I watched a documentary last night called “The Crash Reel” about traumatic brain injury(TBI).  It was very well done and made me think about the TBI that Acoustic Neuroma patients experience as the result of surgery.  This morning, it prompted the following musings.

 Invisible & Misunderstood

 (Life after a traumatic brain injury)

 We may look perfectly normal but feel far from that inside.  They call it Traumatic Brain Injury but its result is a Traumatic Life Change.  We struggle to convince the world, and insurance companies, of abnormality even while reaching futily for normality.

We try to put aside pain knowing that the best we can achieve is less pain.  We try to deny pain yet find the need to emphasize it constantly in order to seek help.  This constant push/pull of our new existence causes us to flex between sanity and insanity.

We then wonder why we feel less.  Perhaps it’s because we seek to be more.  More than a statistic of beating odds in the wrong direction.  More than an identity of disabled.  Striving to find our place between able and dead.  Reaching for beauty and peace in the midst of a storm.  Trying to find value in a constant search.  Trying to think out when our souls are pulling in.

Not trusting our own judgment given that our brains are no longer whole.  Seeing looks that tell us that we are not. Pity is a two-fold look.  One of empathy and knowing that we have comfort.  The second of despair and acceptance that we are now different.  Different in ways that can’t be put into words though we try.

Something is always out of reach.  You know it’s there but can’t quite reach it.