Shake Hands With the Devil

 
"The devil ain't got no power over me. The devil come, and me shake hands with the devil. Devil have his part to play. Devil's a good friend, too... because when you don't know him, that's the time he can mosh you down." - Bob Marley

This March was the eighth anniversary of my accident. It's been over seven years. Seven years is often the magical number in many myths and legends. In popular culture it's also believed to be the number of years it takes for "all your cells to replace themselves" so that in seven years' time you've basically rebuilt your body on a cellular level. Not entirely sure about the science on that one, so don't quote me on it, but there's still plenty of magic in the number. The "seven year itch" for example. Although most couples crash and burn long before year seven.

Having made it to and past this mystically significant breakpoint I can say that there have been changes. I'd like to think that I befriended some of my devil's along the way. In a somewhat shameless riff on a Keyser Söze quote, I've lone professed that the only power the Devil truly possesses is the ability to make us forget. Plenty of things got forgotten over those eight years. Names. Dates. Appointments. Bills. Assignments. Promises. Funny things you said. Stories I wanted to remember. Smiles. The way home. Passwords. New Passwords. Shopping lists. My own face. How to type. Math. People I went to school with. Things I should be sorry for. Plans. Writing. Safe places I put important things. And time. 

While there are other things that are perhaps worse, time may be the most debilitating thing to have forgotten.

(By the way, I may have written about this before, but, sadly, I've forgotten that too. Sorry if this is redundant.)

It took at least four years before the Devil and I can to terms on time. We shook hands on that and agreed with the understanding that things were just going to take longer now. And that I would never be able to accurately estimate how long something lasted while it was occurring. I would also never be able to accurately estimate how long it would take to accomplish a task or travel from point a to point b (even if using GPS or Apps) and I would not be able to accurately calculate future time. By that I mean I can not accurately look at a clock and say....figure out what time I will need to leave the house if I hypothetically need to get somewhere at 9 and it will take me half an hour to dress and it will take me an hour and fifteen minutes to drive there plus ten minutes to stop and get gas. YES. I KNOW that this is simple math, or at least is should be or is it FOR YOU. Sadly, I cannot do it. Something goes horribly wrong in my brain and I screw it up EVERY. BLESSED. TIME.

Then I sit there, behind the wheel, stopped at a traffic light, wide eyed, in dis-belief, thinking, "This is NOT POSSIBLE. I figured it out. Then I figured it out again. I'm not stupid. How does this happen?" And I look over and see Old Nick standing on the corner, leaning against a streetlamp pole chuckling, smoking his cigarette down to a grey, ashy nub.

If I let other people do it for me, I'm fine. I swear to you. A friend and I can leave at the same time, from the same place, going in two cars, and I'll get there twenty minutes later, because that's just the way it IS now.

So I build extra time into everything. All the while hating that I have to make this sacrifice. But it's still better than it was before. Before there was screaming and crying. Pounding on car steering wheels in traffic. Road rage where I was trapped on highways praying to gods even I've never heard of for salvation, for deliverance, for an airlift rescue. And there was my friend Nick in the convertible behind me, laughing, playing that horrible techno way too loud, looking like he'd partied for three days straight in the same clothes.

Knowing time ran differently for me, and likely always would, was one of the hardest things to come to terms with. I wanted that back, the way I wanted to be able to see in the same way. The way I wanted to be able to sleep without my stupid Lunesta. 

Someone, I forget who, said that the experience of time is what makes us human. They might be right. If so, I suppose that makes me just a bit less so.

At least I know my Devils now. Most of them anyway. I'm sure there are more lurking in the shadows waiting for the chance to mosh me down.

There Is Nothing Wrong With You

"Talking perceptions, people. Do we really see each other for what we really are, or do we just see what we want to see, the image distorted by our own personal lenses? I lost someone today and the funny thing is, I don't even know who she was." Jeff Melvoin, Northern Exposure, Lovers and Madmen, 1994

My friend Sue keeps telling me that. I don't know why it's so important for her that there be nothing "wrong" with me. Part of the problem is probably that she didn't meet me until after the accident. She only knows me as I am now, so for her, there's nothing to compare, no "before" to my "after".

I find it extremely difficult to deal with the "oh, you're fine" attitude. While it is true that brain injuries, especially the mild ones, can be largely invisible injuries, I am impacted daily by my new modus operandi.

I say "new". It's been almost four years since the accident. It's still new to me. Comparatively speaking 37 years versus four - yeah, it's still new.

I understand that many of my friends and cohorts are hitting their midlife stride. With that comes some alterations, changes in vision, hearing, perhaps mild cognitive decline, "Where DID I leave my keys?" But it is fleeting. It is occasional. It is not pervasive. Let me say this definitively, It is NOT the same as a brain injury.

