are you prepared for a bit of reading? I was walking home from the Y on... yesterday I think.. and I was thinking about why ppl don't seem to like my diadactical writing much (because I know it has wisdom) and I thought probably because that is the nature of diadactical writing and ppl don't like to be preached at. So, for our first assignment for the breakfast club, I wrote this (If you read anything, read below the green. This is there to hopefully help someone get the stuff after the green. I am not sure if it helps though):
The focus of this essay is the level of independence attained when one has been dealt a TBI. Since I immersed myself in the lives of TBI’ed individuals (by default) I have been exposed to many different wavelengths of dependence and independence. In a few cases there has been a re-occurring issue I do not comprehend. It is the phenomenon that a brain injured person denies any deficit incurred from the injury. This baffles me because my friends will talk about the injury’s effects and do the therapy recommended to help those deficits, yet therapists “in the know” claim that those same clients do not believe what they are saying. I mention this because it may play a role in their independence. Other than denying that something happened to your previous abilities, individuals may also have cognitive losses that they recognize, yet still hinder them from being self sufficient. Our brains and the effects of a TBI are so diverse, it is hard to generalize or find a trend among many variables, if any. I will speak from what I know best, my first hand experience. Although general, along my path I have noticed a few common denominators.
Part of who you become after a TBI depends on who you were before the injury occurred. If you were never motivated, driven or intelligent, do not expect those factors to increase after the derivative of their origin has been depleted. Myself, and specifically one other patient, were extremely motivated before our TBI’s. The core that is an individual does not often change. I lost my voice; some other people lost their ability to walk; but, if you still have your mind – you’re going to be o.k. I know one person that joked about their lackadaisical approach to school. I feel this reflects the life they have now. They have the life they earned. Part of why they do not deserve independence is because of what they might to do with it if attained (sit around and deteriorate even more) .That is not to say others should dictate our futures at all. Unfortunately they do in fact do that. It is wrong and also another factor regarding our independence.
We are under scrutiny others are not. My old psychologist said it was like TBI patients are the part of society that smokes marijuana, gets caught by the police and punished for it. Many people smoke marijuana and are never caught. That makes the parallel worse, because although suffering a TBI isn’t illegal, and should not be, we were essentially caught by the “is-your-life-quality?” police when we had our wrecks.
But I am creating a diversion from the topic at hand. I knew that after a TBI, one has a window of about one point five years to make as much gain as possible. I was able to apply the work ethic, which has always inhered in me, to make as many new connections in my brain as I could within that time frame. Had I not been that worker before, I might still be using a walker. My therapists taught me what to do, but it was up to me to care about enough about myself to do what they recommended. I went through So-Journers straight to my own apartment because mentally, I was the same Adora I was before the wreck. I was responsible and diligent and there wasn’t any apparent reason for me to be held back. If I had taken a lazy, or “whatever” approach I wouldn’t have proved that I was ready for the responsibility of taking care of myself. How much independence one attains correlates with how much one deserves.
It has been a long road though. After I left So-Journers, I returned about a year later because of psychological deficits. I was unable to fully be who I was before the wreck because of what the wreck did to me physically. Although I learned much in school, everything I learned used the abilities I had perfected since birth. They brought me the joy I got from learning. But school never taught me how to grow in a more creative way. It may have taught me facts but nothing about living with a different body (because most people never need that information).. When I had lived the first 18 years of my life living in complete accordance with everything I had always used to perceive the world, and a major vehicle I used to help me cope with that world (my voice) was taken away, I encountered several problems. I no longer could deal with anger, boredom or even joy or spiritual bonding with people in a way I knew. Even though I still haven’t gotten totally over the loss of my voice (because it is so connected with other disciplines that will not go away), I know I will and am dealing with it. Hope won’t contain me in a box, because being the respectable people they are, they realize I do not need to be in a box. I take my own responsibility for my deficits, and find other ways to compensate.
