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22 February ChangePart of my family once lived on a bay. When the tides changed, something I know little about, I would always imagine a slight whirl or at least a still moment in the water before it changed directions. Right now I feel both within me. I feel a change coming on but am still and at times a bit restless. My normal response to this feeling would be to feel frightened or flip to some fad extreme of something. This time though, I'm riding it out with interest.
I have been allowing myself some time this time in between assignments (Feb. is normally slow) to do whatever my body seems to think it needs. If I am hungry, I eat; tired, I sleep; energetic, I stretch; creative, draw terribly; upset, cry; happy, laugh; quiet, I turn off the phone and hybernate; social ... and so forth. I do this without judgement. That's a first. I have been driven to find "normal" for so long that all I did was beat myself up and sway from one extreme to the other.
I have fallen asleep at night as early as 7 pm and loved waking as early as 5 am. One weekend, I slept off and on the whole time. A friend asked about depression and I blew it off. Maybe I was depressed, maybe just tired, but I didn't feel like putting a name to it (maybe that is denial). If it was depression, then no biggy. I got through it. Oddly and somewhat interestingly, my body has since been finding its own rhythm. I had not allowed this before as I was in a push and pull with my stamina and fatigue - a thing that has shifted since being hurt or getting older. Typically I am so pleased when I have energy that I overdo it and then crash. Listening to my body I realize that I need the naps I have been encouraged to take by doctors. Naps that are taken before getting completely wiped out - which seemed riduculous to me before. Normally I would get overtired, frustrated and hit the "wall of not being able to think another thought" and crawl into bed mad at myself. I dislike napping feeling that I am lazy and "missing" time. A cycle I easily fall into is to push until exhaustion (which can come up so quickly at times) and then end up in bed for an enitre day rather than regulating it. This I would find completely depressing and frustrating.
Since my sleep was so sporatic and either excessive or non-existant, I have had trouble figuring out when to eat. For the first time in forever I am now eating three square meals, if I allow for an early afternoon nap. I can actually feel a metabolism!
On the wings of what feels like changing direction, I am also considering different assignments in the future. I have been in an envelope and need to push myself a bit and hope to do another larger photographic project. I have so many interests that at times it is easy to not pick any in particular as a field of focus. I believe there is a time when you "just do it" and get going. This, if wrong pathwise, will eventually lead to another path and a choice can be made. It is easy to forget that decisions need not always feel set in stone. There is great comfort sometimes in feeling the concrete feeling of something, but I am learning that sometimes "just a hunch" is a good thing. I have never "let" myself or given myself the permission to drift a bit. I HAVE BEEN DRIFTING/SWIMMING/KICKING - but I have been fighting what feels like a tide the whole way.
So today and for a little bit, I am going to try to just ride with the tide willingly enjoying it while appreciating the opportunites that I find along the way. It is a different feeling but I am willing to try it. The fact that I seeked so much control over so many uncontrollables was and is frustrating. It is hard to tell the difference sometimes. Letting go is actually not feeling like quitting as I feared it might, instead it feels like a whole new beginning of new things that I can try. Right now I am in the stillness, but I feel the tide changing and don't mind, in fact, I look forward to it. A contentment that I haven't felt in awhile and a feeling that soon I will be enjoying new horizons and rushing along in a great exploration of some kind. Remembering to nap, of course!
11 February GraciouslyThere are things I forget and I know we all forget. With a brain injury, I feel much like a child parenting herself and occasionally looking back and thinking,"Whew, how the heck did I manage to get through that one alive?" If there was any doubt in my mind about a higher power, it gets wiped out by knowing that someone/thing was seriously looking out for me sometimes. Other times, I am filled with panic at the idea that I could have gotten through a time or an event being so unaware. It feels a bit as if I have slept-walked across a six-lane highway and awaken on the other side. I stand in the breeze of the rushing cars and thank God that somehow someone was paying attention. Was it me at all? Every once in awhile I get blasted by a horn midway through, like this morning - I go through my mail and come across a doctors report from some tests. I have a cut/scratch/tear in my throat said the test and need to go back to the doctors - the only problem is is that the letter is from November! Ahh. It specifically worries me but also what else have I forgotten? It freaks me out a bit.
