I have the word “fight” tattooed on my left forearm.
I got this tattoo in early 2009, not knowing how much I would still need it 16 years later. It’s a reminder, on the wrist I used to cut, to keep getting up and trying again.
On that same wrist, still visible, is the scar from the first time I hurt myself on purpose, 30 years ago. That is not the only scar. There are many scars. But there is also a reminder to not let the darkness win.
I’ve had almost daily migraines since my brain injury four years ago, but they’re getting worse now. Most days, by the end of the evening, it hurts to even have my eyes open, or to be in anything but very dim light. Sound bothers me. Movement bothers me. My brain doesn’t work right, and I get severe nausea some days.
I am always exhausted. I take hot baths in the dark.
I will be 44 in April. I don’t want to live the next 40 years of my life this way.
I have tried new, just-approved medications. I have taken the tried-and-true migraine meds. I’ve swallowed thousands of pills and given myself injections. I’ve gotten Botox. Nothing works. Opiates help but I’m only given a limited number of those, and some days they don’t even seem to make a dent.
When I tell you that my pain gets up to a 5 or 6 out of 10 almost every, you might think I’m telling you that it isn’t that bad. But I’ve had multiple kidney stones, one of which had to be removed surgically. I’ve broken my clavicle on three occasions. I’ve had multiple toothaches at the same time. All of those hurt a lot, but none are a 10 on my pain scale. 10 was when I had an abscess in my face. 10 was screaming “what kind of fucking hospital is this?” when I had been given the maximum dose of intravenous Dilaudid and I was still in agony.
Pain that hits a 5 or 6 almost every day is enough to seriously impact my life. It’s enough to make me flirt with the idea of razor blades and high bridges.
I have good days, when the painkillers work and I manage to laugh and enjoy myself. But I have bad days when I feel truly hopeless. I keep picking myself up and continuing to fight, but it is getting harder and harder to do. Four years now of accepting my diminished potential, of letting go of dreams, of trying to dig my way forward and transcend, somehow, the absolute shitshow this brain injury has brought into my life.
I am stuck in a place of making do and settling for less than I hoped for. All because someone else decided he knew better than I did about how I tolerate a certain kind of anesthesia, and I reacted the exact way I’d told him I would– which is to say, Versed makes me try to fight off whoever is trying to operate on me. Rather than stopping the procedure, he or someone in his office slammed my head into something with such force that I am still affected every single day by the injuries they caused. And I will never know exactly how it happened. I just woke up with a bump on my head and a moderate amount of brain damage.
There’s nothing anyone can do, it seems. They can’t make the headaches stop. My therapist can’t help me process this so that it’s somehow okay. It’s just awful. It continues to be awful. It has been awful for almost four years now.
I have lost so much, held on to what I could, and only managed to gain a little through sheer force of will. I don’t want this to be my new normal. I don’t want this at all.
We are raised to believe that if we’re good people, if we follow the important rules and try to be kind, if we persevere and strive, we can arrive at a place of contentment and happiness. I know now that it simply isn’t true. You can get utterly fucked by the fates in an instant, and nothing will feel safe, stable, or whole ever again.
I don’t trust contentment or happiness. I don’t trust stability or safety. And I wish beyond my ability to communicate that I had never gotten this wise. I’d rather be ignorant of all of this. I’d rather be stupid, safe, and happy.
I used to think that an unexamined life isn’t worth living. Now there are things I desperately wish I had never had to see.
All of that being said, I had a very good day on Sunday. I had a very good session with my therapist on Monday. I am continuing to fight. I am looking forward to my next Bacon Blue burger at our favorite bar. I might visit San Francisco in March, and I’m tracking the prices of airfare to Boston, Vermont, and San Diego.
On my right forearm, I have a tattoo of a human heart, and banners over the heart bear two statements in Latin: cogito ergo doleo and dum spiro spero.
It’s becoming almost a yearly thing now, that in June, I take a last-minute, spontaneous, emergency leave from work so I can get some fucking rest. A bit early this year, as it’s starting May 31st. And I expect this to be a short one, just a week or so.
When you find yourself sobbing uncontrollably to a bewildered, but verykind Nurse Practitioner at your neurologist’s office, repeatedly saying “I don’t know what to do,” and “I can’t do this again. I can’t go through all of this again,” it’s time to take a fucking break. So that’s what I’m doing.
I have been searching my mind for the past two weeks trying to figure out what the hell happened. I was doing so much better. My job is great! My coworkers are cool! My veggie garden is coming along! My marriage is going well! My health sucks, but other than that, things are good! So why am I so exhausted all the time? Why can’t I focus? Why can’t I sleep through the night? Why do I never feel like the sleep I get restores me at all? Why am I stuttering? Why am I hallucinating? Why am I crying?
