Connectivity

January 24, 2013 //
4

Even in the digital age, we are each having our own experience.

I know I’m having my own experience, because so much of it is entirely unshared, and in some cases perhaps even un-shareable. By the end of 2012 I was well on my way to a full collapse of my understanding of myself, emotionally, intellectually, philosophically, even historically.  Choices that once seemed obvious, had become questionable beyond the point of my own ability to consider the questions with clarity, my anxiety had become unmanageable, an event in the news hit my consciousness and destroyed a big piece of my everyday understanding of my sexuality, my hormones march ever onward toward menopause, and new information about my own experience came to light, leaving me confused and introspective as I entered the new year. What a new year it has been, so far… If the value of time and events is measured in their intensity, impact, and significance, then 2013 may well prove to be one of the most important years of my life…my life. My experience. I rather doubt that most people around me have any real awareness of my internal turmoil, even my partners. They are also having their own experiences.

I find it complicated when I work on my priorities, my goals, or try to identify my needs and wants in a clear and simple way because, although I am having my own experience, I am at least somewhat aware that my experience has elements shared with others. Our perspectives may differ, probably do differ, but those common elements become the foundation stones of shared understanding, conversation, emotional bonding, and a feeling of being connected. I like feeling connected, but it doesn’t always come easily to me. Lately, I often have difficulties feeling connected, even in very close relationships. The easy course of action is to attribute the difficulty to the challenge of the moment, whatever that may be, but when I’m honest with myself it is bigger than that, and needs my attention.

49 seems like an appropriate age for an identity crisis, I guess… but how does one connect with someone who isn’t sure who they are? I find myself wondering – acknowledging? – that it must be very hard on people who love me, and I manage a moment of sympathy and concern, before my mental nail-biting returns to figuring out the puzzle that is me. I struggle with figuring out what needs to be shared, what would be ‘over sharing’.  My friends, partners, or lovers are not my therapist, or parents, or authority figures, and respecting their boundaries, and our relationships, really requires that I not handle my issues in a way that nudges them into one of those roles… but I am also aware that the mental health industry might actually collapse if people really share their experience more openly with people who matter to them, there would be that much less demand for those services.  Connectivity and emotional support actually matter that much to day in and day out quality of life. (If it seems I’m being over-obvious, I’ll take a moment to admit that I didn’t understand that until relatively recently in my life.)  I want to cultivate a strong connection with people I care about; I don’t always know how.  It’ll sound strange to say, perhaps I’m phrasing it badly, but I’m not sure I know how to ‘make a strong connection with myself’ right now – that can’t make it easier to connect with others.

So…I am having my own experience, and you are having yours. Maybe trying to share mine isn’t the best route to take to feel connected right now… I think today I will explore trying to let go of how badly I need to be heard, and just listen. I may learn something about feeling connected.

Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Menopause, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Turning 50

Forgetfulness and Meaning

January 23, 2013 //
2

I forgot my gloves on the way to work this morning. Again. I’ve moved into a new home, new living arrangement, new neighborhood, and all my routines are up-ended, and the unpacking is not yet completed. I feel unsettled, rather a lot, and I forget things on my way to places. It’s a small thing and I know that over time my routine will be rebuilt and my obvious forgetfulness will be a little less obvious, and a little more well-managed. I get frustrated with what seems like a very slow process of adjusting to what is new.

I feel a little directionless today, like existence itself is just a little bit ‘off topic’ at the moment. I’m tired and although I am managing to sleep, I am not getting enough hours.  I am eagerly craving a breakthrough in thinking, or meaning beyond the ordinary, some great cosmic level of profundity – the ‘Aha!’ moment. I want an answer!

What I have to share with myself right now are a lot of questions. I have a large assortment – maybe you could use of few of these? I think I have extras…

  • Who am I? I mean, seriously, what defines ‘me’?
  • What do I actually want out of my life? What do I need to thrive? Where do these two things cause difficulties in achieving either?
  • Does new information change the meanings of past events? If it does, for whom does the meaning change?
  • How exactly does that ‘happiness’ thing actually work?
  • What is most important to me? Will it ‘make me happy’ if I have that, do that, or know that?
  • Is there a ‘nice way’ to be angry?
  • If all the words I’ve said and written over all the years I’ve been speaking aloud and writing haven’t said what I thought I needed to say,  measured entirely by whether I ‘feel heard’, does it mean that I simply lack the ability to feel that sensation? Or that I lack the ability to recognize that I am not being understood?
  • Is ‘anything’ actually ‘this complicated’ – or is that an illusion based on subjective lack of skill?
  • Aren’t I ‘a little old for this’?

