Traumatic Brain Injury This is Hell

One moment you connect and the next its gone, or so it seems. You wonder if you're really capable of actually connecting with someone at all.  Your doubts creep into your mind and begin to cloud things up. You want to really like a person but the fear of rejection is so great, you stay quiet. You slowly open up and your paralyzed that now that they know they will go. Because they have, many have, most have and you stand there going, what kind of asshole am I really. Self evaluation time, you pick, examine and you question till you've driven yourself mostly mad with the what and the whys.
Did you yell and scream? No. Did you whine and complain,? No. Did you cling or show need? Goodness no. To need at all sends people running away faster than I love you. You realize you're alone, totally alone and you wonder how it happened. Then you really take a look at things and you realize that you changed. Suddenly drastically, that one afternoon in Sept when your head hit the wall for the 9th time. Another concussion, along with a breakdown. Nine concussions, resulting in brain injury and permenent damage and PTSD.. all very real.  With that, your friends took cover. After much thinking, I realized they used to say to me, "You're the strongest person I know." So what would they think when the strongest person they know, crumbles? Could it possibly happen to them? And they distance themselves. They have their own lives. And then there is the stigma of mental illness. "Why can't you just get over it?" I'm told. "You're just giving into it." "If you just try harder, if you just try at all." "You're letting fear rule you." "You're living in the past." " You're never going to get over it if you keep bringing it up." "You're coping out." "If you just try."  I don't think anyone would say to a deaf person, " you're just giving into being deaf" or someone fighting MS, "You're never going to get over it if you keep bringing it up."  I cannot beg, bargain, plead, pray, push, muscle through, forget, try harder, will it, stiff upper lip, Traumatic Brain Injury and PTSD symptoms away. I have brain damage and brain trauma,  and what symptoms those bring with it are real and present. I've gotten mad at them, despaired at them, cried at them, went through physical therapy to learn to walk again because of them. Been in therapy. I am changed by them. Nothing is more.. surreal that knowing there is a you, that person that once was, and you can't get to that person again. And I can already hear people say, " well if you think you can't, then you never will"  Its not a matter of the power of positive or negative thinking at work here. It is a matter of neural pathways that are damaged. And your brain WON'T be that person again. If I had a choice between this and losing my hearing or a limb, I'd take losing my hearing or a limb over brain injury and damage. And to all this, I am facing it alone. As I mention, those I had went away with this onset. I have not one person in my world, who has said, "I get it" and stuck around. They don't get it and they don't stick around or they keep a great distance from me. I can't do this alone anymore. I am horribly painfully isolated. I just want one person to actually give a shit about me. That I can lean on just a little bit. Just a tiny bit. Without this burning fear if I lean a little too much, I'm a bother, and they will go away. I wouldn't lean to much.  And now its out there, and I feel like I am just whining. This is hell. 

aftermath

The boxes are gone, the paintings removed, the furniture the elegant furniture that filled the room are gone. Short work to empty a life. What made it a home is gone and now its a wide open space, whiter walls, dirty carpets debris left over from a life living.

Life living, now I make my mark on this place. Paintings long stored are now up on the walls, each has a place maybe I'll move them around till the fit just right, a bedroom to move around in, an office to write in.

4 months later I have made this place my home. On the wall are my paintings. Around the house it says I live here, this is my home. Quirky  and different, yet wholly me.

I have made a home out of this white walled box...

A mini enviromental rant

So lets take another potshot at the planet.. the big gas and oil companies oh and lest we not forget the coal companies, are fighting for their very survival.. its not hurting them yet but it will. In the meantime they saturate the media with their lies about cleaner burning fossil fuels. Lets face it, you burn fossil fuels the end result unless it goes through a multi stack scrubber, is going to be pollution spewing out. Bottom line, fossil fuels do not burn clean. But before I get lost in that rant, lets look at the mess they make getting said fuels out of the ground.

First the pipelines they build, an eyesore, regardless of how carefully they build it, they tear up pristine land to lay in the line. Then the drilling itself.... they swear they won't make a mess, nothing will spill, but it only takes one spill..... see the Gulf.... see Exxon Valdez..... see the Santa Barbara beaches....and the landscape is destroyed for decades. If you've never seen an oil spill, trust me its awful.  Everywhere you step, you step in tar, it covers the sand in clumps, shells, the water, its simply a horrifying mess. The worst part are the wildlife covered in it,dead or dying from it. Not a fun way to spend a child hood, on a oil spilled beach.