I woke up at 2:20 Tuesday morning and saw a baby dinosaur on my nightstand. I was not frightened because
I knew that it was not real
It was clearly not a threat to me. It was an adorable baby dinosaur.
I googled to see if I could figure out what kind of dinosaur it was. It was a Parasaurolophus. They look like this:
And that’s very much what the baby dinosaur on my nightstand looked like, but thinner and smaller.
I joked about it. On the internet, and to friends, I joked about the baby dinosaur on my nightstand. And then, around midday Tuesday, I realized I was doing The Bravado Thing where I pretend I’m fine, that it’s all a joke, that I’m not fucking terrified that I had a full-on hallucination.
I didn’t see a shadow and think it was a cat. I didn’t see papers ruffling in a nonexistent breeze. I didn’t see an image and wonder if it was moving, which often happens to me since my injury. I had seen something, fully formed, in living color, that was not there. I had blinked, I had looked away and looked back, and there it still was.
I thought about it, really thought about it, and then I burst into tears.
I contacted my neurologist’s office and he said yes I should definitely come in. And that’s what I did– yesterday, now, I guess, since it’s almost five in the morning on Friday. But I haven’t yet slept.
There are two main suspects as to what might be the direct cause of my hallucinations, and they might have worked together. The first is exhaustion. The second is a muscle relaxant I take to help me sleep. Both can cause hallucinations. Both have, in fact, caused me to have hallucinations… but never before at “baby dinosaur” levels.
But the bigger factor, the actual mastermind behind the crime… this metaphor is stupid… is that two weeks ago I put on a beautiful navy blue dress with a lemon print and emceed an event for my workplace. For four hours I worked the crowd, called out raffle numbers, dispensed prizes, mingled with vendors and guests, and collected booty from the various booths. I was charismatic and I looked adorable in my dress and I was told by multiple people that I did a wonderful job and they’d love to have me emcee again next year.
I told my boss the next day that I was exhausted but had had a lot of fun. Actually, what I said was that I felt like I’d survived an exorcism and a cocaine binge both in the same night and still had to work the next day.
I didn’t know that I would still be exhausted two weeks later. I didn’t know. I did not count on that at all.
A year ago I was working a job that I had once loved, a job that I had once seen a bright shiny future in, but by that point in May 2023 had gotten so effed-up and twisted that I was on the verge of killing myself. I have written about it, but I cannot put into words the despair I was feeling.
In October, I moved on to where I am now, and it took me months to relax and realize that it’s pretty unlikely that my current coworkers are going to turn on me with knives out (although with my current Health Bullshit, it’s more possible than I’d like.) I’m in a good place, and I FINALLY started getting better. The headaches decreased in severity if not in frequency. I wasn’t under such an enormous amount of stress. I no longer wanted to die. My marriage got better. I unclenched. I started listening to music again. I started noticing nature more. I started trusting people, just a bit, but it felt nice. My brain was healing.
And I felt like I was finally, finally, out of the woods.
So when I started losing my words again, when I started stuttering worse than I ever have, when I saw an adorable baby dinosaur… well, this isn’t even past tense. I’m scared.
The upside is that I have a plan now. I have 10 days to try to get some rest, to tend to the garden, to pet the cats, use the rowing machine I insisted we buy, to clean up my office, to try to learn how to make oatmeal interesting, to maybe learn to crochet. I have 10 days to breathe and try to let my brain heal a little bit.
The downside is that I now know I will have to be exceedingly careful going forward about what responsibilities I take on, because four hours of calling out raffle numbers and working a crowd is apparently enough to make me very, very ill.
So ill that my neurologist made me promise to contact my psychiatrist to loop her in, and the nurse practitioner practically begged me to take leave from work and let my brain rest. So ill that they both assured me that they care about me and want me to do well and asked me to keep them updated. And I know that they meant it.
And now it’s 5:11 in the morning and I didn’t take the pill that knocks me out, so I’m awake. I will be awake until exhaustion makes me fall asleep. I am going to have to reset my body to fall asleep naturally without the tranq darts I’ve been pumping into myself. I’ve been too terrified to give this an honest try, because I remember when I first got hurt and I was averaging about 4.5 hours of sleep a night and sincerely believed that my brain was melting. I spent my days just trying to stay awake and feverishly playing Sudoku and doing other kinds of puzzles so that my brain would not, in fact, melt. I memorized the presidents in order. I did logic puzzles. Trivia. Anything to keep my brain active and not-melted.
