Living with a brain injury is something that simply cannot be explained. The physical aches, emotional pain, mental struggles, post-traumatic recurrences, current-traumatic stress, relearning simple things on a continual basis, etcetera... exhausting is an understatement. The word 'anxiety' cannot even begin to describe it and extreme clinical depression takes over. Yet, somehow, we push forward, we continue to fight, to move and to learn things about the human body that you just cannot learn any other way. *As not all brain injuries are alike, not all brain injury survivors suffer the same consequences and overcome the same challenges. However, you should never look down upon someone with a TBI because they are champions as they are likely doing everything they can just to do what they are doing. (When I say "we" in this post, I understand that it may not relate to every person with a severe brain injury).*
Along with learning to appreciate things correlated to the human body, we also learn things about ourselves - our spirits, without our carnal bodies. We learn the powerful influence our body has especially as our inhibitions get taken away. It takes a long time for us to learn things again, but when we do, oh how we rejoice!! Despite being in the depths of depression and overwhelmed with anxiety to the point that I can only do 1-2 things a day, I have learned a lot of new things over the past few months so I'm excited to share them with you today.
The first thing I uncovered is that I am more like my peers than I had thought. Or rather my peers are more like me. Insofar as everyone wants to feel like they have gone through the worst of the worst yet risen above and beyond. While I don't feel like I have risen that much, I do feel like I have gone through the absolute worst! Is that justified? I don't know. But that's not the point. The point is that if everyone wants to feel the same level of "victimhood," we can't function as a society. I never wanted to classify myself as a victim, but I realized that is what I do. And that's what most everyone else does too! While I have learned and tried to focus conversations less on myself and more on the other person, I never made it a goal to let them feel like the "bigger victim." Until I had this realization. After this, I found my conversations work better... at least when I would remember this principle.
Very shortly after I came to this understanding, I suddenly stopped feeling like I was still 16 100% of the time. I still dream as a 16-year-old, I still want to dress like I did when I was 16, I want the relationships I had and how I had them as a 16-year-old, but I'm beginning to think less like a 16-year-old. I'm able to notice the immaturity of my peers, I am beginning to address relationships the way that they function as a young adult, I am learning that my body won't fit in the same clothes, and I am almost to the point that I can say I am no longer halted by the juvenile mindset of a teenager.
In that same vein, I have begun to accept some of the challenges I could not bare to accept before. For example, I am finally thinking about actually serving a mission even though it cannot be what I had always planned on it being. After my life was devastated due to the accident, I could not even consider serving a service mission. To me, a service mission was a lesser calling and I have been preparing my whole life for something more. Family History or Genealogy were trigger words for me as well. Because *blech!* I wanted to serve the Lord here and now, and the family history that I had done was terrible. But from little whisperings of the still small voice, and quiet, subtle obedience, I began to find different strains of family history that I absolutely love! I slowly began to consider the possibility of serving a ...service... mission. (There is no more progress on that, just getting things started).
