head around… and they’re telling me, basically, it’s all in my head.

Well, yuh, it is all in my head. But not the way they think.

Lookit, I’m not a complainer, I’m not a whiner. I don’t like to draw any amount of attention to myself for any old reason. I detest being in the spotlight, and I would be quite content to live and work behind the scenes, all my born days, if I could make a handy living that way. I cannot abide being under scrutiny by others, and I hate paying any amount of attention to myself. But you  know what? If I’ve got problems that are really, truly getting in my way, leading to injuries, making me physically ill, and possibly threatening my livelihood and my ability to provide for and protect my family, then it behooves me to make an effort to clear things up.

Contrary to what some people in my life have intimated, I’m not wedded to the idea of being disabled. I want anything but that. People have encouraged me to look into filing for disability, and I’ve flatly refused. No judgment on anyone else out there who requires and chooses that option, but I’m not going there. I’m like that knight in the Monty Python Holy Grail movie, where his opponent has chopped off his arms and legs, and he insists “It’s just a scratch!” That’s my style — not calling attention to every little ache and pain. And as a result, I have gotten myself into situations where I over-estimated my physical abilities and really fried my system. And then fell down the stairs. Or out of a tree. Or got into a car accident. I like to think I’ve learned my lessons from before, and by paying attention to my limits, I can better care for my limited ‘vehicle’. I’m just trying to find a balance. Find the truth. Figure things out. And keep safe, so I can live a long, fulfilling, productive, and happy life.

But when I make any attempt to discuss my situation with people close to me, they cannot handle it. Not my spouse, not my friends, not even my best friend, who has studied TBI and is getting a masters in special education. They all react with horror, shock, dismay, denial, when I tell them about what’s really going on with me. If anything, I tend to under-state my situation and I don’t tell them all the details, but even the “easy” stuff they have difficulty handling. I guess they love me so much, they are horrified at the thought that things are as challenging for me as they are. That’s nice, but it’s also a pain. People and their attachments to me are… a problem.

What makes things even more… interesting… is that I have a hell of a time explaining what’s  going on with me. In this blog, I can write and be clear and edit myself, in the privacy of my own anonymity. When I’m in conversation with someone, I often don’t know how to articulate my thoughts in a way that makes sense to them. I either give them too much information, or not enough. I either understate my situation, or I overstate it. It’s all but impossible for me to accurately convey to someone — especially someone I love and care about — the true nature of my condition. They start firing questions at me, and I can’t keep up, so rather than answering them clearly and accurately and authentically, I just say the first thing that comes to mind, for the sake of moving the conversation along. It’s what I’ve always done, in the past, and they’re used to it. It’s pre-MTBI-awareness behavior that persists to this day, because I don’t want to slow down the flow of conversation, and I get very impatient with myself. So, I leave myself behind — and everyone has a grand time, including the part of myself that doesn’t want to deal with my cognitive-behavioral issues.

Anyway, what I learned from this (among other things) is that there’s not much point in discussing my situation with my spouse or my friends. They just aren’t equipped to deal with it, and they aren’t willing to learn more about it. They hear “brain injury” and they think the worst. Or they hear “head injury” and they look for certain stereotypical signs that I’m cognitively compromised. When they don’t see them, they think I’m either exaggerating or making a mountain out of a molehill. But when I do explain the seriousness of my situation to them, they get all alarmed and go into panic mode.

This is not helpful. For me, or for them.

I don’t need tears and fears. I need information, courage, knowledge, and confidence that no matter what comes, I’ll be able to find some way to meet the hurdles that rise in my path. I always have, and I always will. I don’t want my friends and family to cluck their tongues and say, “Poor dear…” That feels so patronizing and condescending to me. Pity stings me worse than outright cruelty. I want them to just sit and listen to what I have to say, acknowledge my situation for what it is, not deny it and tell me I’m making too much of this… or become shocked at the level of dysfunction that I’m steeped in, at times.

This twice-hidden disability business is a real bitch, sometimes — pardon my language. It not only keeps me from having an accurate perception of my own state of mind, but it also keeps me from being able to accurately describe it to others in a way that seems truthful and accurate to the ones I care most about. At best, it puzzles them. At worst, it makes me look like a liar. And the more I look like a liar to them, the less inclined I am to share what it is I am experiencing and need. The more inclined I am to just disappear into the woodwork, smile and nod and be obliging and compliant… and completely forget that I am in the room, too.

So, yeah, this past week, I took a break from my brain — or rather, the people closest to me did. My spouse got to run around with our friends and family, pretending all is well and I’m all fixed and what-not. My friends and family got to either pay no attention to my dulled, dense behavior, because that’s what they have come to expect from me, and as far as they’re concerned, that’s my “normal”… or they got to tell me that I’m just fine they way I am, and I shouldn’t be so “hard” on myself. My spouse got to shop and eat out and see the sights, without me pulling on them to slow down and not stay up so late, not spend so much money… and they got to tell me how “well” I was doing, as I was barely keeping up… or barely keeping my balance. Everybody got a vacation. They got a vacation from my TBI.

If only I could have taken a break, too…