Memory and awareness seem to come and go, a bit like an ratherly elderly person it feels like, I guess. I have witnessed older people forget something and I watch them bite their lip as if frustrated and concerned, but not wanting to mention it.
It is a grey day. A grey Sunday. I love days like this. There is a hush to things and a sense that everything is moving slowly. I have an openning to photograph tonight and it will feel as if I have been catipulted by rocket into bright lights and fussing. Conversations that go round and round, remembering names, smiling, and acting like I don't mind. I don't sometimes, sometimes everthing just whirls me away and I am swept up by it. Someone I know will laugh at how easy and "fun" I make it look. When I get home I collapse for two days (if there isn't another shoot -if there is I will get it done somehow or not).
When I think about my recovery I am amazed that I made it through. There were many stretches of times that I don't remember anyone and I know I forgot to eat, but how did I do other stuff? For instance, I can remember one place I stayed at and have no idea where or when I did my laundry. Gosh! I know it isn't life-threatening but did I not do laundry for a year? I must have reeked!! ugh! I remember buying underwear so don't be ultra grossed out but mega grossed out might be appropriate.
I remember one time getting into a cab and saying, "food." This concerned him and I couldn't explain it any better than that so he took me to Dunkin Dounuts and watched me eat a dounut and questioned me about the ER. That's all I remember. I lost a lot of weight in that year. I remember being about 95 pounds and I remember the boys looking at me. Boys I had known were suddenly asking me out. I hated them for that - not then but now - then I think the attention was a blessing in disguise. Although one boy ended up stealing my medicine. I remember another one though who picked me up at outpatient rehab.
I am lucky I didn't get shoved into the system or something though. Can't imagine what my life might be like. This way I was forced to figure somethings out and not have people telling me what I could and couldn't do. Although a little of that could be a good thing. Not that it is anyone's responsibility but mine, but it freaks me out to forget things...though we all do (which is what people constantly tell me if I admit that I forget things).
But there are amazing things that make me realize that God really never does leave us. There were "innate" things, I can't think of another term, but things I didn't know to do that I did that got me through. The way I wanted to draw though I had never really drawn before - this helped keep my mind working and hand-eye coordination. Also it helped my memory. It is amazing how our inner spirits know what is best. I believe that now more than ever. I can honestly say that "whatever" that guiding force is, is what has gotten me through some of the most basic levels as well the harder ones to survive. By surviving, I don't just mean living, I mean these small but defining decisions that we make without really realizing it. I try to remember these miracles when I get scared or feel like I am drowning.
Today I feel overwhelmed and tired and don't know how I will make it through work. On the other hand, to miss work, to lose the jobs that I get, would make me fearful of darn near disappearing. I swear that work is the only reason that I am here. Without it, I feel like I would disappear into that time before it, where there was no night and no day, there was just...space. There was something intriguingly childlike about that time. At the same moment, there is no going back there, I cry at the thought. UGH listen to me! I gotta get it together... , I feel grateful for what I have. I am going to kick some ass today.
10 February Being different ????Well, the last entry seems a bit of a breakdown! I'm fine. Actually I was just venting. You know one of my last really close friends is getting married soon and I always get a little weirded out about my own love life when this happens. It sounds selfish, and I suppose it is though I don't mean for it to be; I just MISS some of my friends. It changes, if you met them when they were single, it changes; if you met them when they are already married, it therefore obviously stays as it is. Now my best friends are already married and thank God! I do adore my best friends here in this town. They are the greatest and like sisters to me. I feel so lucky to know them. But I do miss some of the people who have "disappeared" into matrimony. I am happy for them though if they are happy. There might be something wrong with me though in that I don't necessarily want to be married. Actually I can't really imagine it at all.
Someone asked me the other day if I wasn't bipolar. I go through extreme times with my photography work of being around people and being in different situations all the time, that on my own time, I do my own things. On a free night one of my most favorite things to do is read a book by myself and turn the phone off in my room. I draw, paint, doodle. I'll turn on classical music and get lost in colors and making something on canvas. I might nap then wake up in the middle of the night and then sleep til noon. If someone knocks on my door, I feel like a teenager or something! Honestly I think I have become 13 again. I even have an eye-roll down to perfection.
