it is still

Below are comments from the last post. I wanted to bring a little more attention to them because as Mike deals with the nice pretty gifts that accompany self awareness; low self-esteem, depression, doubt, fear, regret, anger, frustration and it only gets prettier. I thought it was important to bring it to the surface. We will NEVER understand what this is like for him and for others who must live the rest of their lives with an injury to their brains. It not only changes who you are forever, it shakes the very foundation of your being. There is no escaping it. There is only learning to cope and compensate. It is still in the silence of knowing and then not being able to be the person you know. Still in the silence.

Nate

Sep 14, 2009 at 1:52 pm

sounds more like transitive – If a = b and b = c, then a = c( I had to look that up btw ).

But, Im sure there are plenty of other equations that you can apply to the situation.

Alex

Sep 20, 2009 at 12:35 pm

Hi Mike, just dropping by, and had a thought. Your progress = brain fitness. In three weeks I will be running a half marathon in London. I ran one at the end of July, so I know I can run a half marathon, because I’ve done it before, right? Trouble is, what with the children’s summer holidays/limited childcare/getting overtaken by life….I haven’t done any training since I ran my last race. I think that much of what you get frustrated by with your mother is stuff you know that you can do – because you’ve done it before. (I remember you telling me when I asked about your empty journal pages – I can fill them in, I just haven’t) But I think you will know as well as I do that if I’m going to put in a half decent performance in October’s race I can’t sit back admiring my last race medal, I need to get out there and put the miles in to build fitness. Even if I know I’ve done it before.

Mike (it’s him)

Sep 23, 2009 at 12:59 pm

No Alex (lieutenant), of course you’re right again. I don’t think so. I know that the fat unemployed loser who lives at home again, the person I’ve become. Just because I can talk a good game in no way means that I can necessarily walk that same game. I just feel I have to somehow keep my spirits up and sometimes I do so by making myself sound maybe a little better than I actually am currently.

rae

Sep 23, 2009 at 7:08 pm

Welcome to the world of it doesn’t have to make sense. Mike, you and I have weekly discussions about perception. Perception isn’t always reality but perception can become your reality if you’re not careful.

Perception – a person’s knowledge creates his reality as much as the truth, because the human mind can only contemplate what it has been exposed to. When you see things without understanding, the mind tries to reach for something that it already recognizes, in order to process what it is viewing. So what most closely relates to the unfamiliar from our past experiences, makes up what we see when we look at things that we don’t comprehend

With that in mind, let’s take the accident out. If this were your life as you described above, of course you would not be happy. No accident, no injury living at home, not working hitting 200 lbs…yeah, you would call/think of yourself a loser. But it was real. As much as we all wish it didn’t happen to you, it did.

Do you understand that you live at home because you were in a horrible accident and what you lost on Oct, 21, 2007 on I66 is not an easy recover? Yes. Do you understand that you may not be an employee but the job you have now holds more responsibility and more commitment than any other job you have or will ever hold? Yes. Do you understand that every function, yes, EVERY function is controlled by your brain, including your metabolism and that extreme fatigue comes absolutely free with an injury to your brain? Yes, you know that. Do you understand that a loser would not have the strength, the will, the courage to not be JUST a survivor and would not have the determination to overcome this “f’d” up thing that happened? Yes, you know this. But does the reality of it all become too much to look in the face some days? Yes and because of that, it is totally ok to make yourself sound and feel like a fricking superhero if that’s what it takes to get through the day.

Take Alex’s advise. You know it’s true…you have to put in the miles and you do. But here’s the error…if your perception is that you’re unemployed and live at home again = loser, your perception is wrong. You have not been here before. You haven’t done this before. Yes, you’ve walked, read a book, played games, learned to play a musical instrument before, but you’ve never done it with an injury to your brain so severe, that doctors said you would probably be a vegetable. Sorry Mike. You’re not a loser. You’re a survivor. A survivor of something so devastating that most would not have the inner strength to persevere. You’re a soldier and this is the mother of all marathons.