Misplacing your keys occasionally because you're overbooked, or overworked or overtired or over caffeinated doesn't compare. (I know you all mean well when you say things that attempt to normalize or minimize but at some point it just becomes frustrating.)

As an illustration of my point, I offer an example. On Tuesday I dropped of some artwork for a show. I needed to fill out cards which were taped to the backs of each painting. They listed the title of the piece, my name, the medium and the price. I was in the midst of a migraine so from the get go, I wasn't at the top of my game. I made some error and apologized, telling Sue, who was sitting across the table from me, that I wasn't having a good day. She's known me long enough to know that's my code for a "Bad Brain Day". She laughed, made a dismissive gesture and said, "Oh, you're FINE. There's nothing wrong with you."

I seethed, and continued to fill out the cards for my six painting.

After I finished, I said my goodbyes and I left, four crumpled cards balled up in my jacket pocket. On one, I'd written down the wrong media. Another, I'm mis-spelled a word in the title. The third I'd written something on the wrong line, and the fourth - on the fourth card I had spelled my last name incorrectly.

I spelled my name wrong.

How often do you spell your name incorrectly?

How often do you make THAT many mistakes in rapid succession?

The more I think about this incident, the more I want to believe Sue. As I try to come to terms with who I am now, I want to accept my new abilities and limitations as simply factual, without judgement or disappointment or regret. This is how I am. This is who I am. While I am definitely changed, and have definitely lost some speed and some ability, I need to stop judging that fact and, by extension, myself. In that sense, perhaps there really is nothing wrong with me.

You Can Take of Leave It If You Please

"Anyone desperate enough for suicide...should be desperate enough to go to creative extremes to solve problems: elope at midnight, stow away on the boat to New Zealand and start over, do what they always wanted to do but were afraid to try." Richard Bach

Suicide is a hot topic right now. There's been a rash of teen suicides in the U.S. that are being connected in the media, and in many people's opinion, with bullying.

I maintain the unpopular and challenging opinion that healthy people do not commit suicide. Even when the situations in their lives appear bad, or even hopeless, psychologically health people seek different alternatives.

Acknowledging that this is uncomfortable for many people, let me also say that placing blame is one way to make sense out of what feels to many to be a senseless act. We want to know "why". It is a basic human need. We want to make sense out of things that are difficult. How many times have we all heard someone say, "If would all be easier, if I could just understand..."?

It's easier to blame something bullying than to try to understand why someone felt that killing themselves was their only option. Bullying is wrong. People who bully are bad. If the bullying was the final stressor in a series of stressors that pushes someone over the edge, so to speak, then we can feel good about blaming the bullies for the suicide.

But...

There is one problem with this logic. The bullies aren't the ones who pull the trigger, or swallow the pills, or open the vein.

If someone decides to rob a bank because his friends repeatedly taunt him and egg him on society still holds the bank robber responsible for his actions. We each have choices. We choose to seek help or succumb to bullying or torment or financial stressors. People choose their fate. They choose to live or die.

The bully does not make that choice for them. THEY choose for themselves.

With that being said, there are factors that make reasonable choices about suicide more difficult. Being a child or teenager is one of them. Adolescent brains do not have the impulse control abilities of a fully mature brain. What that means is that adolescents have a harder time stopping themselves from doing things, especially when those things relate to peers, or coincide with heightened emotional states.

Ok, once again, adolescence + heightened emotions + peers = bad judgement.

Add a brain injury into that mix and you've got a recipe for disaster.

Brain injury often affects something called "Executive Function". Executive Function is the brain's decision making ability. Brain injury can also damage impulse control and other areas of behavior and emotional regulation.

Do you see how any of these symptoms can make a bad situation infinitely worse when dealing with multiple external stressors (bullying, death in the family, poverty, legal issues, etc.).

The following article is about the suicide death of a football player who, after autopsy, was found to have suffered repeated brain injuries.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/09/14/thomas.football.brain/index.html?hpt=C2

So what's the answer? I don't pretend to know. Perhaps there isn't one. However, I am suggesting that subtle brain injuries are very likely behind some of the adolescent behavior which adults find distressing like AD/HD, ODD, Depression, and Suicidality. I am suggesting that people, especially adolescents, with a known Brain Injury should be monitored differently than uninjured people.

I am suggesting that these injuries can, in some people, create a perfect storm of depression, hopelessness, frustration and impulse control and can end in suicide.

I am also suggesting that there is always more than one reason why someone commits suicide, and the easy answers aren't necessarily the best, or most illuminating.

Who's Who

"Looking back, you realize that a very special person passed briefly through your life, and that person was you. It is not too late to become that person again." - Rober Brault

This evening I had the pleasure of having my portrait painted by artist, Eric Armusik. It is the first time anyone has created an image of me, in a medium other than photography, since I was five. In 1975, while my family was vacationing in Ocean City, a boardwalk artist did a charcoal sketch of me. It still hangs on the wall in my parents' house.

