Oh, haters…

Everybody’s got an opinion. And some folks feel the need to go on the attack to make their point.

I just got my first nasty-gram from someone who disagrees with what I said about Ronda Rousey and that fight. They really felt strongly about the subject, that’s for sure. I guess I hit a nerve.

Too bad they didn’t actually leave their name — they commented as “Anonymous”. I guess it was one of those “hit and run” kinds of things.

I always find it strange when people find it necessary to go after other people and call names, just because they disagree with what the other person said. I don’t begrudge anyone their opinion. I really don’t care of others disagree with me — I welcome it, in fact.

But I won’t be bullied by name-calling and insults.

Sigh. Time to get on with my day.

The things we do to heal

I just learned about the movie Marwencol. Check out the trailer video and visit the site. Fascinating.

This kind of reminds me of my own retreat from the rest of the world, over the course of my life. Although my own withdrawal from the world where I got hurt on a regular basis was not nearly as labor intensive as Marwencol, it was in fact my own private Idaho. It was a place where I could pull back and experience my own life on my own terms without danger of being hurt or mistreated or dismissed. I have that place boxed up in tens of journals I’ve kept over the years, and stashed on bookshelves filled with subjects of  “study” that never came to anything.

My own removal from the world started when I was around seven or eight years old. And it stopped 35 years later. I can’t wait to see this movie, Marwencol — I’d like to see how someone else did it. And how it turned out for them.

It makes me wonder how many people are actually walking around with one foot in one world and one foot in the other.

What happened in the field that day

Here’s what I remember:

I was about 8 years old and I was playing up at a field near my family’s house. I was with my younger sibling. The field lay right between two different neighborhoods, and we never went into the other neighborhood by ourselves. We rarely went there at all, period. We were playing about 50-100 feet from the entrance on our side of the field. The line of garages that flanked the alley on the other side of the field were behind us, and we were facing the direction that our one-way street went.

The field was bounded on the other side by a high (maybe 20-foot) chain link fence, and our side was the only “real” entrance to the area.

My sibling and I were there by ourselves for a little while, then two kids appeared on the other side of the field. They crawled under the bottom edge of the fence, slipping through a depression in the ground and looked over at us.

We looked over at them — I’m not sure if we called over to them and said hello. I’m not sure if we even acknowledged their presence.  I suspect we didn’t. The kids weren’t supposed to be there — they had crawled under a fence that was built to keep them out, after all. As I recall, we decided to mind our own business and keep playing.

The kids called over to us a couple of times, but we ignored them and just kept playing. Then they started yelling at us — calling us names. We didn’t respond, and after a while they started throwing rocks at us.

At first the rocks didn’t fall very close to us. It was a bright afternoon, and we wanted to play. We decided we were going to stay put. My sibling wanted to go home and pulled at me to go back home. But I said we needed to stay. Or maybe I just thought that, and my sibling just went along with me. Our dad was really into standing your ground and not backing down from your position, if you were threatened, and I wanted to make my dad proud of me and not give in to bullies. I remember the thought going through my head, that we needed to stand our ground and not just run away.

Several rocks fell closer and closer to us. I think the other kids threw 3 or 4 rocks before they got close. While they were throwing the rocks at us, I remember them laughing and urging each other to get closer. I remember focusing on just ignoring them and not being intimidated by them. It didn’t occur to me that I could be hurt — or maybe I didn’t care?

After a number of times of trying to hit us, they succeeded. I remember the distant feeling of a rock hitting my head — then everything went dark.

The next thing I remember, was looking up to see my sibling sitting beside me, crying. They hovered over me, tears streaming down their face, looking terrified.

I remember being really dazed and foggy as I came to. But I did finally know we needed to go home. The kids on the other side of the field were laughing and cheering that they’d hit me, and when we left the field they were jeering at us. I remember feeling like I’d failed, like I’d given in to being bullied, and I was really disappointed with myself.

I recall being wobbly and woozy on the way home, and my sibling was very upset and crying the whole way there. I was embarrassed by the display of emotion. I wanted to be stoic and take it like a grown-up. I didn’t want to be injured. I didn’t want to be woozy. I didn’t want to be wobbly. And I certainly didn’t want to cry.

When we got home, I remember my sibling telling our mom and dad what had happened. I was embarrassed that I’d been hurt and needed attention, and I was upset that I worried them. I remember Dad telling me to lie down on the couch, and he looked at my head — I don’t remember bleeding — but I recall that I did have a huge lump on my head.

The bump on my head was above my hairline, which made it difficult for my mom and dad to see where I was hurt. The bump was pretty prominent, and they got some ice to put on it, which hurt, because the edges of the ice cubes were hard and felt sharp. I really just wanted to not attract attention and not be fussed over. I just wanted the whole experience to go away, so  wouldn’t worry everyone. My sibling was so upset and crying, our mom had to take them out of the room and get them away from me.

My parents called a friend of theirs who was a registered nurse, and she told them to get a flashlight and check my eyes for any dilation. I seem to remember something about them not being sure if my pupils were dilated or not, but in any case, they had me lie on my left side, facing the back of the couch, and put ice on the bump.

