THE SWEETNESS OF BRAIN DAMAGE
There is a certain sweetness in being brain damaged. Its like waking into a new world, as surreal and incomprehensible as finding yourself in a place you've never seen before, as abstract as being on another planet or being an observer during the time the dinosaurs walked the earth.
It feels like you have nothing in common with your surroundings, don't speak the language, can't understand what you're seeing. You're caught between wonder & absolute terror & you spend every waking moment searching for something - a word, a thought, a memory - anything to remind you of who you are, what you used to be. The beauty of it all was understanding words; fear, resentment, anger, pain, despair, among others, and not remembering what those things felt like or ever suffering the effects of them.
If I had known what was in store, I would have done anything I could to have stayed in this safe & ignorant fugue state. There's something to be said about not knowing any better, not needing to look outside of my small world, not needing any answers & not even being aware that there might be some questions.
A part of me wanted to hold on to that sweetness forever. I wanted to forget there was something and someone locked inside of me, someone who did, indeed, know better, who had no sins, no regrets, no ghosts waiting to haunt what was left of me, no demons waiting for that first hint of insight & cognition.
THE CURSE OF COGNITION
I knew that sweetness was over, long gone, when pieces of my past started coming back. It was like looking down at a corpse you don't recognize and seeing you have blood on your hands or finding yourself on death row knowing but not remembering you've committed the most heinous of crimes. I'll never forget looking at my hands, clean as they were & looking around this brain injury unit I had been in for the past two weeks & thinking, " Oh my God, What have I done? "
For the life of me, I couldn't remember anything horrible or evil, didn't think I was one of those people who intentionally did things out of harm or bad intention. From that point where I knew there was something that brought me here, each piece of cognition hit me like a sledgehammer to my soul.
My very first thought was realizing I had never looked my precious brother Gary in the eye & told him how much I loved him, how much he had helped me before he died. Like flipping through a stack of baseball cards, hundreds of memories flashed before me, each one an opportunity I missed when I could have done so.
Each flash, each picture that appeared showed me an example of the boy, the man he had been, the kindnesses and unconditional love and loyalty he had shown me; the cruise he had taken me on after an illness, the day I graduated from beauty school & he had taken the time from his busy schedule to see me clock out that last time, the night I got my 30 day chip at an AA meeting.
The more I remembered, the deeper my heart sank. How in the world could I have missed this? What kind of person could not cherish someone like Gary & taken just one chance, one moment to stop. look and give thanks? What kind of monster doesn't know an angel, a savior when he's been right in front of you for an entire lifetime?
It was far worse than I thought. There was so much more than blood on my hands. From what I could recall, my crimes were much greater than murder, more grave than any assault, any felony. In trying to answer 'what have I done?', there would be no way I would ever really know the depths of it. If I lived another 50 years, I could never understand any of it, never be able to look myself in the eye and not see anything worthy of redemption or peace.
t
Saturday, May 10, 2014
Friday, April 25, 2014
THE VEGETABLE GARDEN IN THE LOBBY
The Vegetable Garden in the Lobby
Two weeks into my stroke and in a rehab facility, I found myself in what I've come to call the vegetable garden in the lobby.
Although my body is destroyed, paralyzed on my left side and unable to do much more than think, sometimes I feel like I am still here, somehow. still alive. Yet again, I found myself in this lobby of the damned, my company profoundly brain damaged women. One they called 'Toady', who is in this thing resembling a hand truck and who spends every waking hour screaming bloody murder, and another woman, a de-animated Trish Takanawa from Family Guy who just stares out into space, drools and makes these ungodly noises with her throat. There's a few others there, equally unresponsive.
I looked from these women to myself and tried to find the common denominator, the reason why we were all grouped together again. I thought there had to be some mistake, that I was nothing like them, there was no connection except for where we were.
There was a sweet woman who worked behind the front desk in the lobby. She brings me my daily schedule for physical therapy every morning and always has a smile and a twinkle in her eyes when she sees me, something that showed me she sees me, that she sees past the diaper wearing, paralyzed woman in the wheelchair. She saw me looking over at her and came over to me, to ask me if there was anything she could do for me.
" Please," I asked her as clearly as I could, gesturing to my fellow 'plants' in the lobby, " I need to know what the common thread is, why we are grouped together every time I'm brought out here."
For the first time, I saw her smile fade, the twinkle dim and she looked away. With my one good arm, I reached up towards her. " Please! ", I pleaded, " I have to know, I need to know. "
" Forgive me," she answered, " We go by statistics. All the patients who have no phone calls, no visitors and no inquiring calls to the doctors are brought out to the lobby to help, so it wont seem like they're alone and have no one who cares. " She looked away and apologized again. I tried my best to smile and thank her.
For a moment, I thought of using my cell phone later to call my room, to make believe I was someone else who cared for me, that I was important enough for someone to want to talk to me, to try and fool the staff that somehow, someway, I mattered to someone, that I was worth a phone call and the time that took.
But that, in itself, seemed even more pathetic and tragic than finding myself in the vegetable garden for another day. I realized, were it not for this room, this garden, I would never have noticed this mirror that sees far beyond any looking glass I've ever seen. Maybe this was my secret garden and the reflection I was about to see has been my destiny all along.
Two weeks into my stroke and in a rehab facility, I found myself in what I've come to call the vegetable garden in the lobby.