Moving day

        Since Feb I knew this day was coming. My mother is moving away. Today. The apartment walls are bare except for the few bits of art I've hung up to make it not look so empty and every where I look there are boxes. Numbered One  through 117 stacked up in every available space. White boxes numbered, boxes upon which is written in bold black text,  "live fish," numbered. Green cellophane wrapped paintings, Suitcases and ditty bags. Her green canvas tote with the dragon embroidered upon it. Her bedroom once so full and busy, stands dismantled and bare, everything put away in boxes, taped up standing ready to be moved. A life, a creative busy life, lived but momentarily in that room. Waiting now for another to live life in there. In this case me. 

        How long does it take to dismantle a life you've spent 23 years building? For my mother 4 months. That which I do not understand is why one with so much, such richness in her life would pack up and move away from all that she has built, the friendships she has garnered, the many groups she has belonged to, the one most important she has been with for 23 years. The weather cannot be the full driving factor. All she could tell me is that it was time. 

        It was time... for her, she is nervous, excited, a little anxious, a new vast adventure awaits. For me,  it is time to let go of the safety net she provided for me. The constant I had knowing she was there. Each morning when I woke up, each night before I went to bed. Her sounds, the talk radio, the deep resonance of her wind chimes, a little cough, a sneeze, the sound her phone makes when she text's on her phone, the clicking of her nails as she types on her computer, the sound of her sewing machine purring along as it embroidered for her. Those sounds that said, " hey you're not alone here." Funny as a youth I could not wait to get out from under my parents and now I want to hold on and say, " don't go."

        Apartments, while we call them home.. are really transitory. No mark you can make on them that says " this is permanently my home." They are simply a borrowed place. Their white walls and uninspired box shape, standing there saying,  " shallow roots only."

the most amazing thing I've seen

there is a commercial on tv right now, I think its for intel it asks whats the most amazing thing you've seen...

there is no one thing... each is amazing in its own right... sunrise at redrocks on the shortest day of the year...the very first time I saw stephanie her eyes so bright and blue..amazing... the aurora borialis craclking across the night sky the blues and greens...amazing... the tide as it glows at night.. the grunion running..
sunset at the beach... the redwoods... watching mount st helens erupt...the first daffidill of spring..a storm rolling in off the pacific..an intimate smile..I could go on and on, and I probably will add to this...

Goodbyes

Goodbyes are never fun nor easy... they just simply are. I said goodbye to my friend yesterday, a delightful goodbye, full of laughs, chocolate, red wine and intimacy. But it was still goodbye none the less. He has his things I have mine. He gives the best hugs, and most importantly I am myself around him as he is with me.  A good friend to have.
 At the airport I hugged him tight, kissed him, taking with me the touch the feel, savoring the bond we two have as friends. But it was still goodbye.
Not a good by forever, just till we meet again. May be a few months, may be never again. With us, the two of us, the paths we are on its just an unknown.  What I do know is that as a person I really like him. He is rare in this world, in that you can be yourself around him, and not many people have that acceptance of others. He just is one of those that does. Time with him speeds up and slows down. It is a break being able to just be yourself.  I had a break.  For that I am grateful.
I said goodbye to my friend yesterday, hugged him, kissed him, turned and walked into the airport, got on a plane and flew home. Time to be my other self again. 

Sounds, touch, thought

Wind in the trees. waves crashing on the shore, a meadowlark singing, squirrels shouting indignantly at a cat. The hum of the air cooler in the background from the Safeway. My friends wonderful booming laugh. A 20 something kid high as he ran through traffic the police hot on his heels, "this is real" he announced his voice pitched with incredulity. My friends response along with his booming laugh. The hum of the interstate late at night. The whistle of train far in the distance. The mournful sound of a river barge heading up stream. The roar of a waterfall as it spills over the edge. The sound of thousands of people moving, talking and dancing at Movement.

My friends hug, to be wrapped up in those arms is a nice place to be.  kiss.. tender a promise of what could be. My dogs tongue on my hand. The embrace of friends as one stands and faces a fear. The simple pleasure of just holding a hand. An intimate embrace.

The promise of late fall, gave way to the lushness of its spring. The will of the people here astounds.  I am half way up the hill. I look behind a moment and see I've come a long way. I look forward. I can do this. I am not afraid anymore. Life....is....good.