When my doctor prescribed a muscle relaxant to treat my whiplash injuries (the head injury, which is the sexy part that gets talked about, came along with some pretty severe whiplash) ANYWAY I took a half a pill on a Friday night just to see how it affected me and I basically tipped over sideways on the couch a half hour later and realized that this little pill was the answer to my prayers. Finally! Sleep! Except that little pill is dangerous. And I cannot sleep without it. And I’ve now been taking it for three years. And it took me, oh, about two and a half years of knowing it’s bad for me to finally commit to getting off of it because I am so damn scared of the terrible insomnia I had when I first got hurt, and how lost I felt when I was so addled and all I needed was rest but I couldn’t fucking sleep.
But if it’s getting off the pills or dying… I’m going to white-knuckle my way through this. I have Mtn Dew, Adderall, several pot shops in the vicinity, a good hot water tank, lots of tea, a rowing machine, a garden, and ten days to figure this shit out.
And, in case you didn’t know, I am Kate the Great and I am a fucking badass.
I like being married. I like having a stable job, a house, cats, and a meat thermometer so my steaks always come out perfect. I like my sensible car and knowing I have a pension waiting for me some day. I like stability.
I like not being a slave to my stormy emotions, being dragged around by impulse and a heart that cares too goddamn much about the wrong people and things.
But it has cost me.
I’m starting to wonder if there’s a middle ground between being a Chaos Tornado and being so complacent that I spend entire weeks and months essentially numb to all but the strongest stimuli. I’m starting to wonder if all the pills I take to keep me on an even keel, and sleeping at night, and not freaking out– if all this modulation of the highs and lows has reduced me to a dull, beige middle.
I woke up before 5 a.m. today, and like any sensible person I decided to go through all those people search websites and try to get myself hidden or deleted. In doing this I stumbled on my old blog from 15 years ago. There were words and photos that reminded me of what it was like to feel things so keenly, the sweet ache of longing, the inspiration that comes from living closer to the edge than I’ve allowed myself to be for a long time.
Last Friday, I went into the office, which is what I do most Fridays. I was surprised to learn that my former boss was there. He’s someone I always really liked and admired, and when I was his employee and just starting out, we had some great conversations about a lot of things. We managed to talk a few times throughout the day, but as the afternoon wore on I sort of started avoiding him. And as I was driving home that evening, it struck me how much of myself I now keep behind walls and gates and bulletproof glass. It might not be obvious to anyone else, but it’s obvious to me. My husband pointed out that it’s a good thing not to let my freak flag fly too high at work. But I feel like I’ve lost something. I think those walls exist in my marriage and friendships, too. I think they exist inside my heart.
Now that things are looking up, now that I’m finally getting some relief from the clusterfuck of stress the past few years have been, I’m taking a step back and admiring my own strength. I sustained a serious head injury and I didn’t die. I got horrifically depressed and almost lost hope, but I held on. I am employed, still, and married, still, and I have a house and two cats and I didn’t die.
But it cost me. I’m still learning how much it cost me.
I’m sure part of it is just getting older, and I’m sure that a lot of it is just getting healthier. It reminds me of a poem that I have probably pasted to this blog before, but here we go (again?):
the lesson of the moth by Don Marquis
i was talking to a moth the other evening he was trying to break into an electric light bulb and fry himself on the wires why do you fellows pull this stunt i asked him because it is the conventional thing for moths or why if that had been an uncovered candle instead of an electric light bulb you would now be a small unsightly cinder have you no sense plenty of it he answered but at times we get tired of using it we get bored with the routine and crave beauty and excitement fire is beautiful and we know that if we get too close it will kill us but what does that matter it is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with beauty than to live a long time and be bored all the while so we wad all our life up into one little roll and then we shoot the roll that is what life is for it is better to be a part of beauty for one instant and then to cease to exist than to exist forever and never be a part of beauty our attitude toward life is to come easy go easy we are like human beings used to be before they became too civilized to enjoy themselves and before i could argue him out of his philosophy he went and immolated himself on a patent cigar lighter i do not agree with him myself i would rather have half the happiness and twice the longevity but at the same time i wish there was something i wanted as badly as he wanted to fry himself
Have you ever had your car broken into? Or your house? There’s this sense that this space is not entirely your own anymore.
Worse, have you ever been touched by someone you didn’t want touching you? Have you ever been raped?
Now imagine that, but it’s your brain.
Waking up from anesthesia with a brain injury is like having your brain invaded. Someone rifled through the glove compartment of my mind. Someone squeezed the ass of my cerebellum on a crowded train. Someone didn’t want to stop at heavy petting and now my amygdala is feeling used and dirty.
