... and I wasn't coming back...
Well, this is pretty amazing. Incredible, actually. So much has happened, in the past weeks, my head is spinning, and I’m still working at fully understanding everything that’s coming together for me.
There have been specific things that have happened, like the great conference call I had on Tuesday morning… and the positive working relationships I have been building at work… and the ideas I’ve been getting for some technology I’ve been learning in my spare time. I’ve been putting in considerable time for these things, and also really focusing my attention on them, and it’s really paying off. It’s hard to put my finger on it, but there is a completely different quality to my life now, than there was, just a few months ago.
I feel clearer, stronger, better. I still have that weight on me that I’m trying to lose, and things at work are a bit dicey in places. But those things aren’t front and center like they used to be. They are part of my life, not the sole focus of it.
And it’s good. Really good. Just the general sense that I have about my life, the presence I have, the truly solid foundation I feel under me again, after what felt like a lifetime casting about and wandering in the proverbial desert. It feels like I’m back – back in the game, back with myself, back in my own life.
How unexpected. Seriously. To tell the truth, I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to get back to feeling this way – ever. I thought that when things started to really go south, and everything was crumbling around me, the money was disappearing, and my composure was dissolving in the face of the littlest little thing… well, I figured, that was it. Even though I never wanted to give up, and I refused to abandon home, a part of me figured I was going to have to make do with what I had and get used to the idea of being less of a person than I was, those years ago.
I was resigned, in a way. I figured I was just going to have to soldier on with all my issues and keep fighting and fighting and fighting to get anywhere. I wasn’t going to have an easy time of it, and that’s just how it was. And if I got anything in life, it was going to be through wrestling the angels of my everyday nature to coerce a blessing out of them, even if it half killed me. And if I was ever successful at achieving what I set out to accomplish, it was going to come at considerable personal cost. And yes, it might half kill me.
After all, that’s pretty much how things had been in the past with me. Looking back, I can really see how my issues contributed to that thinking – attentional issues (which I wasn’t even aware of) were keeping me from being able to fully pay attention, and they were keeping me from making the most of what focus and attention I could train on things. Chronic pain and fatigue and all the hidden drains that came along with them were also diluting my attention and keeping me from being fully engaged in my life. Sensitivities to light and sound and touch were causing me to keep my distance from people and activities in life. And anything that I got or achieved came at a considerable cost and only after intense effort.
That’s how it always was, and that’s how I figured it would always be. It was just my lot in life and that was that. No relaxation. No resting. No settling into doing things in a systematic, measured way – everything was a sprint for me… one sprint after another, one drama after another, one problem after another. And whatever I won or got or achieved, could disappear at any time, if I just looked away for an instant.
People always wondered why I wasn’t doing more with my life. They couldn’t see the things that were “up” with me – I had learned to hide them, and I hid them well. At most, I was someone with great potential who ended up a disappointment to those who had such high hopes for me… and so it went.
And that feeling of being half-here, only being in on part of the action, never having all the information I needed at any point in time, was a way of life. It had dogged me all my days, as it does for so many people.
I had things sorta kinda worked out, about ten years ago. I had a career, I had a good job with a great major multinational corporation, I had the respect of my peers and a great salary. I was really doing great, as far as anyone else could tell, even though I still had this nagging sense of being only half there. In a way, knowing how to live with that sense helped me in my work, which was on the cutting edge – you can’t dance along the fine, fine line of the cutting edge, if you’re not comfortable with some measure of uncertainty – and uncertainty was pretty much all I had to count on, at any given time.
Then I fell, in 2004, and things started to unravel. I started to lose it. I started to be even worse off than I was before. And it was hell. Hell. That awful, terrible feeling that I was slipping away without any grips to grab onto followed me, day and night, and I couldn’t figure out how to make it stop. Make it stop… All I could do, was watch myself fade away, get weaker and weaker, less and less organized, more and more confused…. I was losing it, and there was nothing I could do to stop the downward slide.
“Well, that’s it,” I figured after a while. “I’m just screwed.”
I’ve thought that many, many times over the past 7-8 years. Even after I started working with my neuropsychologist, I still felt like I was screwed. They’d be talking to me about all this stuff, and I could only follow so much. I’d be going through my days, feeling like big chunks of me were missing, and it was all I could do to try to piece the different fragments together. When I fell and my brain got shaken, I guess a bunch of connections got fried. And as much as I’ve managed to knit a bunch of stuff back together, I still miss those old connections. I miss feeling like myself. A lot. Despite my progress, I still feel that way – like I’m walking around in a stranger’s body, trying to life my life in someone else’s reality.
But see, here’s the thing — even though I feel that way, over the past weeks, I’ve been handling that a whole lot better than I can remember ever handling it. It’s like, I still have this feeling of fragmentation, and I still feel like parts of me are missing, but it doesn’t have the same life-shattering weight that it had before. It’s like, Yeah, I’ve got chunks of me that have disappeared, and I’m not sure if they’re ever coming back… but at the same time, I have a much stronger sense that there is a lot more of me to discover and develop – even in the face of what is a pretty nagging loss.