Lots of times I feel sick - either fatigue and exhaustion which seem to be followed by a headache - this has been since the brain injury so I assume that it is related. It is one of the reasons that I prefer night to day sometimes and adore the quiet that early hours bring. But around high noon I feel aggrivated at the sun and tired to tears. Photography as a career is the best for me due to making my own hours pretty much. IF I think about being married I imagine that this type of lifestyle would freak out anyone that really knew me. in fact I am reading a book about a child and the child is freaked out by her mother --- might I say who I "get" completely. That IS frightening me sort of.
I feel odd being in such a "different" place in life than the people around me. It seems that my roadmap won't cross theirs, though they are kind. I listen to conversations about house morgages and still feel like the teenager at the table. I can't believe that they are my age! Watching a group of moms sip wine and discuss kitchen tile the other night with vigor, I couldn't discern if I was confused, envious, uninteresteed, or frighteningly feeling so very far removed - I swear I used to be "in common" with them - it wasn't just the topics of conversation -- it was the lines of thought as well or something. I'm not being judgemental - if anything I am being judgemental of myself not them - I was the alien.
I guess one has to answer to their own life - am I happy? Yes. It just feels like a different road than the people around me AND I guess that that is okay. It feels a little weird though. But ? I guess it is just that it doesn't feel like I chose it...it feels like it chose me. Is that normal? I know, what is normal? but I guess it is just something I think about. Like a 13 year old! :) ...31, 13, 130. And I am moody, isn't everyone really?
07 February Lost LovesIt seems ridiculous. How could I age ten years, have a brain injury and return to an old town to fall in love with the same person who was wrong for me so very long ago? What is that? Some kind of reinforcement? Some kind of... despite what life has dealt me I will see if I attract the same people, no matter, if they are the one I want? And why? Is it genuine? Is it some sort of test to see if I am the one that was once who I was? To feel alright? And what if I am not? does that make me? what? Does it make me less if we have gone different ways? How can you love someone and not be on a similiar path - and will that path anyway stay the same regardless? And what does make it different and is that justified? And how far should one go to become their former selves - brain injury or no? I mean spiritiually how far do you keep your past relationships? When does love become not love but conquering something? and if conquering is too strong of a word than maybe I mean "having what one thought they wanted?" And when is okay to just let that go? To let those past things go as unknown and un-undesrstood as foreign as a counrty that I have never visited? And how, sometimes I wonder, what it would have been like if I had gone somewhere else - would I never have to know what I know now. Being brain injured, and am I better off in the long run somehow? Is this rather what I was to live, learn and share? I am surprised by the highs and lows - the way that life can seem so spectacular and then so very .... "well just life." -and that in and of itself is specatacular after almost losing it. How does one get used to such an amazing gift???? There is this weirdness of wanting too much from this lucky chance and accepting too little at the same time. Does that make ANY sense????????? And I open to my favorite book before sleeping and start with the sentence... "life is a matter of passion..."
and if in that matter of passion I have found a new love...photography - where light and life come together to express feeling. where maybe I can reach beyond myself to find....something? 06 February Some New CalmI am feeling a bit better - actually better than I have been in a really really long time.
I have been reading a book given to me by a friend called, Health and Science by Mary Baker Eddy, along with this she gave me the book Healing Spiritually. (It is part of the Christian Science denomination, but I don't believe in denominations and when it was written in the 1870's by note, a woman, it was written actually for all denominations). Anyway here's what happened...
For a while now I have been doing somewhat of a "church tour" - I like going to different churches and listening. I hadn't done this for awhile but recently I did go to a church that had a message that confused me. I had been having panic feelings before I went to the new church and afterwards I felt more uneasiness.
It was as if I couldn't get comfortable in my own skin and things and thoughts were really bothering me. I admitted to a friend of mine casually my panic feelings when we happenned to be talking about something else, my church experience and general things. She asked me what my fears were. When I told her that I was scared of death and sickness and being alone at times - but that I wasn't sure if that was what was causing this panic because none of those things were happening in the present moment - but I felt scared as if they were.