Lately I’ve been having these weird tremors in my spine and the backs of my thighs– they don’t hurt. They don’t really do anything. Just shake shake shake for about 60 seconds. Like being on a vibrating bed. A 5.0 on the Richter scale but only for a square foot of my body. And then it stops.
Sometimes my hands work like those claw machines in the foyers of shitty restaurants. When part of my job was to open incoming mail, it was a challenge to get letters out of envelopes and unfolded. It took a lot of focus to do. I could do it, but concentrating so hard on each and every one meant that after 25 or 50 letters I was so spent that I could barely walk. And every day was like this.
My vision goes blurry. Sometimes it doubles. I have migraines almost all the time. I suffer from terrible insomnia and only one pill treats it effectively, but the side effects are worsening to the point that it is absolutely not worth taking anymore. I am terrified of not sleeping, but I’m not really sleeping anymore anyway.
I am in pain all the time. I am dizzy all the time. There are so many things wrong that if I tried to explain all of the things that are wrong you would think I was making shit up. My life is, in many ways, hell.
When I tell you that this injury ruined my life, I am not lying. Could things be worse? Absolutely. I know that I am very, very lucky that my injury was not worse. I work in government social services. I have had many opportunities to interact with people whose brain injuries were far more devastating than my own.
I am still employed, although that was really fucking touch-and-go for awhile. I am still married, but my marriage is under some serious strain. The cats are fine. I am not currently bleeding from the eyeballs. I am getting along with my parents. I am loved. I have friends. Shit could be worse.
But I didn’t know humans could be this tired, this stressed, this close to falling apart for so long, and not just scream and scream and scream until they had no voice left.
I have learned how strong I am, yes, but no one should have to be this strong.
I know about the holocaust, I know about Cambodia and Russia under Stalin and the American slave trade and the fucking Crusades, and man’s inhumanity to man. I know about comfort women in Japan and Ed Gein’s human lampshades and what Ted Bundy did to those poor women in Florida and Colorado and Utah and Washington. I know about the clients I’ve served here in Oregon and the horrific abuse they suffered that brought them to the attention of the government services I worked for. I know I am very lucky to have the support I have.
But I also know that my brain chemistry was already fucked up enough before this injury happened to me, that I was already in physical pain before this happened to me, that I had already fought hard enough before this happened to me, and that I didn’t deserve what happened to me.
I am an optimist. I have always been an optimist, I think. It is really hard to keep being an optimist after all of this. I continue to take my medication– so much fucking medication these days. My husband, bless him, has so many suggestions for things I should try to do to feel better– walk around the block! Enjoy the weather in the back yard! Drink more water! Cardio! And I just want to lob things at his noggin. Sure, those things could help. But in the face of all this hopelessness, it just sounds so pointless.
Today I’m trying caffeine. I have a bunch of caffeinated tea and also some Mtn Dew I stocked up on because at least it’ll keep me from falling asleep on the job. Looks like it’s sunny outside so maybe I’ll go squint with disapproval at the backyard on my lunch in a few minutes. T will approve.
Two years, eight months, and four days ago, I went to the oral surgeon. They put me under. I woke up. I was terrified. I was crying. I asked, did something go wrong? They said nothing happened. One of the assistants seemed angry with me. I didn’t know why. I couldn’t stop crying. My friend Jordan was my ride. He was waiting in the parking lot. They wanted to go get him. I wouldn’t let them. I wanted to calm down first. I didn’t want him to see me like that. I couldn’t stop crying. I didn’t know why I couldn’t stop crying. I didn’t know why I was terrified. No one would tell me anything. Eventually I calmed down a bit. I was still pretty out of it. I don’t know how long it took, but if I had to guess, I’d say maybe twenty minutes. Jordan came in. They walked me to the car. Jordan drove me home. Jordan got my husband and they put me to bed. I slept and slept and slept. I was a mess. I had gauze in my mouth, and stitches, and I just wanted to rest.
That was on March 15th, 2021, which was a Monday. I think I worked that Tuesday. I can’t imagine how I worked Tuesday. Force of habit, I guess. I know I can’t have been feeling 100%. I haven’t felt 100% since before March 15th, 2021.
Tuesday night was when we found the bruises
These were obviously fingerprints pressed into my arm.
We were laying in bed. And The Husband-Bot said Oh My God Your Arm. And I was like What Are You Talking About. And he said “Look.” and I Looked. And I was like, T, those are fingerprints. And he said “Yes, they are.” And we marveled.