Sitting for the portrait, while a great deal of fun (Eric and his wife Rebekah are delightful), was taxing. Staying still is harder than you think, especially when you MUST remain still. The neck and back injuries began protesting almost immediately, but I was allowed breaks to stretch and reposition. That aside, it was a marvelous experience and I shall treasure the portrait, but all this focus on my visage got me thinking about the self and our, or rather my, image of it.

One of the scarier moments post accident was when I was casually flipping through the photos on my ex's phone and found a picture of a woman I did not recognize. She was smiling at the camera, with a look that implied a relationship with the photographer. It wasn't vulgar, or flirty, just, knowledgeable.

I freaked out.

Who was this woman? Why did he have a picture of THIS WOMAN on his phone? Why was she smiling? What the hell?

As I began my rant and asking those questions, in escalating degrees of shrillness, my ex looked at me, at first amused and then baffled. "Are you serious?" he asked.

"Yes."

I was deadly serious.

He paused a moment and said, "It's YOU, Lor."

Then it was my turn to pause. I looked at the picture again. Then I looked harder. Then I realized that the woman was wearing my jacket. And that I recognized the location. Although I knew it HAD to be me, my brain still wouldn't accept the fact. There was absolutely no recognition that the woman in the photo was me.

I was terrified. Nothing had ever happened like that before. Sure I'd forgotten names and dates and things since the accident but I didn't recognize myself. Disorienting doesn't begin to explain the feeling.

Lucky for me, I've never had a repeat of that experience, but it was enough to give me a taste of what "real" amnesia must feel like. Technically, I have what it know as an "Amnestic Disorder", which is, simply, a problem with how memory is created, stored, or retrieved. It comes in many forms, some more benign than others. Even with the things I have lost, when I consider this incident, I feel like I got off easy.

Ooooh, That Smell

"One must lose one's life in order to find it." - Anne Morrow Lindberg

In hindsight, perhaps watching the video of a PSA featuring a montage of dramatic auto accidents wasn't the best choice prior to going to bed. One of my friends had posted it on Facebook. I watched. I had to. Just to see if I could look the demon in the eye, I suppose.

I went so far as to re-post it, with a short commentary about how, at my internship today, as I was auditing charts and checking dates, staring at calendars from 2006 to 2010, I perversely counted the days since the accident.

One thousand, two hundred and ninety one.

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes,

Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear.

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes,

How do you measure, measure a year?

My fortieth birthday is this Sunday, three days away. I get maudlin near my birthday. And the New Year.

So there I was counting the days and reviewing what I'd done with them. Had I progressed? Had I learned? Had I grown? Had I healed?

Was it worth it?

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

Would it have been worth while,

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball,

To roll it toward some overwhelming question,

To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all."

At 2:04 a.m. I awoke smelling burning plastic. Since the accident, I have olfactory hallucinations. No, that's not quite correct. I don't suppose they are technically hallucinations if they occur in dreams. Let me be precise then, I dream in color, which I always have, and now, I perceive odors while I dream. It's usually the smell of something burning. Toast. Plastic. Metal.

The fact that I awakened and all my muscles were pulled tight like harp strings, my neck corded and taut, my shoulders locked and ready and my inhalation paused mid breath makes me think I was in the middle of a nightmare. I did what I always do in these situations. I breathed. Then I tried to figure out if something really was burning.

Then I realized the smell of burning plastic was really the smell of the deployed airbags.

S'io credesse che mia riposte fosse

A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,

Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.

Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo

Non torno vivo alcun, s' i'odo il vero,

Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

I got out of bed, and walked around the house checking, just to be sure, that nothing was on fire. It's my fate now. To sometimes doubt my senses, my memory. Then I turned on the laptop and began to write this.

So what is the answer? What is worthwhile?

After posting the video I learned that this was the anniversary of my friend Shannon's brother's death. He died in a car accident. He did not, somehow, inexplicably, extricate himself from his vehicle and live to tell about it, and live to blog about his recovery and experiences. He doesn't get to be maudlin and self-deprecating about how much he hasn't done in the years since.

The answer is, "I don't know." And I do know. And it doesn't matter. And everything matters.

Someone asked me recently, "If you could go back and relive any time of your life, when would it be?" This wasn't asked in the sense of returning to alter the past or correct mistakes. She meant to ask which time period was so good that I would trade my now for it.

I shocked myself with the answer. None. I would not return to any other time in my life.

I guess that means I'm happier than I thought I was because, honestly, all things considered, now is just as good, if not better than any other time.

I am learning. I am healing. I am making a difference, even if I don't always understand how or to whom.