If you find my answer to any of these, please send it on along, I could probably use the help. If you find your answer to any of these, I hope it has enormous value to you!

I did forget my gloves this morning, but I did not lose them, and it’s a good day.

Categories Brain Injury, Perspective

My Eyes, My Camera, A Sunrise

January 22, 2013 //
8

I am having a very nice morning. I was musing about just how nice, and the feelings that gives me, and watching the sun rise, as I waited for my bus to work. The colors were amazing; crimson and scarlet and magenta and orange, pale streaks of mauve and a hint of lavender off to the edges, and in the foreground the contrasting darkness of the trees, bared branches of winter, reaching across those bold colors. I was struck by it and eagerly pulled out my camera (phone) to capture the amazing vista…but my camera will not photograph a sunrise. A little frustrating, but not a big deal. I keep hearing the phrase in my thoughts, though,  as I wait for the bus… “My camera will not photograph a sunrise.” I have the vague sense that as sentences go, it wants to tell me more, but I don’t find more there to know.

My brain injury is a frontal lobe injury. It effects memory and executive function, and likely has for the entirety of my adult life. I contemplate that a lot lately, and how that may have changed my experience of life, and how well/poorly I handle relationships and social interactions or make decisions. I have a lot to learn… having found out about my brain injury doesn’t change past behaviors or experiences, but it has serious potential to change my understanding of how my behaviors and experiences have evolved, what has driven my choices and decision-making, and why some things frustrate me so much (and I hope, also what I can do to improve on how I cope with those things).  I spent the solitary portion of my morning reading about memory over coffee.  I moved on to reading about executive functions while I rode in to work, and during my morning break, a short article about the frontal lobe. I read a lot. (Words work for me, mostly, although I have to read things more than once, take notes, cross reference bits I’m not sure about, and talk things through to gain an in depth understanding of a subject.) This morning I am a little awed at how easily the ‘issues’ I’ve had, challenges, bad behavior, and weirdness line up so cleanly with the information in my reading regarding frontal lobe damage and potential consequences to executive function and memory. I keep staring at the words and wondering why, if I can see these connections so easily here and now, no one looked at the list of shit I’ve been working through for so long and made the connection in the other direction? (You know… “Damn, considering X, Y, and Z, I have to wonder if you are suffering from some sort of damage that effects executive function?” I mean, seriously Medical Science, it actually seems that obvious in hindsight.)

It’s a lot to think about. I vacillate between feeling beat down to the point I can’t go on, overwhelmed to the point of giving up, and feeling like I do today; hopeful, and armed with new knowledge about how and why I am who I am, and where I can go from here with more appropriate tools.  I am hoping that gaining a deeper, more profound understanding of how my injury effects cognition, decision-making, and memory, that I can develop a better set of coping skills – more effective, more reliable, and less ‘guess work’. How do I change how I cope with my brain injury so that I am able to treat people consistently well? How do I make good decisions, and take care of me? How do I reduce the level of agitation and turmoil in my every day experience knowing now that much of it is born of simple frustration, fatigue, or challenges that are a by product of my injury? As is so often my experience, I have more questions than answers.

I need to paint – there are things I need to say that I don’t have words for; a sunrise, a memory I can’t quite remember, a portrait of a fracture I can’t see… I need to feel heard.

Categories Art, Brain Injury, Logic & Reason, Relationships, Words

What Happens if Everyone Is Nicer on a Monday?

January 21, 2013 //
3

Expectations are strange things. If I expect Mondays to suck, they generally do, and over time more so. If I spend a few minutes on Sunday evening contemplating what a great day Monday may be, my Monday seems to start in a very different way, filled with the soft quiet of unfulfilled potential rather than with the dread of ‘if this, then what else follows?’ It is a nice difference (and I owe a dear loved one a ‘thank you’ for the suggestion). It also got me thinking about expectations and how a pleasant surprise can turn a day around.