I had a knot on the back of my head. I had bruising under my jaw. It hurt to swallow. It hurt to put even featherweight pressure under my chin. Someone had obviously restrained me with great force. Multiple someones. Someone had obviously slammed me back in the chair. I had been injured. But I didn’t know yet how injured I was.
March 15th, I went to the oral surgeon.
March 16th, we found the bruises.
March 17th, I emailed the oral surgeon to ask what the hell had happened.
And on March 18th, I figured out that there was something really wrong with me.
That’s when I knew I had a concussion.
Today is November 19th 2023. It has been two years, eight months, and four days since my most recent traumatic brain injury, and I have been well and truly fucked by it.
I saw my amazing doctor on March 23rd. She verified that I had a concussion, which at that point was a mere formality. By this point I had
been bucked from a horse in 1985
attempted (and very much failed) to pop a wheelie in 1987
fainted and smacked my head against a wall in 1995
gotten t-boned by a truck in 2011
I knew what a fucking concussion felt like.
On April 8th I facilitated a staff meeting but then started hallucinating like I’d eaten some excellent shrooms. It was then that I decided to take the rest of the day off and not to facilitate meetings for awhile.
Work was very understanding, if by understanding we mean that they said that they understood while actually making everything much harder and tilting their head like confused dogs when confronted with the fact that, yes, I still had a TBI and, yes, that actually did change some things and no, that wasn’t something I could just kinda, y’know, opt out of on weekdays or anything…
(fuck you kristin)
(I have a new job now)
The first three months after my injury I tried to behave as normal. I tried not to miss work, not to make excuses, not to slow down or change my routine in any way, and it almost killed me. I was getting worse instead of better. I couldn’t really sleep– it’s a sick irony of TBIs and that they can cause insomnia when what you need more than anything else is rest. So I was working eight hour days and sleeping about 4.5 hours a night and experiencing ungodly migraines, dizziness, ataxia, paraphasia, hallucinations, issues with word-finding, short-term memory loss, and a host of other issues that made me feel like I was going senile at 40. I was worried that I was losing myself. In June I broke down and ended up taking three weeks of leave out of desperation and sleeping as much as I could.
Part of the reason it felt imperative to take leave right then was that things had come to a head with my mother about her continuing pressure on me to have a relationship with my brother which I did not (and do not) want to do. I had to really break that down with her and put her on a time out, and this was very difficult for me emotionally. I wrote a rather lengthy blog post about this at the time if you feel like hunting it down. It’s not hard to find.
In September I received a two day unpaid suspension for goofing around on my work computer on the clock. When I pled that a lot of the things they cited were work-related, that in many cases I was trying to stay awake and alert when I ran out of tasks, and that my judgement and awareness of time were affected by my traumatic brain injury it fell on deaf ears. This is when I started to seriously believe that management was trying to get rid of me.
So at that point I was six months into my TBI adventure!
Throughout all of that I was trying very hard to be upbeat! Hopeful! To maintain my belief that healing was just! around! the corner!
Spoiler: no.
I got a new therapist around that time who was awesome! Her name was Jacey! And she was very good at helping me see the bright side of things. She felt like a friend. Our weekly sessions really helped keep me going. So that was great. My work situation still sucked ass, but at least I had someone to talk to about it.
And now I’m sitting here trying to think of other things that were happening in autumn 2021 and I can’t think of a fucking thing… I think I was just in survival mode, you know? Waiting for the good things I was sure were just right around the corner. I know I wrote a Christmas letter that year?
So I guess we can pick back up in Spring 2022.
MARCH: A year after my injury. I threaten to sue oral surgeon. He sends money. It isn’t a ton of money, but it’s all I’m going to get. I had to sign a NDA. We start shopping for a house in earnest. [We did not have “buy a house” money. We have “Oregon has great first time home-buying programs and we had hubris and now have SO MUCH DEBT OH MY GOD WHY DID WE DO THIS” money.] I hired the first realtors I met up with because I got a good feeling. They were a team who I’ll call Carrie and Fiona. I only meet Carrie the once, Fiona was our point of contact from then on.
APRIL: Jacey the therapist decides to leave the practice she’s at but super super pinkie swears she’ll totally for sure going to start up somewhere else to continue the super important work we were doing. I never see her again. This devastates me. I go into a terrible depression. The depression goes way past April. I am still in the depression. I do have a therapist currently, though.
MAY: HOUSE HUNT! We find a great-looking house and are about to bid on it when we discover that it was pretty much the site of a gun battle the year before and decide “nope.” We decide to confine our search to a certain part of town where we really want to live, which limits our options but makes us focus more.
