This is what an invisible injury looks like…completely normal on the outside. My accident happened four-and-a-half years ago (or 1,640 days, if you want the more dramatic way of saying it.) Sure, I can talk about it casually, but I still can’t REALLY talk about it without crying.
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Are We Enough?
My WORD, it has been a long (but oddly fast) summer and there’s a zillion things to write about, but I’ll leave those stories for another day.
My sister and her family came to visit me this past weekend. They arrived the same day I got home from being gone for a month. I had just enough time to return the rental vehicle, unpack, eat and shower before they pulled in. The excitement of my niece and two nephews gave me a boost and I made it through to bedtime. As draining as this weekend was, I soaked up every minute of it.
Anywayyysss, I wanted to sit down and jot down an experience tonight that I know I’m not alone in.
Being 4.5 years out from my accident and with symptoms subsiding to not nearly as severe as they once were, I don’t always think about the early years; the mountains I’ve climbed, the progress I’ve made or the day-to-day struggle to do simple tasks and always having to monitor how every single little activity would impact how I would feel – if it was worth the risk of doing said activity or would it just make everything worse…and depending on the strain it had on me, I would be bottomed out for days and sometimes weeks. Literally. No Joke. For realzzz. The frustration level is insane in the midst of all that.
By the way…if you fall into the category of not having a brain injury, I’ll fill you in on a little secret. Constantly having to gauge how doing the tiniest little thing will impact you (for sometimes days) is absolutely exhausting, and it consumes ALL OF YOUR THOUGHTS. So, if you belong to a brain injury survivor, take a minute and go hug them. They’re not okay.
Back to the scheduled program.
Tonight, as I was cleaning up the well-lived-in house from the weekend (with a grateful heart I might add) mid-vacuum swipe in my bedroom I started feeling melancholy. You see, I’m in a weird place right now. I’m back to feeling “less than.” Like I don’t measure up to other people. Like I will be judged if people know that I’m not 100% yet after so many years post-accident. The thought of having to tell someone that makes me recoil and want to go crawl in a hole. It’s not a fun thing to have to think about how to describe your life…to carefully weigh the words you use, or how you describe it to not either make them pity you or to think less of you or worse yet, not want to be around you because your limitations devalue their lifestyle. (To those people who have treated me that way, I wish a lifetime of uneven table legs on you, haha. But seriously.)
So, as I was sliding down this slippery slope, heading straight for vulnerable feelings-ville, I had a flashback to the early days of my accident, trying to vacuum for the first time. Tears stung my eyes as I was vividly brought back to my parents’ living room. Wanting so badly to contribute to the household, not just be a burden, and to actually do something useful to make their lives easier and to just feel the accomplishment of doing something productive.
Unbeknownst to me, the motion and repetition of pushing the vacuum over the carpet was exhausting. Cognitively I fatigued very quickly and the act of pushing and pulling with my arm made my neck and head “ragey”, causing all my symptoms to spike. But I did it. I accomplished something. However, it completely wiped me out and that was it for several days.
Caught up in the memory, I just stood there and cried in the middle of my bedroom as I now pushed the vacuum back and forth with ease, feeling no symptoms. Those early days seemingly so long ago yet still so vivid when something draws my thoughts back to them. Truth is, I have come so far. Four-years-ago me was still expecting that one day I was going to wake up and magically be healed and life would go back to normal (snaps fingers) just like that. Sometimes I can’t wrap my head around that it’s been so long since that life-changing day, but it has. And even though life has turned out wildly different than I imagined, I am beyond grateful for where I am now. From the outside looking in, I actually appear to be living a normal life and no one would know it if I didn’t tell them about my injury. I can be up and busy from 7am to 10pm more days than not without paying the price for days on end just trying to bounce back. More recently I’m able to do things that I never thought I would be able to do again.
Yes, I still struggle. Yes, I still have bad days. Yes, some days I’m in a lot of pain. Yes, sometimes my symptoms flare. But even 4.5 years out I’m sooo much better than I was, I’m still improving and I’m creating the life and person I want to become. I’ve proven several of my doctors wrong who told me there was no hope for healing. And get this, I’m living on my own again!
We are not our injury. Sure, this terrible thing happened to us and we now have to navigate a minefield with no map, directions or clues how to do so. But we are strong. We are resilient. We will rise, and we will conquer. We have a strength that is unmatchable.
I know that I will still have days that I will struggle with other’s perception of me and shrink at the thought of not measuring up. And I know there will be many more days that I will wish I didn’t have this injury and never have to explain who I am again to anyone, concerned that I might be judged. But it’s in these little moments of reminiscence that I am reminded of one simple truth; We are enough.
- L