Although my body is destroyed, paralyzed on my left side and unable to do much more than think, sometimes I feel like I am still here, somehow. still alive. Yet again, I found myself in this lobby of the damned, my company profoundly brain damaged women. One they called 'Toady', who is in this thing resembling a hand truck and who spends every waking hour screaming bloody murder, and another woman, a de-animated Trish Takanawa from Family Guy who just stares out into space, drools and makes these ungodly noises with her throat. There's a few others there, equally unresponsive.
I looked from these women to myself and tried to find the common denominator, the reason why we were all grouped together again. I thought there had to be some mistake, that I was nothing like them, there was no connection except for where we were.
There was a sweet woman who worked behind the front desk in the lobby. She brings me my daily schedule for physical therapy every morning and always has a smile and a twinkle in her eyes when she sees me, something that showed me she sees me, that she sees past the diaper wearing, paralyzed woman in the wheelchair. She saw me looking over at her and came over to me, to ask me if there was anything she could do for me.
" Please," I asked her as clearly as I could, gesturing to my fellow 'plants' in the lobby, " I need to know what the common thread is, why we are grouped together every time I'm brought out here."
For the first time, I saw her smile fade, the twinkle dim and she looked away. With my one good arm, I reached up towards her. " Please! ", I pleaded, " I have to know, I need to know. "
" Forgive me," she answered, " We go by statistics. All the patients who have no phone calls, no visitors and no inquiring calls to the doctors are brought out to the lobby to help, so it wont seem like they're alone and have no one who cares. " She looked away and apologized again. I tried my best to smile and thank her.
For a moment, I thought of using my cell phone later to call my room, to make believe I was someone else who cared for me, that I was important enough for someone to want to talk to me, to try and fool the staff that somehow, someway, I mattered to someone, that I was worth a phone call and the time that took.
But that, in itself, seemed even more pathetic and tragic than finding myself in the vegetable garden for another day. I realized, were it not for this room, this garden, I would never have noticed this mirror that sees far beyond any looking glass I've ever seen. Maybe this was my secret garden and the reflection I was about to see has been my destiny all along.
THE PRICE OF ADMISSION
THE PRICE OF ADMISSION
In my dreams
I'm in an airplane
flying into the darkness
alone, shoeless
The walls of the plane
are painted bright red
with water running down them
hard and steady
like blood
falling from an open sky
The floor is covered in snow
there are no lights out the windows
it's cold
I'm holding my beating heart
in my own hands
as it turns to sand
and slips through my fingers
when I notice
there's a toll booth
up ahead.
10/30/2004
I wrote that years ago, when I knew there would be a day when I would have to pay for my sins. I never thought my price would be so high or my penance could ever be so great, my insight behind it so blindingly clear, that I would find myself where I am now.
There's no way to defend myself, nothing to justify any of it, no chance to find peace or redemption, to find just one solitary thing to hold on to to give my life meaning. It's a brutal, horrifying lesson to be taught what would happen if you died while you were still alive, to know that you have made no difference and left no void.
I found out about myself - and owned it two weeks after having a massive right hemisphere stroke, leaving me paralyzed, unable to speak correctly, sight and thoughts compromised, unable to even sit up without falling over. It was truly my lowest, darkest point ever.
I was placed in a sub-acute rehab hospital, well known for its intensive brain injury program. It only took me a short time to realize what kind of place I was in and how profoundly damaged and impaired I was. The unit was like The Snake Pit, with screaming and yelling, lots of noise and chaos. The most evident was how absolutely alone and abandoned I was, how different I felt and how unfamiliar just being seemed. I often wondered if I was the only one who knew I was still alive.
Every day, my roommate's family and friends visited. Every day, she was brought lunch, dinner, books, gifts, coffee. For hours I would hear them talking, telling stories, reading, laughing. And every day I wondered where my family and friends were. I was taken to the Vegetable Garden in the Lobby and I understood.
In my dreams
I'm in an airplane
flying into the darkness
alone, shoeless
The walls of the plane
are painted bright red
with water running down them
hard and steady
like blood
falling from an open sky
The floor is covered in snow
there are no lights out the windows
it's cold
I'm holding my beating heart
in my own hands
as it turns to sand
and slips through my fingers
when I notice
there's a toll booth
up ahead.
10/30/2004
I wrote that years ago, when I knew there would be a day when I would have to pay for my sins. I never thought my price would be so high or my penance could ever be so great, my insight behind it so blindingly clear, that I would find myself where I am now.
There's no way to defend myself, nothing to justify any of it, no chance to find peace or redemption, to find just one solitary thing to hold on to to give my life meaning. It's a brutal, horrifying lesson to be taught what would happen if you died while you were still alive, to know that you have made no difference and left no void.
I found out about myself - and owned it two weeks after having a massive right hemisphere stroke, leaving me paralyzed, unable to speak correctly, sight and thoughts compromised, unable to even sit up without falling over. It was truly my lowest, darkest point ever.
I was placed in a sub-acute rehab hospital, well known for its intensive brain injury program. It only took me a short time to realize what kind of place I was in and how profoundly damaged and impaired I was. The unit was like The Snake Pit, with screaming and yelling, lots of noise and chaos. The most evident was how absolutely alone and abandoned I was, how different I felt and how unfamiliar just being seemed. I often wondered if I was the only one who knew I was still alive.
Every day, my roommate's family and friends visited. Every day, she was brought lunch, dinner, books, gifts, coffee. For hours I would hear them talking, telling stories, reading, laughing. And every day I wondered where my family and friends were. I was taken to the Vegetable Garden in the Lobby and I understood.
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