JUNE/JULY: More house hunting. I have become obsessed. Travis keeps telling me to chill. I MUST HAVE A REWARD FOR ALL THE BULLSHIT I AM GOING THROUGH. ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES KATE A DULL PSYCHOTIC MESS. We find a house which is MEH but for some reason Carrie the realtor (who T has never even MET) really wants us to buy it. It is dark and dank and a homeless dude lives in the shed and it isn’t at all what we want and there is no driveway and no back yard (and an awesome back yard is on our MUSTS list) but for some reason Carrie is like THIS IS YOUR HOME BUY IT. We do not buy it. There’s this other house that we wanted to look at but the residents got Covid so we couldn’t. But then a couple weeks pass and we’re like what about that one…….
So it’s July 27th and we go and we look at it and T is like DO NOT GET HOPES UP DO NOT FALL IN LOVE and we drag our friend Dan along like we usually do and I’m just walking through this house like uh-huh…. uh-huh……. hmmmm……. uh-huh….. and then I go in the back yard and I sit in this Adirondack chair and Dan walks out and we make eye contact and we just, like, nod.
So we bid. And they came back a little higher. And we said Mmhmm okay. And then and then and then we have a house. We moved in September 21st, 2022.
Dan does not live here. We just rely on him to be rational and see things we don’t. It’s good to have a friend like that. I fall in love with everything. T is a ball of cynical anxiety. Dan is level-headed.
So I fucking love our house. Original 1958 oak floors. Not pristine, but solid shape. Central heating, no AC but we can dream. It’s in great shape for its age, good foundation, new roof, new huge deck. It’s charming as hell. We love our neighborhood. Quiet. Great Mexican restaurant a few blocks away. Friendly people. It’s just… nice. We’re still learning how to be homeowners. But it’s great.
But there’s nothing, nothing, nothing that can compensate for the TBI. $10k wasn’t enough. $10mil wouldn’t be enough. Nothing would be enough. Nothing.
We’ve been in the house for 14 months. We wouldn’t have the house without the catastrophic head bonk. And I think I was so obsessed with finding a house because I thought it would make up for the head bonk. And it doesn’t. It couldn’t. It was stupid to think that it could. It’s a great house. But nothing could.
I am mostly “back.”
I am doing way better than I was a year ago. I am doing immeasurably better than I was two years ago.
But I will never be like I was before I was injured. Looking at me you might not know that. But I know it. Every day I know it. I feel it. And it bloody kills me.
I spent the first, like, 29 years of my life in the pits of despair, man. Agony. I had good days and bad days. I had good years and bad years. And when I was 29 I had to move out of my rental house in Portland and I had nowhere to go so I went to my mom’s house in California because I was out of fucking options. And I got a job and I got a nice boyfriend and everything was temporary but it was sunny and it was tolerable and I was happy for just a little while, and I knew then that it was possible to be happy.
And everything went to shit again, and everything stayed shit for quite some time, but I knew it was possible to be happy so I fought like hell and I eventually got to a good place, a stable place, what felt like a really sustainable place, and by the time I was 39 I was married and I was on the right pills and I was employed and I was fucking healthy and everything was coming up Milhouse.
I guess I still believed in the American dream, that with enough sweat, luck, and bootstrappin’, you can do anything, you can be happy. You can succeed. I believed that I was away from the yawning chasm I’d camped next to for most of my life and I’d never get that close to it again. Suicidal? Not me! Not anymore, not ever again.
I thought I’d fought hard, and I’d won. I thought I could stop fighting.
I guess you’re the new Office Assistant. Welcome to the team! Okay, that’s a weird thing to say since I’m not on the team anymore, and I’m sure everyone else is making you feel very welcome– they’re a great bunch! The dedication and skill of the people you’ll be working with might knock your socks off. Gary and Keith are(almost) endlessly patient and will be very kind about explaining things if you get confused. There’s a lot to learn, so don’t feel bad if you need to ask a lot of questions! I still had to ask questions three years in! It’s fine! It’s expected.
I think you’ll find that the job is very challenging but also very rewarding. Getting to help people in the ways that you’ll get to help people will probably be as great for you as it was for me. Everyone will be very supportive while you’re learning, and soon I’m sure you’ll fit in wonderfully.
You’ll get to know our clients’ quirks over time. Some of them you’ll groan when you see their names on caller ID, but others you’ll be excited to talk to. One of my favorite things is getting to shop for people– sometimes you’ll bear back how much Joe liked his winter coat or Jane liked the poster you got for her. That feels great. Other times, you’ll be drafting correspondence from templates, making calls to Comcast, or filing. Those things are less fun, but if you keep in mind that it’s all in service to the clients, it makes it easier.