And that’s what matters – the what-else-is-there? is the thing that makes all the difference. It’s the thing that makes getting up each day worth it, the thing that keeps me going, the thing that urges me onward. Even though I don’t have all the exact same faculties and interests and abilities that I had before, there are even more that I’m finding around me, each day – and many of those faculties and interests and abilities were buried deep behind the shell I’d shellacked around myself over years and years of difficulties and thinking that the difficulties meant there was something wrong with me… that I was permanently damaged and unworthy and unloveable.
Yeah, I figured I was gone for good. I figured that whatever abilities I’d built up over the years that got fried when I fell, pulled a disappearing act and weren’t ever coming back. And I figured that if my abilities were gone, then I was, too. I equated my abilities with my self, with who and what I was, whether or not I was worth anything. And when those things got compromised, then I assumed that it meant that I had been compromised, too… and I was just going to have to settle for a lesser life, because of it.
But here’s the thing – that mindset put me into a constant state of fight-flight stress, that just fried my nervous system. As far as I’m concerned, the real culprit in my TBI complications, has been intense stress and anxiety and borderline panic, that’s shut off half of my biochemistry, because my body is convinced I’m in a raw life-and-death survival situation. All that driving, all that pushing, all the struggle throughout my life before my most recent fall, really cut into my ability to life my life 100%. And after I fell in 2004, and things got even more intense, well, my system just shorted out and I skidded out of control.
Now that I’m dealing directly with the fight-flight stuff with my breathing and sitting, I have to tell you, it’s made an astonishing difference. Something as simple as sitting for a count of 47 breaths, each morning before I get up (and sometimes at night before I go to sleep) has helped my autonomic nervous system in ways I could never have imagined or anticipated. And I’m much more HERE than I’ve been. In years. Maybe ever.
Now, don’t get me wrong – this sitting and breathing business hasn’t fixed a lot of things. I still can only follow so much my neuropsych says to me. Sometimes (yesterday, for example) it’s like I just hear their words floating around in the air, and none of it makes any sense to me. And I have been having issues with noise sensitivity, intense pain, low energy, and serious sleep issues. But those problems aren’t front and center with me the way they used to be. And they also don’t cut into my overall quality of life to the degree they used to. They’re just there. They just need to be managed. And whether or not I do a perfect job of dealing with them, isn’t the point. The point is, I’m working on it.
The point is, I’m all here. There are still chunks of me missing, and they may never come back. But I am all here. There’s a lot more to me than specific functions and faculties, and with full access to all my biochemistry, I get to choose how I live my life, how I react to my life, how I move on from one thing to the next.
I may have been gone for a while, but I’m not gone for good.
... and I wasn't coming back...
Well, this is pretty amazing. Incredible, actually. So much has happened, in the past weeks, my head is spinning, and I’m still working at fully understanding everything that’s coming together for me.
There have been specific things that have happened, like the great conference call I had on Tuesday morning… and the positive working relationships I have been building at work… and the ideas I’ve been getting for some technology I’ve been learning in my spare time. I’ve been putting in considerable time for these things, and also really focusing my attention on them, and it’s really paying off. It’s hard to put my finger on it, but there is a completely different quality to my life now, than there was, just a few months ago.
I feel clearer, stronger, better. I still have that weight on me that I’m trying to lose, and things at work are a bit dicey in places. But those things aren’t front and center like they used to be. They are part of my life, not the sole focus of it.
And it’s good. Really good. Just the general sense that I have about my life, the presence I have, the truly solid foundation I feel under me again, after what felt like a lifetime casting about and wandering in the proverbial desert. It feels like I’m back – back in the game, back with myself, back in my own life.
How unexpected. Seriously. To tell the truth, I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to get back to feeling this way – ever. I thought that when things started to really go south, and everything was crumbling around me, the money was disappearing, and my composure was dissolving in the face of the littlest little thing… well, I figured, that was it. Even though I never wanted to give up, and I refused to abandon home, a part of me figured I was going to have to make do with what I had and get used to the idea of being less of a person than I was, those years ago.
I was resigned, in a way. I figured I was just going to have to soldier on with all my issues and keep fighting and fighting and fighting to get anywhere. I wasn’t going to have an easy time of it, and that’s just how it was. And if I got anything in life, it was going to be through wrestling the angels of my everyday nature to coerce a blessing out of them, even if it half killed me. And if I was ever successful at achieving what I set out to accomplish, it was going to come at considerable personal cost. And yes, it might half kill me.
After all, that’s pretty much how things had been in the past with me. Looking back, I can really see how my issues contributed to that thinking – attentional issues (which I wasn’t even aware of) were keeping me from being able to fully pay attention, and they were keeping me from making the most of what focus and attention I could train on things. Chronic pain and fatigue and all the hidden drains that came along with them were also diluting my attention and keeping me from being fully engaged in my life. Sensitivities to light and sound and touch were causing me to keep my distance from people and activities in life. And anything that I got or achieved came at a considerable cost and only after intense effort.
That’s how it always was, and that’s how I figured it would always be. It was just my lot in life and that was that. No relaxation. No resting. No settling into doing things in a systematic, measured way – everything was a sprint for me… one sprint after another, one drama after another, one problem after another. And whatever I won or got or achieved, could disappear at any time, if I just looked away for an instant.
