I Pity the Fool

"Self pity comes so naturally to all of us." - Andre Maurois

That last quarter of last year's entries started to sound a bit like the transcript for my own private pity party. I'm hoping to stay away from that in 2010. No one wants to read my ceaseless griping. Heck, I don't even want to hear my ceaseless griping.

Stop griping, right?

I'm working on it.

So how to manage that? How do you keep a positive attitude in the midst of chronic pain and fatigue and overwhelming financial and relationship issues. Maybe it is just a matter of "butching up" and soldiering on.

Why is it that there are so many cliche's about pushing through problems?

Butch up. Man up. Soldier on. Get a grip. Put on your big girl panties. Deal with it. Keep a stiff upper lip. Just do it. Damn the martinis full speed ahead. Suffer in silence.

I'm sure I've missed some good ones. We definitely have a love/hate relationship with facing challenges. We don't want to have to face our own. We want to hear stories about people who overcame theirs, but we definitely don't want to hear any complains or even descriptions of challenges people are currently experiencing.

It's the Hollywood complex. We don't want to hear the struggle if we don't have the guaranteed triumphant ending.

Not everyone gets the triumphant ending. We can't even guarantee a triumphant ending for ourselves, and on some level we hate being reminded of that fact. It's like being reminded of our own mortality. We KNOW death is unavoidable, we just don't want to be reminded of it.

So my attempt here is to illuminate the process, the struggle and discovery of learning to live with a brain injury. Some days will be triumphant, some will not. I can't guarantee a Hollywood ending, but I'll try not to bore you, or myself in this process.

I don't want a pity party, even when I'm in the midst of throwing one for myself. What I really want is understanding. If you can understand how a person's life is impacted by their disability, you can move beyond pity and annoyance and see the little triumphs as well as the failures. The failures are perhaps the most important parts, because it is through failure that we learn.

My failure here has helped me to learn how I want to portray this injury and how I want to measure my successes. Letting you in, via this journal, means allowing you to see the struggle even when it isn't pretty and doesn't show me in a positive light. I hope that even then, something good may come of it.