Places

That excitement of finding new places or re-finding old ones.
Pieces of me scattered in places I had never been.
I set off in April alone to find those pieces and indeed
they have been found. I knew. Never any doubt or question.

In my brain, I have snapshots of the many places I've been.
Places I have loved and places of tragedy or apathy.
Sacred places and places that have lost their holiness to me.
I have lived and loved and died many times over.

I have always been able to navigate through fairly well even those cities which I've visited after lapses of decades.
I remember how to get around neighborhoods and I can still see houses, apartments, stores, trees.
There are very few maps in my world; and very little need to ask strangers for directions.
An acute sense of direction combined with almost no sense of distance and a marked indifference to time.
Time leaks onto the fabric of the pages of my life,
muddying the words therein. I can still sing the words and I do.
I can read upsidedown with no problem.
I can write with two hands in various combinations of left, right, forward, backwards, rightsideup, upsidedown.
These things I have always taken for granted.
A long list of "Can't everyone?"

Just like the phone numbers from childhood and the addresses I can still recall.
First memory-- learning how to walk. And the revelation of a secret tryst inherent.
I was on the second floor of a house being encouraged by an old Italian man with missing fingers
to walk around the coffee table with no hands to steady me.
That old Italian man turned out to be the father of my step-father.
That is how old the affair of my mother and step-father was.
She was still married to my dad at the time.
From that memory, I understood how the two of them had met.
My mother had happened to hire an old Italian woman as a babysitter.

Odd. Almost everyone with a traumatic brain injury winds up with deficits in memory.
I am not one of those. I tested in the 99th percentile in both working and long-term.
My t.b.i.-er friends all tell me that they can't remember. I can't forget.

I did forget for a time who I was before my brain injury.
I could not describe my self pre-bonk.
And then random memories of my life began to return at random times.
Not anything I'd been counting on or even expected to happen.
More memories to add to an already bulging mental scrapbook.

Oh, I did forget how to cook.
The burnt pot of wilted herbs in a smoky kitchen told me so.
Cooking, like so many other things now, not automatic pilot.

I cannot take much for granted.
No. Having walked with death, I've been catapulted into life.
Vision like a permanent acid trip took some getting used to.
The world was too fast. I got used to my own pace, my own music.
I've "adjusted." Those who say otherwise know not of what they speak.
Yes, today I can describe my character traits before the accident.
Today, that doesn't feel important.

My mother told me when I was moving out, "You can never go home again."
I thought that meant she would not take me back in. I was too traumatized to care.
She had lost me through her abuse years before I was able to leave her house.

I understood a different meaning to not going home again many years later.
That people and places change, that my memories of those people and places
were expected to dull to inaccuracy, that returning does not render magical healing of heartbreak.
She was wrong.
So fundamentally wrong
in ways that I cannot explain and don't want to.

I have gone home again.
To places where I had never been before.

spike

spike manifesto

I am spike. I am who I am and not who you want me to be. I was never good at being what you wanted me to be and now I am even worse at it. So I gave that up. I have my own way of being, my own dreams. I have my own timetable. What you think I should be able to do by now means nothing in my world. I am healing. I am experiencing a remarkable albeit slow recovery process. Nothing is automatic anymore. Being on manual overdrive is the way it is for me now. I march, skip, dance, and fly to the beat of my own steel drum band.

I am spike. I don't "look" disabled. Casual observers do not recognize my double vision in one eye or my physical pain or my expressive aphasia which I have learned to work around. Only doctors note the hyper-reflexia and the ocular-motor dysfunction, sleep apnea and sometimes the fatigue that plagues me. I take naps almost daily. When I don't, I fall more on uneven ground. I don't like falling. So I've learned to manage my energy and to take naps. I can be a citizen of the universe on those days when I am not screaming with fatigue. On days when I exist in a swirl of fatigue, I need solitude and rest. I am comfortable with my own company. This is my brain, my life. Not yours.

I am spike. I do not care much for instructions on standards or how to behave properly or things like that. I compare myself to myself, not to some impossible standard of normalcy. I know that there is much to be said for blending in, for fitting in when and where I am able to. The world does not owe me a living. I intend to work at something just as soon as I can. Try hard to remember that a traumatic brain injury diagnosis means no open machinery, period. That test for factory work that you are dieing to give me is not going to happen. I cannot do it. I am not equipped to work in a factory. Nor am I able to stand on my feet cashiering. Any ability I had to multi-task is dead. I have not given up on myself. I am my own best advocate, not you. You are someone who is being paid to offer a service. I don't engage in false displays of admiration and gratitude when you the professional "helper" finally do something that is in your job description. You don't get to live vicariously off my back any longer.