People always wondered why I wasn’t doing more with my life. They couldn’t see the things that were “up” with me – I had learned to hide them, and I hid them well. At most, I was someone with great potential who ended up a disappointment to those who had such high hopes for me… and so it went.
And that feeling of being half-here, only being in on part of the action, never having all the information I needed at any point in time, was a way of life. It had dogged me all my days, as it does for so many people.
I had things sorta kinda worked out, about ten years ago. I had a career, I had a good job with a great major multinational corporation, I had the respect of my peers and a great salary. I was really doing great, as far as anyone else could tell, even though I still had this nagging sense of being only half there. In a way, knowing how to live with that sense helped me in my work, which was on the cutting edge – you can’t dance along the fine, fine line of the cutting edge, if you’re not comfortable with some measure of uncertainty – and uncertainty was pretty much all I had to count on, at any given time.
Then I fell, in 2004, and things started to unravel. I started to lose it. I started to be even worse off than I was before. And it was hell. Hell. That awful, terrible feeling that I was slipping away without any grips to grab onto followed me, day and night, and I couldn’t figure out how to make it stop. Make it stop… All I could do, was watch myself fade away, get weaker and weaker, less and less organized, more and more confused…. I was losing it, and there was nothing I could do to stop the downward slide.
“Well, that’s it,” I figured after a while. “I’m just screwed.”
I’ve thought that many, many times over the past 7-8 years. Even after I started working with my neuropsychologist, I still felt like I was screwed. They’d be talking to me about all this stuff, and I could only follow so much. I’d be going through my days, feeling like big chunks of me were missing, and it was all I could do to try to piece the different fragments together. When I fell and my brain got shaken, I guess a bunch of connections got fried. And as much as I’ve managed to knit a bunch of stuff back together, I still miss those old connections. I miss feeling like myself. A lot. Despite my progress, I still feel that way – like I’m walking around in a stranger’s body, trying to life my life in someone else’s reality.
But see, here’s the thing — even though I feel that way, over the past weeks, I’ve been handling that a whole lot better than I can remember ever handling it. It’s like, I still have this feeling of fragmentation, and I still feel like parts of me are missing, but it doesn’t have the same life-shattering weight that it had before. It’s like, Yeah, I’ve got chunks of me that have disappeared, and I’m not sure if they’re ever coming back… but at the same time, I have a much stronger sense that there is a lot more of me to discover and develop – even in the face of what is a pretty nagging loss.
And that’s what matters – the what-else-is-there? is the thing that makes all the difference. It’s the thing that makes getting up each day worth it, the thing that keeps me going, the thing that urges me onward. Even though I don’t have all the exact same faculties and interests and abilities that I had before, there are even more that I’m finding around me, each day – and many of those faculties and interests and abilities were buried deep behind the shell I’d shellacked around myself over years and years of difficulties and thinking that the difficulties meant there was something wrong with me… that I was permanently damaged and unworthy and unloveable.
Yeah, I figured I was gone for good. I figured that whatever abilities I’d built up over the years that got fried when I fell, pulled a disappearing act and weren’t ever coming back. And I figured that if my abilities were gone, then I was, too. I equated my abilities with my self, with who and what I was, whether or not I was worth anything. And when those things got compromised, then I assumed that it meant that I had been compromised, too… and I was just going to have to settle for a lesser life, because of it.
But here’s the thing – that mindset put me into a constant state of fight-flight stress, that just fried my nervous system. As far as I’m concerned, the real culprit in my TBI complications, has been intense stress and anxiety and borderline panic, that’s shut off half of my biochemistry, because my body is convinced I’m in a raw life-and-death survival situation. All that driving, all that pushing, all the struggle throughout my life before my most recent fall, really cut into my ability to life my life 100%. And after I fell in 2004, and things got even more intense, well, my system just shorted out and I skidded out of control.
Now that I’m dealing directly with the fight-flight stuff with my breathing and sitting, I have to tell you, it’s made an astonishing difference. Something as simple as sitting for a count of 47 breaths, each morning before I get up (and sometimes at night before I go to sleep) has helped my autonomic nervous system in ways I could never have imagined or anticipated. And I’m much more HERE than I’ve been. In years. Maybe ever.
Now, don’t get me wrong – this sitting and breathing business hasn’t fixed a lot of things. I still can only follow so much my neuropsych says to me. Sometimes (yesterday, for example) it’s like I just hear their words floating around in the air, and none of it makes any sense to me. And I have been having issues with noise sensitivity, intense pain, low energy, and serious sleep issues. But those problems aren’t front and center with me the way they used to be. And they also don’t cut into my overall quality of life to the degree they used to. They’re just there. They just need to be managed. And whether or not I do a perfect job of dealing with them, isn’t the point. The point is, I’m working on it.
The point is, I’m all here. There are still chunks of me missing, and they may never come back. But I am all here. There’s a lot more to me than specific functions and faculties, and with full access to all my biochemistry, I get to choose how I live my life, how I react to my life, how I move on from one thing to the next.
I may have been gone for a while, but I’m not gone for good.