Just never get injured. Never get sick.
I don’t mean “don’t sprain your ankle.” Or “don’t catch a cold.” I mean don’t ever get anything chronic. Don’t ever get hurt hurt. Because if you get hurt you’ll be told that you shouldn’t talk to the team about it because it makes your coworkers uncomfortable. You’ll be told that it’s not a good excuse for fucking up. You’ll be reminded about how hard it’s been on the team that you got your life messed up by something out of your control. Management will make it very clear to you what a problem you are now. And they will push you out like they pushed me out.
They’ll act like every ADA accommodation is a favor they’re personally doing for you. They’ll tell you how hard it is on the team when you need to take time off because you can’t walk straight or feel like someone’s hammering a nail into your forehead. They’ll celebrate your birthday and your work anniversary but you’ll never get a “get well” card. You won’t be able to mention your illness in your yearly review, because “that’s not what they’re for.” If you make a mistake, they will condescend. If you make a real fuck-up, they’ll punish you as much as they can without the union making them stop. You’ll be told over and over that what happened to you, the limitations you have now, don’t matter, aren’t a factor, why can’t you perform like you did before the horrible thing happened to you and liquefied parts of your brain.
They will treat you with pity and call it compassion.
They will make it hell for you to stay.
So enjoy your time here and never, never get hurt or sick.
We’ve been here for over a month. The floors are oak that someone put carpet over but someone else ripped the carpet out, thank goodness . It’s somewhat drafty and badly insulated. Apparently our gutters aren’t great. The fan in the bathroom needs fixing. The kitchen is too small.
It’s lovely.
We hosted people in the backyard approximately every other day for the first month we were here. Now it’s cold and the backyard is soggy. There are some tomatoes that I should bring inside. I ate a pear right off the tree a few weeks ago and it was delicious. I got a tan but now that it’s cold I look kind of sallow. The cats settled in nicely. Husband and I manage to both be in the too-small kitchen without wanting to murder each other, and we’re both sort of amazed that this is so. The tub is pretty big and I spend a lot of time in there. The furnace is noisy and we don’t run it very much. My office is the warmest room. The bedroom is barely big enough for a bed and a dresser. We’ve managed to keep the place pretty tidy. My office is the only room that is a mess, but it’s getting better.
I’m a mess, but I’m trying to get better.
My job is trying to suck the life out of me, but now that I have a mortgage I’m not allowed to tell anyone to fuck themselves. I still love a lot about what I do, but management isn’t very kind to someone with brain damage. Downright unhelpful, actually. Last week was panic and this week is numb. Next week will likely be panic again.
I sit in my cold house with my warm cats and find peace wherever I can. I nest in my warm office with my cold thoughts and try to remember that things have a way of turning out okay, because I know this to be true. Most of the time, things turn out okay. I keep telling myself that.
It’s weird to be in such a bipolar state. Some things are going so well while other things are going so terribly. And I’m bouncing back and forth between elation and despair.
The house is really very nice and we’re quite happy to be here. I wish everything else was going so well.
My husband and I toured a house yesterday. Immediately when we got inside, I smelled mildew and fresh paint. That was not a good sign. We walked through a few times and told the realtor we’d think about it. On the way back home, we impulsively stopped at a Japanese restaurant and got a light lunch. We decided at that table that we would not buy the house (which did have some lovely features, but several more ticks in the “no” column than in the “yes.”)
And while we were sitting there, me noshing on edamame and sipping water, I told T that I think I’m spiraling a little bit. I’m impulsive. I don’t have a lot of control over my emotions, and I hate it. I have worked very hard to have control over myself, but lately I am snappish, mercurial, sullen. I speak without thinking and am overly friendly with people who (it seems to me) give me weird looks and then try to go back to what they were doing. I ache for connection but shrink away from it, full of doubt.
My normally pretty-damned-good self-esteem is faltering. I don’t think I’m a worthless pile of crap or anything, but I do have my moments of intense self-doubt and calling myself weird, stupid, or crazy, even if it’s only in my head. I can usually manage to push those feelings aside and move onto something else. But yesterday, I felt a sort of melancholy that I haven’t felt in quite awhile– this feeling that the ground was falling away from underneath me and I was in freefall toward… I don’t know. Some sort of emotional doom.
I know myself pretty well, so when I was telling T about all of this I said “I’ll probably feel better tomorrow, because I usually do feel better after a good night’s sleep.” And I was right, I do feel better today. Not all the way better, but no longer like the abyss is looming.