I have thought about this too: taking that independence further. I know it would be possible for me, and many other people, to do as most people and go through a rigorous class schedule to get a 9 – 5 job. I’m sure I would find my place in the work world but I do not desire it as much as I desired walking again. Desire is a big part of who we become throughout recovery too (and the recovery does not have to be physical or recovery in the sense of repair). I desired to be someone better than who I was, so I worked for it. When lacking in a skill, without natural ability, it is not going to improve unless we climb the ladder of failure that leads to the subjective heaven we are after.
and I also pondered the play I wrote for creative writing, that went over well. I thought maybe the difference was that although it was funny, it wasn't silly (rather than straight up serious). So I took that same essay from above and tried to say the same things in a way that is more fun. This way I am hoping it will speak to more of the crowd that could care less about reflection.
It is in the form of letters. It was a challenge by a man in my writing group. And the idea was started by a thought from Rolo4wmu . The letters were found amoung boxes of pictures written and abandoned by the old tenent and discoved by the landlord.
I had just bought a new house. I am a landlord and I had to clean up the previous tenants’ mess. There was the usual dishes, but also photos and journals. The photos were of all different people; I don’t know where they came from. Different cameras and film too. There were interesting and usual. A child on a swing; a couple smiling; a baby sleeping. That one made me smile. The little girl (about five months old) was in her rocking swing, upright, and completely limp! Her mouth was wide open and her arms dangled at her sides as her head looked, with eyes closed, up to the sky. I got lost in their amusement and, not being in that great a hurry, it was alright. There were several small shoe boxes. The first two being full of photos, I hypothesized the other one was too.
I opened it to find about 50 letters. Some were short and not titled; others were standard letter format and full page length. I could not figure out who had owned this home before I bought it or to whom they were writing or why.
Dear Doctor,
I woke up yesterday and was very mad at everyone watching me. It was like they were hovering, with their noses tightly pressed, up to my window. I don’t know what they were looking for; or what they saw that gave them reason to keep watching. I do know that ever since I was a baby they were there though. When my mother stepped outside to get the mail – they came out from the closets or appeared to peek around the doorways. As they got more comfortable, they walked through the doorways right to where I was. Though they rarely played with me because I was afraid of them. I didn’t want them staring at me. I just wanted what I knew and who I was supposed to have as friends. I didn’t want them. But they hindered my growth because I let them. I could have found joy in their presence through a joke or a funny face or peculiar movement. And seeing as how they always hovered, their movements were quite odd. Or, pushing me on the swing! That would have been nice. But now, I’m all grown up and they’re still there. Is it different now that I am an adult? I would think they should go away.
Dear Doctor,
You tell me something is wrong with me. That I cannot fly. I don’t believe you because I do; you just never see it. Only I do. You can’t feel or see what I see, so how do you know? You say you see yourself. Are you saying your eyes are better than mine? Hoe do you know I don’t just wait for you to leave to fly?
Dear Doctor,
How come I am tormented by these people? Other people that are just like me do not have spies around them all the time. If you won’t answer me, I’ll find out some other way.
Dear Doctor,
I was talking with my friend Sally the other day and I asked her if she was ever in a hypothetical situation like mine, what she would do. About the people watching her. She said she would talk to them and ask them what they were doing assuming they had the right to intrude upon someone else. I don’t think she knew what I was talking about but she said people used to watch her too. And she also said that she confronted them and asked them why they did it and in finding out why they were there, she could asses her situation to make it so they wouldn’t need to be there.
She said it had something to do with her cooking skills. Most of them were chefs of some sort and came to teach her how not to burn her food all the time. When their purpose was served, they left.
She encouraged me to talk to them. Ask them why they were there – what they were doing. I said I thought I was too afraid. And she asked of what. And I said that they may tell me I’ll be eating burnt food for the rest of my life.
Dear Doctor,
I talked to one of the hovering spies today. Well first, I threw something at him to make sure he was real. When the lotion bottle bounced back onto the floor, I knew I wasn’t seeing things. I asked him what he was doing and he told me. I guess since I was a child, I put my boogers places. He said he was there to remove them before they caused bigger problems. Or got stuck to my mom’s hand. I said, “but I don’t live with my mom now”. And he told me that now, they had to be worried about problems in my house or it getting in my hand. And I asked that they would leave me alone as they did my friend Sally. He told me she fixed her problem while it was still fixable. He said unfortunately, booger hiding was now a lifelong habit of mine.
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