This year all the Christmas preparations and activities are going a lot more slowly than in past years. Part of it is me, part of it is my spouse. We are both slowing down — especially my spouse, who is having increasing difficulty sequencing information and understanding things when I say them the first time. They are also having difficulty communicating their ideas to me. They tend to start their sentences mid-way, and then they get angry furious when I ask them what they are talking about.
It’s not much fun, watching the love of your life decline cognitively, physically, emotionally, and behaviorally, that’s for sure. It’s heart-wrenching, and it’s very difficult to observe… not having any way to stop it. They’re also intensely anxious about… well, just about everything. If they don’t have a sense of control, they flip out. Or run away.
So, I do my best under the circumstances. I try to remain calm. I take my vitamins. I do my exercises when I wake up. I keep on keepin’ on. I work on my projects, in hope that they will allow me to earn some extra money on the side, so I can take better care of us. I just keep on, taking care of what I can control, and “turning over” the rest, as they say.
And we both do what we can. We really work at keeping the arguments from getting completely out of hand, and get through the rough patches the same way as always. I have a lot less tolerance for the fiery arguments, than I used to have. We have always had a very fiery, passionate relationship, and we’ve kept each other on our toes. But it gets a little old, to be honest, and sometimes I just don’t feel like going through the whole big loop to get to a final resting place where we both understand what’s going on.
Anyway, over this weekend, we did some Christmas shopping and got just about everything we need for family members. We’re not shopping for each other, just yet, because we have time and we don’t want to put a lot of pressure on ourselves. We also trimmed the tree a bit. This year, we are taking it in bits and pieces. In past years, we put everything — and I mean everything — on at once. We loaded the tree up with all our ornaments and lights, and it was a sight to behold.
This year, we just put up strings of small lights, and last night we did the larger lights. We didn’t have enough of the lights we needed, so the tree is looking a little lop-sided this year. We’ll figure it out, I’m sure.
Or we won’t. And this will be kind of a sad and low-key time.
I’m thinking it’s going to be the latter. For all the progress I’ve been making, and for all the strides I’ve made, I’m married to someone who is on the exact opposite end of the spectrum — too afraid of their own shadow, and too averse to hard work, to maintain and improve. They are literally letting themself go, and when they are challenged, they’ll react for a few days… maybe a week… and improve. Then they will go back to how they were before. It’s very dispiriting, to be honest.
It also makes me all the more aware of what a difference attitude makes in brain injury recovery. By hiding from it in fear and ignoring it, basically refusing to engage with it, that just makes things worse. You can’t shrug off a brain injury. You can deal with it. You can address it. You can fix a lot of things. But NOT if you’re hiding from it, cowering in fear in the dark corners of your mind.
Of course, brain injury lends itself extremely well to panic-anxiety disorders. You can get stuck in fight-flight mode, simply by right of the nature of the condition. You’re always ON, always on high alert, trying to figure out how to do things that used to make sense, and you’re constantly being surprised / jolted / alarmed by things that did not work out the way you needed them to — or expected them to.
It is so hard, at times. A real pain in the ass. And the worst thing you can do is avoid dealing with it. That just does not work.
Well, anyway, we got done most of what we meant to do. And we’ve got more planned for this week. We’re moving carefully through the steps of getting it all done in good time, and it will all get taken care of, for sure. It’s just hard, right now, watching my spouse decline… watching their thinking degrade… their physical mobility… their overall health and well-being. It’s hard watching the one person you care for most in the world, let themself just go downhill like that.
If I didn’t care, it would be one thing. But I do care. Deeply. I guess I’ll just go with that.
Broken Brain - Brilliant Mind 