TBI ANNIVERSARY NUMBER THREE COMING UP 11/1/06

Sunday is the third anniversary of my traumatic brain injury. Three years ago this Sunday, I escaped death once again. My car was violently slammed into a house, leaving a large hole in the foundation [through which one could jump into the basement], and I lived to complain about it.

Through my husband's nieces, I have been blessed with two grandnieces and two grandnephews. Grandniece #2 through no fault of her own had the misfortune of being born on the same date as my car accident and traumatic brain injury-- she was born later that same evening. Consequently, anniversary #1 and #2 post-tbi I had remained selfish and self-obsessed enough to refuse to attend her birthday parties.

This year anniversary #3 I decided that I have to live in this world and that the people of this world don't necessarily have to live in mine-- especially little grandnieces who really have nothing to do with my own struggles and regrets. The fact that she was born on an inconvenient day for me is nothing to her and ought to remain nothing to her--and perhaps even to my husband's family. Basically, we are really alone in our own skins. Thus, part of this whole adult thing is to be able to function in spite of the personal junk zipping through my internosphere at any given moment in time and not to inflict it upon the innocent bystanders around me.

I thought a few weeks ago that this tbi anniversary thing would not "mean anything to me this year." I thought wrong. Because it does. I have my regrets and some resentments that the help I got did not include tbi rehab nor any real help to be able to get back to working. Thus it is three years later and I appear to be no closer to becoming a productive self-supporting member of society.

Well, I know I cannot fix the past. Nor can I fix the local shithead VESID agency's
inability to deal with me nor mine to deal with VESID. Sometimes there is a price
to pay for being non-pliable. That price is once again for me to really have to
knuckle down and do much of my own work without oversight or "help" from the
professional vocational rehabilitational businessites. Consequently, I am forced
to handle my own anxieties and doubts about this whole work thing instead of
having the insane luxury of thinking that some VESIDite with a sterile safe life is going to "fix this."

Finding professional cheerleaders to be highly overrated, I am thereby committed
to making my own way. That is a bit old at this point. And yet, I cannot live
any other way. That is the reality of it all. We can all walk together on parts of
our individual journeys thru this life. But no one can walk for me nor I for anyone else. Thus, I find comfort in knowing that I have some really good friends and yet as a grown-up, I still have to retain responsibility for my life decisions.

This year, I will endeavor to re-connect to my sense of self-efficacy as I continue up the road of healing tbi.

sapphoq healing tbi