Why am I ranting …
Why am I panting …
The gait of my right leg is slanting …
My eyes are glaring …
I am at my kitchen window. Someone, outside, happens to look in. I have on my head a Pescado, that’s a Portuguese fisherman’s hat. I am stunned for the moment, looking out the window with my jaw wide open. That person looks directly at me. I peer over my glasses with both brows firmly drawn. I am motionless, hands limp above my torso, glaring out the window. I was ranting to myself about butter or olive oil, or something but I stopped at the window. In that moment, she double-took and turned away. Is he mad? Is he crazy?
Recently, I have been challenged with what I might call long-stroke. I want to laugh at my own suggestion at it, but I have come to realise that after some time, people think that the damage of stroke must have magically resolved itself and all systems are now go. The dead matter in my brain is still dead. Sorry to say, I would like it to be alive but it is still burnt earth. Any improvements you might see are the result of new pathways but those pathways are by no means perfected. They have been the result of three years in lieu of forty-seven years.
It’s not what your brain can do, it’s the sum of it parts that is the important thing. The gestalt. My brain, damaged, is no less capable than anyone else. If you can reward the people around you, and yourself in the smallest of ways. Your brain has achieved great things. It has overcome greed, self-righteousness, bullying, and all the rest of the evolutionary entanglement of cognitive superiority that non-damaged brains think they have achieved. A damaged brain is not a setback, it is a way forward to a better place for individual well-being.
Wow that’s powerful - not the quoe but it all. really resonnates with me.
I get it really I do.
But I do try and tell myself that every pathway starts somewhere and if it gets used or damaged by wind or rain or people then it will still get repaired or maybe given a slightly different direction which can be good or bad!
Wow! I could feel it, creeping in again, in your words. I thought you were going in a different direction because for me, the person in the window would be my own reflection. I am not the person I was before, and that scared me, but like you, I am finding some things are much better than before. I may not be as fast or as able to run through each day before falling asleep exhausted or laying in bed awake, thinking of what I didn’t accomplish today and planning for tomorrow. In fact, planning is out the window…I no longer know how, and staying awake when my brain or body says it wants to rest, will not be refused. I will nod off right where I am, in the middle of something even. Now I know rest, and those things I can’t rush through, never needed to be done in the first place. I was just trying to keep up with what the magazines, or the boss, or the culture were telling me needed to be done. Now I can do it my way. I am not scared anymore. I can’t drive, but I don’t know of many places I want to go anyway. Now no more road rage traffic, or insurance, gas and repairs to deal with. No more dragging myself to work still have asleep, brushing my teeth and hair on the way because I have only had four hours sleep. I can take as much time as I like on any project I choose. And for me, I honestly knew before that love was all that was important, but now I can better act on it because I am not constrained by a lack of time due to all those things that were getting in the way. Much love to you, Rups. Thank you for sharing this beautiful piece of art that shows both the worst and the best of our new lives.
Just reading carefully through what you describe, we have have many similar symptoms, gosh, our lives are mirrored and not cured in this way. I need to separate what you have written because a lot of It resounds.
@Rups Speaking truth and heart felt: Ye’re a’ richt Rups.
That dead spot, black hole, whatever, created something called the affected side. “affected”; a cold term.
My affected side was my right side; the dominant side. It is the side that holds all my talents since I was a child.
Drawing, painting, playing music on beautiful instruments, wood working, and the like.
My left side is quite useless in doing those things. But I still love the left side for its normalcy.
Those new pathways we have to work so so hard to produce take ages to develop and I just pray that I have enough years to see improvement.
The really hard thing for me is, although as you guys say, in some ways it changes you for the better, it always, every hour everyday, shows its ugly face. Always there.
No, I don’t think you are down! You are something, but it’s not down.
Is it one of those days where you are inside your head coming to terms with the past versus the present.
It’s so bloody annoying when people always know of somebody or somebody’s friend or uncle who had a stroke and got better and recovered all their abilities and they’re really good as new now. It’s pointless trying to explain that recovery doesn’t mean you’ve got better or mended, or will ever be mended, it just means you’re working around the broken part.