I am spike. Do not tell me that "mind matters" or show me your stupid green rubber bracelet. I am not placated by meaningless empty platitudes. Do not tell me that you "know" what or how I feel unless you have had to have three sets of six very long needles stuck into the back of your skull in order to ease the severe constant t.b.i.-induced headache. We are all alone in our own skins. You better hope and pray with all the fervor that you possess that you never have to deal with the things I've had to face in the past almost three years. You may not be able to get through it as well as I have.

I am spike. I cannot bend. My body doesn't allow it. When I am able to work on the garden or rip up carpeting, I have to do it my own way-- sitting. Do not criticize my lack of speed unless you are willing to offer your help. I am not emotionally invested in doing anything because you say I should or at your whim. This is the way of it. I am also not interested in hearing any wangst about "how difficult it is to live with [someone who has] a t.b.i." I don't complain loudly about how hard it is to live with a neuro-typical. Take your wangst to a support group for families and friends. I claim my right not to listen to it and not to get caught up in it. I have no time for bullshit.

I am spike. I am not interested in your pity or your displays of affection. I do not want to be swallowed in your vampiric bear hugs or have the life sucked out of me by your neediness. I have no energy to spare. I don't care for your crises or your drama. If you cannot relate to me friend to friend, I will reject your overtures. Anger is my truest friend. If you are afraid of my anger, chances are that any interconnection between us will be limited. If you are looking to get me "healed" of my anger or want to convert me to your religion or your way of being, save your breath. If you want to be my friend, you must remember that I am living on borrowed time. Those of us who have a nodding acquaintance with Death are forever changed. I offer no apologies for my attitude. I am not a t.b.i. I am spike. I can be a great friend. Or I can leave you in the dust as I and my dog go wandering off into the sunset happily.

I am spike.

sapphoq healing t.b.i.

Hints for Living

I declare myself inspired by both
ranting dyke: http://ranting-dyke.insanejournal.com/
and tigresslilly: http://tigresslilly.insanejournal.com/ .
Kudos and thanks.

Hints for survival while employed by a human servitude agency:

1. Keep looking for another more saner job. Sanity of existence is one benefit that you will never hear about at your human servitude agency. Sanity of existence is priceless.

2. Don't go to office parties or dinners unless you wish to be accosted by the c.e.o who absolutely must dance with you while the d.j. is playing "It's Your Thang. Do what you want to do..." and experience him shaking his thang. Alcohol does not account for all random acts of bad behavior.

3. Remember that you have a life. The other workers do not know this. Keep it up front. Say no to overtime. If you never say no, then your yesses won't mean anything at all.

4. The people you work with and for are not your buddies. When push comes to shove, they will rat you out in order to gain brownie points. Anyone who says, "Trust no one here. Except for me." upon first introductions should be watched.

5. You are expendable. When you wind up in a car wreck, the human servitude agency will quickly forget that you too are human. Instead, they will call you and argue with you about meaningless paperwork when you are sleeping 20 hours a day because now you have a traumatic brain injury. They will also fax you a safety committee form to the place where your mate works. The form will ask, "How can this accident be avoided in the future?" Knowing that the answer is something akin to, "Ensure that all those who get stoned are picked up by the magic bus instead of being allowed behind the wheel of an automobile," give the paper to your lawyer so he can promptly lose it. When you are down and out, the human servitude agency will not watch your back. You are an insurance
liability now. All insurance companies wish you would go away or drop dead and so does your former employer.


Hints for getting over your loss of a career after a bad car wreck and traumatic brain injury:

1. The helping agency which is supposed to help you get gainful employment that you can do is also a human servitude agency. Remember that. Do not allow any organization or person to take control of your life and how it's gonna be. Advocate for you. There is a high probability that no one else there will.

2. Get rid of toxicity, especially toxic people wherever and whenever you can. They are a strain on the brain. Become involved in disability culture instead.

3. To badly paraphrase the folks at http://www.biausa.org/aboutbi.htm , life is different after a traumatic brain injury. It is still very much a life. Celebrate life.

4. Surround yourself with cute doctors. Fire all ugly docs and replace them with eye candy. When you don't feel well anyways, pretty helps immensely.

5. You are not expendable. You are sacred. Remember this always.


9/11 came and went. I woke up wanting to cry. It is six years later. I grieve for all of us having to live on this planet and trying to kill each other off.

9/08 came and went. 9/8 is my birthday but not the day I was born in a hospital. I have been free from active drug addiction [including the drug alcohol] since 9/8/80.

sapphoq healing t.b.i.