Marking Time

It is New Year's Day. (At least it was when I started writing this, so I had better get it out while it is still January!)

Every year of my adult life, I have spent the new year refecting upon the growth of the past year and setting intentions for the upcoming year. At least I did that every year until a TBI twisted my head on differently.

In the chaotic swirl of a brain injured mind, this becomes irrelevant or impossible. Irrelevant because because we have lost a linear sense of time. Time is just now. There is just this eternal moment of NOW. Impossible because when I look back on a year, cutting through the confusing swirl of jumbled memories and making sense or order of them, is like trying to reflect upon the color of a fruit flies eyes while watching a swarm of 500 fruit flies buzz around you. We just can't focus long enough or filter what is important and what isn't.

My New Year's reflections have been missing in a fog for these last three years. So when I sat down to reflect this year, I got a surprise! In another marker that the fog is lifting, I can actually find a theme to last year. 2013. It was my first year of living independently with a brain injury.

I don't know what is more exciting, that I survived a year of independence or that I found the clarity to notice.

2013 truly was a big, scary year, and I made it over this hurdle.

I was terrified to be on my own. How do you survive, let along thrive if you can't drive, ride a bus or train, look to cross a street, walk more than a mile, and have fog for a brain? I live alone with my son, and my family lives 3000 miles across the country.

Everyone I know with a brain injury lives with a spouse or family. I have learned that that safety net makes all the difference between thriving and flailing. I can look and feel downright normal when I am tagging along with someone else who can drive.

By myself, everything feels overwhelming, failures build on each other, I barely leave my house, and struggle with anxiety and depression. Life is simplified to the barest necessities. Getting food is such a challenge, I mostly skip it. You could say it was a failure year because I certainly didn't thrive, or a success year because I survived and am still alive, and I have lost all my TBI weight gain. Maybe the judgement isn't the important part.

Now I know I can survive on my own even though it is super hard. That information is invaluable, that is the important part. Learning about ourselves and accepting ourselves is the important part, not the judgement. Maybe judgement is over-rated.

It's funny how at the end of the year or the end of the day, we look back and judge ourselves. How often do we look at all we did not accomplish in our day? How often do we focus on our failures and miss our accomplishments?

I have learned to count my accomplishments and celebrate every little one. I intentionally focus on what I did do more than what I didn't do, and where I succeeded more than where I failed. Like taking a good photo, life is all about what you focus on. Focus on what lifts your spirits! I am calling 2013 a success.


P.S.  Since I've got my New Year's mojo back, I am also setting an intention for 2014. I hear-by publicly declare that I will have a first draft of my book, "Brainstormed, How I Lost My Mind, and Found My Heart", done by June. It is my story mixed with educational information. It has brain injury, romance, and travel. Think Eat, Pray, Love meets My Stroke of Insight. I have an unbelievable story, the book is coming along, and it is going to be good!
http://www.brainstormedthebook.com/