My friend is one of those people who appears to have things pretty figured out - has a great outlook and handles situations calmly. There have been many situations when I look at her startled at her abilities and she looks at me startled when I freeze up in panic. I often think in my head what would "M." do? She is that much of a role model in life and in her ways.
I had dropped off some work for her and on her office desk there was a note for me - it was about fear and saying "no" to it - to imagine a cup filled with goodness and too full for worry. It was a kind and non-judgemental note from someone I admired and to my further admiration she admitted to learning these things because she too can be a "worrier" and has learned to keep it in check. When she looked at me, she understood, and when I looked at her, I was amazed. Beside the note was the book, Healing Spiritually and I asked about it. She said I could take it if I wanted. I openned immediately to a page about depression. A couple hundred pages and I open up to a page that applies to me and speaks to me and immediately makes me look at things in a new perspective!!
The book quotes often Mary Baker Eddy's book which she wrote in 1870 - it is just her perspectives and they are interesting. I love to read. There are things in the books that I feel like wow yep I agree with that and other things that I agree with a little but not totally and I think that is healthy. I think people's realtionship with God, Higher Power, and/or the universe is personal - I do think that love is the answer though. I think that life is forgiving and good. I think that everything that happens we learn from. I think there are mistakes and accident. I think we are incredibly resilient and have this strength within us from where-ever we come from and where-ever we go. I think that we all have a spirit that makes us us. Despite what life changes or what we go through I believe that that spirit remains as beautiful as the day we were given it and that nothing - nothing - can take it away from us.
I also am learning and I like this book because it does also empower one with the responsibility of making choices. It isn't easy to make choices...sometimes I actually think about how great it would be to have someone calling the shots! But the thing is is that it feels hard but good to feel like I have choices - choosing to worry or choosing to learn to trust the good and appreciate it more. I could argue here that I feel like I do both - but I almost feel sometimes that I am appreciating the good almost out of superstition and that is not truly enjoying the moments - that is just "scared thanking" I guess I will term it. So the new thing really is to choose not to worry and to really LOOK at the good. An empty thanks is nothing but a habit - a true thanks can be felt in the heart.
There are some habits that I have learned since youth. I have always carried around a sense of guilt. A sense that I can find no root for but feels like ivy that chokes me up sometimes. A lack of self-respect or self-worth that made me feel almost unworthy of true happiness. I was reading the healing book and reading about addiction and there was this quote from Science and Health, "We should relieve our minds from the depressing thought that we have transgressed a material law and must of necessity pay the penalty. Let us reassure ourselves with the law of Love." I have felt so very small at times that I did not believe that I deserved love. I thought if I was good enough ie: "if I payed the penalty", that I could try to be better. I am learning that the God I believe in is about Love. And that that spririt may just love me as I am and though I didn't believe it maybe always has.
I am learning. I don't know why I share this - maybe to share love - maybe to those of you who may feel panic and might feel some of the relief that I have learned to feel this week. The relief is so beautiful. I think that I thought if I stopped worrying that something would go terribly wrong...my friend in a sense by giggling with me that I would try to be "worry-free" for a couple of days was like someone giving me permission to put down all the baggage that wasn't helping me or anyone -if anything it was in the way of me doing more). I needed that permission. If you need that same sense than please let me loan you mine! I have worried less and nothing that wouldn't have happened didn't happen any differently!
When I was in my accident, I was singing "One Fine Day" on the radio by Natilie Merchant. I was smiling right up until the moment I saw what I saw. For awhile that sort of freaked me out. How blissfully unaware I was. But here is where I choose - if I were to get hurt today would I have wanted to spend the last week worrying about it OR would I have wanted to experience joy, love and happiness and making wise decisions as best I could? That last part about wise decsions I added at the last moment - being worry-free does not mean to me that I want to be or am free of responsibility or don't have choices to make that may be hard or difficult - what it means is that I don't want to get into the "spin of worry" that makes me freeze up and makes me unproductive and really afraid.
I have made it a couple of days and plan on continuing. It is a bit unnerving. I feel so "attached" to "worry" like it has become a "safe" friend or something. I now realize that this is a habit.
Wishing you all love. |
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