In three days I will gratefully celebrate my 40th birthday and toast what I have survived and who I have become because of it.

How do you measure, a year in the life?

How about love?

How about love?

How about love?

Measure in love.

Seasons of love.

Possibility

"Failure is impossible." -Susan B. Anthony

This past weekend I attended a training conference on Ericksonian Hypnosis and Brief Positive Psychotherapy. It was taught by a gentleman named Ron Klein and I probably learned as much from watching him deal with the disruptive and derailing "elements" in the group as I did from his actual presentations on the topic.

One of the things that I discovered over the weekend was that, apart from the residual difficulties stemming from my injuries, there isn't all that much that I'd really like to change. This stemmed from his asking for volunteers who had something relatively simple that they would like to change about themselves. Granted, there are plenty of things that would like to change but they are BIG things, not something you can hypnotize away. In defense of the program and the process, we weren't learning to hypnotize anything "away". That's not how it works. In any case there were plenty of people who had phobias, and smoking habits and inabilities to deal with confrontation or loud noises, etc., and it made me look at myself and I realized that I was willing to face my demons directly and didn't want to have them miraculously disappear. I realized that if I wanted to change something about myself, I could do it myself.

That alone was worth the price of admission.

Again, don't get me wrong. I am not perfect. I just wasn't there for a quick fix. Although I did have to come up with something for one of the exercises and I chose going down stairs. The vision changes I experienced after the accident altered my depth perception. I also still have double vision in my right eye. This tends to make walking down steps a bit challenging. Before I found a Neuro-opthalmologist, which took over a year, I got in the habit of going down stairs like a blind person. As I lowered my foot onto the next step, I would "check" the location of the step with my heel, pushing it back against the upright of the step. In essence, I was feeling my way down the stairs. I also had a bad habit of looking down and always felt like I wasn't quite sure where my feet were going to land.

My goal during my turn as the client was: I want to go down stairs confidently and agilely.

That night after dinner, I burned off the extra calories by dashing up and down the fire stairs at the hotel.

Yes, I'm saying that it worked. It worked well. This isn't the cure for everything, but it sure seems like a valuable tool to put in my bag of future tricks. The other thing I took away from the weekend was the idea that there is no failure, only feedback. It's a good way to look at things. One that is important when dealing with life changing injuries and chronic illnesses.

When there is no failure, anything is possible.

Every Day A New Begining

This is the first day of my 39th year, a year I have determined will change the rest of my life. Naturally, you can say that about any year, any day, for that matter. But these changes will be, as much as possible, by choice. This is the year I will learn, or relearn, how my brain and body work.

In March of 2007 I was working in New Jersey and having completely my work for the day, decided to drive home to Pennsylvania a day early to meet my boyfriend for dinner. On the way home, less than five miles from my house, my car was struck by a truck driven by a drunk driver. He ran a red light and tried to beat me across the intersection. My Element was pushed up over the highway divider where it sheared off a sign, then skidded across two lanes of opposing traffic and into a parking lot where it came to rest in a planter against a sign for a printing company.

I suffered what I later learned was a Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, back, neck and shoulder injuries and a knee injury.

Up until that point I knew nothing about brain injuries. I thought you either scrambled your brains and became "retarded" or you healed. What I learned was that there is an enormous continuum of "Mild" brain injuries - alterations in thought, emotion, perception, feeling, motion and control that, although pervasive and disabling, are not considered "Severe".

For the past two years I have been fighting this condition, trying to "get over it" and "get well" and return to what my life was like before March 27, 2007.

This is the day that I stop trying.

This year will be my great experiment. This year I will begin a journey of, for lack of a better term, "Radical Acceptance." The task I propose for myself is one of exploration. Although I desperately wish it were otherwise, I cannot become what I was before this accident, this injury. My task during this year will be to explore the person I am NOW - to determine her strengths and weaknesses, and to try to embrace this person without wasting any more of my precious energy mourning what I used to be.

There will be changes. In order to truly become effective in this new incarnation, I need to find new ways of doing almost everything - cooking, cleaning, paying bills, working, making art, having relationships, etc.

Throughout my life I've always loved beginnings. Each new year, new semester, new project, offered the chance to begin again. This time I'm being forced to change. My own brain and body are demanding a completely new way of being. If I am to succeed and re-establish a workable and satisfying life, I need to restructure almost everything "from the ground up" so to speak.

In the coming year I will be changing my surroundings, adapting my home and workspace to my new requirements. I will be changing my relationships, and learning new ways to exist with my family, my friends, and myself. I will be changing the way I eat and exercise and care for myself. Hopefully, while making these more concrete changes I will also change the way I think and feel. That, I think is inevitable. I may even learn something before I'm done, and that, perhaps will make all the rest worthwhile.