I remember I was so tired, and I wanted to sleep, but my dad made sure I stayed awake. I remember him looking in my eyes several times to see if I had a concussion, and both my parents discussed whether or not I should go to the hospital. If I remember correctly, my dad said he didn’t think I had a concussion, so they didn’t take me.

Things were very foggy for me, after that. And I recall not being allowed to play much, in the coming days.

It wasn’t long after that, that I noticed that the moon was double, when I looked up at it, at night. When I told my parents this, they were alarmed and took me to the eye doctor.

Wrong doctor, I think…

TBI & Polytrauma Single-Topic Issue in JRRD

The US Dept of Veterans Affairs has some great information at http://www.rehab.research.va.gov/jour/07/44/7/contents.html

Here’s hoping that folks suffering from TBI will be better served — especially our veterans.

How I got here

It all took me pretty much by surprise…

I have been going through a pretty intense time in my life, for the past couple of years… having trouble with work, having trouble with relationships, having trouble keeping up with the demands of daily life. Things that other people seem to find easy — keeping groceries in the fridge, holding down a steady job, having a social life, keeping the house repaired and well-maintained — have gotten increasingly difficult for me, over the past few years.

I just couldn’t go on, constantly feeling like I was playing catch-up, never being able to hold down work at the same job longer than a year or two… I’ve got a mortgage to pay, and obligations to meet, and I was getting damned tired of living in isolation. I couldnt afford to be so erratic. Not anymore.

So, I sought professional help, about six months ago. In talking to my counselor, I came to realize just how traumatic my childhood was, how many behavioral issues I had, how my relationship with my parents and siblings has always been strained… but why?!

I was trying to “track” my personal experiences that might have caused me to be the disruptive, rebellious, defiant “behavioral challenge” that I was in school and at home. What could have happened to me, to cause me to be at such odds with my parents and teachers, in and out of trouble, grades up and down, never really performing at my peak potential… What was this terrible experience I’d endured at the hands of the world, that made me so angry and bitter and aggressive?

I just couldn’t figure it out… My parents are not awful people, and even at their worst, they didn’t terribly abuse me. My school experience wasn’t great, and my teachers were often sorely lacking, but my education wasn’t some Dickensian nightmare. My childhood was just not as horrific as my symptoms would imply.

Then, I was looking around online and came across a site about recovery from trauma. I clicked through some links, followed more links, followed more links… and ended up on a page that read like a chronicle of the last 35 years of my life — it was a web page about traumatic brain injury.

Everything on that page sounded like a description of my childhood… and adulthood. From the Cognitive Difficulties after TBI to Behavioral/Emotional Difficulties, it was like reading a high-level description of my life.

And I thought back to when things seemed to change drastically for me… when I started having real problems in school and with other kids — right after I was struck on the head by a rock thrown at me by kids who didn’t like my looks. I was knocked out briefly, if I remember correctly, and was pretty “out of it” for a while after the impact. My parents had me lie down and they kept an eye on me, but they decided the hospital wasn’t the place to take me, as I didn’t seem to have a concussion.

After that incident (assault), I remember wondering why I was so aggressive with the other kids in school. Why I was so angry, why I was so frustrated, why I said and did things I didn’t mean to say and do — teasing kids mercilessly, striking out at my siblings, being a real discipline problem at home. I couldn’t seem to understand what was going on around me, anymore. I remember wondering why. I consciously noticed a difference in my behavior that baffled me. It was like I was watching a bad movie of myself doing impossible things, unable to control myself and my impulses. It never occurred to me that getting hit on the head had anything to do with it.

But it did. I’m convinced of it. I also believe that — as a very active athlete — I may have re-injured myself in sports and outdoor activities over the years. Falling down and getting a little dazed was not a rare occurrence for me, and I may have easily done more damage to my brain without knowing it.

Over the years, I’ve essentially rehabilitated myself — largely in response to the threat of being punished for things “I” did. I grew up as “problem” that people couldn’t figure out how to solve, and I spent an awful lot of time struggling to reach (or simulate) some semblance of normalcy and regularity in my life. I’ve struggled all my life with not understanding what people were saying to me right away… not being able to keep myself from saying socially inappropriate things (especially relating to gender and race and religion)… not being able to perform up to what I knew my potential was… not being able to concentrate for long periods of time… losing focus… forgetting things… struggling academically… a whole slew of issues that I can now see were 99% probably due to that head trauma I sustained around 1972-3. I’ve recovered admirably… on the surface, anyway. And I do a damned good impression of a “normal” person.

Then I slipped and fell down a flight of stairs at the end of 2004, and I hit my head — hard — on the first 3-4 steps before I pulled my head up and tore up my back in the process. After that experience, all my relationships at work started to suffer, my work product suffered, and I burned bridges with people who probably never realized that there may have been a physiological and neurological reason for why I was acting like such a bastard. I blamed stress at the time. But now I blame mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI), which can have anything but mild consequences.

My story is still far from over I’m still trying to track down all the details about my situation — taking notes about events that happened, my symptoms, possible after-effects from my injury/-ies. The more closely I look at my past, the more sense an MBTI makes. It explains a whole lot that’s baffled and mystified and frustrated me over the years.

I’m not happy to have sustained MTBI(s), but I’m happy I finally figured this out.

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