The past 14 months have been one of the most difficult periods of my whole life– and if you know me, you know that my life has had a lot of difficult periods. Already plagued with health issues, I did not need the addition of a traumatic brain injury. But that’s what I got, and I am doing what I can to make the best of it. In a life that’s probably about half over, I’ve learned that often that’s the best thing we can do.
I’m still employed and getting straight A’s in school. But it’s dragging. I’m dragging. My verve and enthusiasm that I worked so hard to cultivate are failing me right now. When we got married, T said he wanted to buy a house within five years, so I fixed my abysmal credit score, paid off debts, and started trying to save. When I enrolled in school, I decided I was going to kick ass and I have. I have done so much with hope and willpower, but now there are things in my life I can’t just power through. There are things, like buying a house, that are in many ways out of my control. Knowing that my goals are years away from being achieved is really taking a toll on my psyche. And I just don’t have the energy to go fast fast fast all the time like I always have. I get tired so easily. I can’t coast by with intelligence and willpower, I have to utilize that skill that I’m still trying to build and has never come naturally to me: patience. I hate patience.
Things have been better, and I’ve gotten stronger. But eventually strength isn’t enough. Smarts aren’t enough. Humor and pretty green eyes, unfortunately, don’t mean much in an insane housing market. They won’t give me a Masters degree for being cute. Work doesn’t accept “well, I’m trying” as a substitute for getting stuff done or answering the phone. And there are some days when the effort of just getting through is so exhausting that I sort of cease to function by 5pm. For awhile, grit, determination, and my eternal/infernal optimism were carrying me. But those things aren’t inexhaustible. I am so, so tired.
I have this image pinned to my cubicle wall at work. It amused me but now I’m seeing through the gaslighting! What’s step 2?
The despair I felt yesterday was something I used to feel much of the time. And I kind of marveled at it, like how did I live this way for so long? Because for a most of my life I saw myself standing next to a vast canyon, feeling the wind try to push me over the edge. Feeling parts of my brain telling me to just jump and get it over with. And for the past few years, even after my injury, I sensed that the cliff was still there, but that I was no longer standing at the edge. I’d moved into a clearing several dozen paces away, and I could not gaze into the bottom any longer, contemplating, wondering, tempted.
Yesterday I was closer to the edge again. The wind was whipping. The canyon loomed. And as I always have, I turned my back away. I looked toward the clearing. I kept my eyes on the hope, the potential, life. Because some days, that really is all you can do.
We met in the swimming pool at our high school when I was a sophomore and you were a freshman. I had just given myself an appalling haircut, but you said it didn’t look too bad. I appreciated that.
We didn’t get to know each other until I was a senior, in psychology class. We both tested as introverts but were the loudest people in the class. We argued a lot, but it was in good spirits. I broke up with my high school sweetheart and developed a big crush on you. I wrote you a letter to that effect, and you wrote back and used the word “ennui,” which had to look up. I wish I still had that letter.
We went on for years, almost being a “thing” but never made it over the threshold to being in an actual relationship. We dated. We kissed. You asked me one night to help you shed your virginity, and I did because… well, why the hell not? The only other time we slept together was right after your dad died. I didn’t know what else to do to console you.
I fucked around with your feelings an awful lot, and for that I’m sorry. All those times we were “almost, but not quite” were because of me. You were smart and funny and athletic and witty and kind, and wicked hot, and I… for some reason just couldn’t be in a relationship with you. On paper, you were everything I wanted. In practice, it always felt off. I shouldn’t have kept leading you on.
I once dumped you in front of a “no dumping” sign near a canyon. You pointed it out wryly.
You stopped speaking to me nigh on 20 years ago, and you were right to do so. I was a mess, and more importantly, I treated you like shit. I didn’t mean to, but that’s no excuse.
I thought about reaching out to you to apologize. You turned 40 yesterday, and I thought I’d look you up and see what you’re doing these days. I knew you were in a hoity-toity industry and had been for years. I knew you were still in our hoity-toity hometown. I stumbled on your Instagram.
You’re married. You have two sons. Your wife looks nice. You enjoy baseball. You lost much of your glorious hair. You look happy.
I decided not to reach out.
You’ll never read this, but if you ever did– or if I can send a thought out toward you, 700 miles away– I would tell you that I am deeply and truly sorry, that I think you’re wonderful, and that I am so, so happy that you seem so happy. I would tell you that I’m a better person now, that you had a positive impact on my life and taught me the word “ennui” and you were so beautiful and I’m so fucking sorry.
But that would be for me, not for you. You’re fine. You don’t need or want anything from me.
Self-Indulgent Drivel 