In the not too distant past, my biggest holiday recovery challenges were typically hangovers, cleaning up the cardboard, paper and ribbons, and putting my house back in order. As a brain injury survivor, recovery from the holidays means something completely different.
Let me start by saying that I’m thankful I made it through the recent holidays without a complete loss of my sanity. I recognize that the Christmas holiday means a lot to the people that I care about; but my reality is that since my TBI, I can’t share in the joy of family gatherings as I once did.
The Dreaded Gatherings
Family gatherings with more than four or five people in attendance are among my most dreaded activities these days. Crowded rooms with multiple simultaneous conversations going on equate to a level of chaos that my brain can no longer process. Others often share with me their well-meant perspective that they just ignore everything else and listen only to whoever they are talking to. But this is an ability that I’ve lost. I hear every conversation in the room all jumbled together into a single stream of words that I simply can’t make sense of. It’s discomforting when you suddenly realize that you’ve been asked a question and you have no clue what it was.
At this stage in my life, family gatherings are mostly my elders. Elderly people with hearing deficiencies don’t always realize just how loud they are talking, and in a room where everyone is trying to be heard… well, it’s just more than I can take. As I’ve posted previously in The Perils of Over Stimulation, I’ve developed behaviors and a tool set that make a positive difference for me. In my recent large family gathering, I’d never had made it through the event without my ear plugs and the occasional breaks to another room.
It Gets Worse
Most of my family members don’t have a clue who I am now or why I’m so aloof. They see me and they see someone they used to know… but that’s only who I was, it’s not who I am. There are so many awkward moments when a shared experience is being spoken of and suddenly people are looking at me for my input but I have no memory of it at all. My cousin ran through a veritable list of events asking me if I remembered them. Of the meager handful that I thought I had a piece of associated memory of remaining, he told me that, no… my recollection was incorrect. Well, what fun that was.
Sometimes I need to be reintroduced to someone I used to know. At the gathering, my cousin’s wife asked me if I knew who she was. I did, but only through deduction, not through memory. It’s funny how, in these moments, I can’t help but notice the abstract sympathy in the eyes of those around me.
Then there are the things that give me offense. My mother has dementia, she’s to the point where she can forget what the conversation is about or something recently spoken feels like a more distant memory to her. Perhaps it’s my own issues with memory that made me take one poorly delivered comment so personally. I had been asked a question about my own motorcycle crash, and a sentence and a half into my response my uncle interrupted with a story about a crash he had been in once. At one point in his story, my mother got confused and was trying to ask a question when my uncle scolded her by saying that we had already “established all that a half an hour ago.” I get that he doesn’t understand how far her disease has progressed, but it took a lot of restraint for me to let that pass unchallenged.
The Aftermath
My TBI has changed so much, and one of the changes is that I don’t drink any more, with the exception of the occasional glass of wine. So, there are no hangovers to get through. It’s just my mother and I, so the Christmas mess was next to nothing. The gathering didn’t include a meal, just coffee so that was easy to clean up after. From this perspective, recovery was pretty easy.
But the Christmas week, for this TBI survivor, was arduous and exhausting. There were two movie dates…movies aren’t easy for me to make it through these days. There were the holidays and the holiday gatherings that take so much out of me. The week closed with a demanding high-level meeting to plan revisions to my role in the business, my professional development, and new directions for corporate technology tools in the coming fiscal year.
As Saturday starts, it’s like breathing out a big, relaxing sigh. I just want to relax, to revel in the silence and lack of demand for my time or attention, and to get a few things done. I start by getting my mother situated, then go to my room to meditate, sip some espresso and do a little work on my latest painting. Suddenly I get a text. My son and his girlfriend were sick, so we had planned to do the Christmas thing on Monday – but he’s feeling better and wants to do it today. I did, and it was good. He’s also a TBI survivor and gets me in ways that no one else does. He gave me the space he could sense I needed and didn’t offer me coffee or ask me to sit down and visit for a while – so I didn’t, and he didn’t mind. Thank you, my son.
A little later, I got a text from my girlfriend asking if she’d be seeing me today. I desperately need some downtime and asked her if tomorrow will be ok. She’s seen me through this from the start, and she understands that there are occasions when I just need a little time on my own. She said tomorrow would be good. Thank you, Marcie.
Recovery
At this point, my recovery is more about regaining emotional stability and sharpening my mental functions through some simple downtime. So here we are, just past midday Saturday and the rest of the day is just about me – I intend to make the most of it.
Meditation helps me to find my center, and to let distractions pass me by without letting them steal my attention. Quiet time in my room feels good… no music, no television, no conversation, just peace. A walk through my forested back yard energizes me. Painting brings me happiness, even when I don’t paint it the way I wanted, it makes me happy to create something with my own hand. I’m planning on spending part of the day in my wood shop just being creative. Each of these activities are part of the plan for today.
Writing this out is therapeutic, it helps me put things in perspective and better accept the world as it is.
This is my recovery process for today, and I expect good results. Finding your own recovery process is all about learning what lets you find your peaceful center in a chaotic world, and allows you to let go of everything but the present moment for at least a little while.
I agree, Christmas gatherings or gatherings of any sort are near impossible now. As you said, there are only a handful of people who understand. I’ve had to say “I look the same but I’m very different” to people. Not sure if it works in remedying a person’s viewpoint or if it’s just a record scratch that stops the conversation. I find painting and drawing very therapeutic too and I never really did that before the accident.
This is a new behavior for me as well since my injury. My neurologist suggested that as my brain healed, it created new neural pathways through the less injured right-brain areas. I’m largely ambidextrous now, but lean towards the left hand for things that I once could only do right-handed.
Just wanted to share that I truly enjoyed your description of a “record scratch that stops the conversation.” This paints a clear picture in my mind, from the literal to the figurative sense. Thanks for that.
I’m glad you like the “record scratch” comment as it works so well to describe a lot of scenarios where one has to describe their condition.