Would you like to get in on the ground floor of some fun with me? It’s along the lines of upsetting expectations, and altering our reality for the better, and it’s easy and doesn’t cost anything but a moment of will and your time, and all the choices are yours! Here is how it works – be just a little nicer on Mondays. That’s it. So many of us expect really awful Mondays. We go back to work after a weekend that always feels too short, or we wake up with the knowledge that we are among those who could be working but are not, or any one of a near infinite number of life scenarios – many of which include the expectation that ‘Mondays suck’. So, to join in on this fun, we’ll be re-wiring Mondays! Treat your fellow man just a little nicer today than you might ordinarily, and see where it takes us all. It doesn’t have to be ‘let me buy your lunch’ big, either, and you don’t have to tell a lie or compromise your values – just handle each interaction in the most pleasant way you know how. Exercise what you understand about kindness, mercy, compassion, friendliness, hospitality, graciousness, good manners, helpfulness, patience.. hey, pick one and just do that! I don’t see a goal labeled ‘perfection’ on this anywhere, the word I keep using is ‘fun’.  Why ‘fun’? Because that is how I hope to appreciate the day today, any time my efforts result in an unexpected smile from another person, or a moment when it is obvious that their Monday is just a little better than they expected. If enough of us do it, what happens to what we all expect of Mondays? If it gets to be a widespread practice, how awesome would that be? How amazing to build a reputation as a culture for treating people well? We could do that, one day of the week at a time.  It’s a choice.

Ideally, of course, we couldn’t have this conversation at all. The very idea that it would come up as a suggestion is a little… well… it doesn’t say great things about who we have become as ‘civilized’ beings, does it? That there is room to suggest our world could be a better place with so little effort is rather…sad. Still, the good news there is that it actually will take very little individual effort to make our world a better place, to improve our culture, to improve our quality of life experience, even to make Mondays great days to look forward to. Small steps, and simple ideas, are not a bad starting point for change.

Today I am taking on Monday very differently.  I wonder what it will be like? I mean, after all… we are each having our own experience…

Categories Perspective, Relationships, Words

Tear Down Your Idols

January 20, 2013 //
0

A Sunday evening before a Monday workday and I am contemplating what has been a very productive and pleasant weekend spent in the company of people I love, and thinking about the immense damage we do to ourselves over time, and how it becomes damage we do to others. Of course, a lot of the damage we do to ourselves has its origins in the damage done to us in life, and there’s that whole ‘choice piece’ to contend with, because once the damage is done, the choices are still our own, and then there’s the ‘accountability piece’ too, because whether we willfully choose an action or not, the ownership of the things we choose to do falls to us regardless of our choice, in all but what is forced upon us. It’s complicated to think about, sometimes, and recently I think about the logic of choice a lot. Choice works best when you know as many of the available options as possible, and for years I just didn’t understand how wide open the vista of choice really is. That has limited me more than I understood.

I’ve been searching all my life for ‘happily ever after’ – a fairy tale ending, more or less, I guess. Not reality; reality hasn’t always been good to me. Something hit me this week, sometime in the midst of tears, pain, emotion, and turmoil, both internal and external… maybe ‘happily ever after’ misses the point as goals go? Would I be more productive, more satisfied, and even happier if I turned my attention away from the goal of ‘happy’ and focused more on ‘meaning’? A mindful, meaningful, life… it’s a different idea for me. I’ve tended a bit more toward easy gratification of obvious desires, or needs that don’t infringe on other priorities (or do so in a way I can overlook).  I don’t have a lot more to say about that from the vantage point I have this evening, as I watch the sun sink low, and listen to the contented sounds of life at home; I just have hope.  Hope feels pretty good, and for the moment, good choices don’t seem out of reach.

I’ll admit that one thing that has been big for me lately has been ‘tearing down my idols’ – finding the bits and pieces of nasty leftovers in my basic learning of things that simply are not true, don’t actually reflect my values, or are remnants of assumptions, premises, and teachings that have been long over-turned but not corrected in my thinking and decision-making. It’s a slow process and sometimes quite sad; the discovery that some long held notion is a ghost in my machine, or worse still some malicious booby trap left over from some earlier time, place, and relationship…well, saying ‘it hurts sometimes’ doesn’t even begin to describe the quantity of tears or magnitude of disappointment.  It is worth it to make the slow steps to being who I most want to be.

Categories Logic & Reason, Perspective, Relationships
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