So much too do and so little time that sometimes it is overwhelming. Right now I am not so much overwhelmed by all I have to do as I am by how voiceless and powerless so many people, including myself, are.
Recently I have been trying to help a sister-in-law who is going through her own legal battles and who has been a victim far too many times and by the "systems" who are supposed to protect victims. My heart hurts for her and where she feels beat down by how voiceless and powerless she has been, I feel angry and I want to fight for her. The thing is she tries so hard not to be a victim and has done and been all that she is expected by society to by denouncing that she is a victim, but this has not helped her and she continues to be beat down by people who don't understand what it is like to be a victim.
The thing is, it SUCKS to be a victim. And it is an unfair expectation that you are not supposed to be a victim when you are a victim. You are somehow supposed to be proud, brave, confident, and all kinds of bold when you are small, beat down, powerless, and being vilified for your efforts to stand up and speak out while being expected to stand up and speak out. It is sooo much more complicated than people know to not be a victim.
Take me for example. Clearly I DO NOT make a good victim. I don't succumb to manipulations easily, I talk WAY too much, am too honest and open, and I feel an obligation to warn and protect others. I am a whistle blower when it is needed and I refuse to accept the degradation no matter how bad, how long it has been going on, or to the level it progresses, BUT that still isn't fixing anything and I continue to be victimized in many ways for my efforts, openness and honestly -which pisses me off more while simultaneously annoying others who will accuse one of "always claiming they are the victim" when I try again to point it out and try to end the victimization of myself and others... What a conundrum. Especially when I can relate to all sides. But that is all I want to write out about that today. My frustration is not resolved but also not feeling super productive right now; so I am going to pack it away and tackle it, if I can, on another day in some other way.
Because now I want to write about this:
I am sorry the picture is not better but I think it demonstrates pretty well what we (myself, my husband and my son) were doing and and how we got there.
For my birthday this year my husband bought me a Sur Ron, which is a lightweight electric dirt bike. I have always wanted to ride motorcycles the way my husband does and has been doing since he was tiny. Now I have had a Honda 150 for a few years, but I have so little experience and I am starting much older. These disadvantages have made the Honda feel like too much bike for me and I am far from skilled enough to take it on the single track trails my husband prefers. Additionally, if I make a mistake on the Honda it is hard to recover from since it weighs quite a bit more than I do. The Sur Ron on the other hand, weighs less than I do and doesn't have gears I have to worry about (which I am not super proud of- but have to admit- does make riding easier for me most of the time), so it is much easier to recover from if I do make a mistake. Overall I find this little bike quite fun and, even though it is said, "it doesn't replace your dirt bike," for me it does and I am okay with that.
But this little rambling is not meant to be a Sur Ron review, rather I actually wanted to talk about the ride from the picture and how my TBI effected it
...because I find it interesting.
Since I am such an inexperienced rider and still learning the nuances of my new bike, I feel like Madonna 1984, every time I ride ("Like Virgin") until I start to settle in again. Because I am so new and still learning it is more cognitively demanding than it would be for someone like my husband who has been riding since he was in elementary school.
And
I have that damage to my brain from those TBI's to contend with which can wear me out a bit quicker and cause some interesting phenomena. One thing I found interesting was how depleting all the depth and complexity of the mountain terrain was. The visual stimulation that was moving past and beneath me at higher speeds than is normal for a body to move at in such terrain was really cool but also a huge draw on my cognitive resources and I could feel it. Yet, as the sun set and daylight began to fade so did the colors, depth and distant that I could see and I was surprised how noticeable the effects were on my cognitive energies; riding in the fading light was not nearly as cognitively depleting.
However, by that time, I was truly and genuinely cognitively fatigued and I had to keep that in the forefront of my thoughts because I didn't feel tired physically. Now maybe you think I am limiting myself too much or making up excuses etc for my lack of speed and skill but I assure you I am not. The effects of TBI are, and genuinely can be, very odd. If they are not recognized for what they are there is a lot of potential for all kinds of trouble in so many aspects of your life, so self awareness is absolutely crucial after your brain has been altered. Plus if you do pay attention and utilize self awareness it can be quite fascinating to analyze what is happening as it happens. Which is precisely what I was doing, and needed to, when my brain started shorting on the ride.
"Shorting?" You ask.
I think this is quite a common phenomenon that many experience when they are tired. Your brain just kind of misses what's going on for a moment. It happens a lot to kids in school who are trying to pay attention for developmentally inappropriate lengths of time as they try to learn all the new material they are expected to learn so quickly.
But for me, while riding, it felt more like overdriving your headlights; a phenomenon that does not seem to happen as much anymore, likely due to technology advancements as well as infrastructure improvements that have decreased opportunities to drive in dark conditions on those long, lonely, and curvy highways. Now according to many online definitions, overdriving your headlights means not being able to stop inside the illuminated area ahead of you when you are driving in dark conditions. But by my definition, and what I remember experiencing in my younger days, overdriving your headlights happens when you are driving, maybe faster than you should and usually around a turn, and you actually overdrive the illuminated area ahead and you are, for a moment, driving in the dark while the light is being cast in a direction you are not driving. I don't think I did this all that often and generally speaking, it's more likely to happen in adverse weather conditions, like fog and rain, when the light being cast is dispersed by the reflective conditions you are driving through. Always, overdriving your headlights, is a huge warning sign that you need to slow down.
And that is what it was like for my brain on the Sur Ron that evening. I had to slow down because I would experience a blank moment that indicated my brain was not totally keeping up with my speed and circumstances. Very interesting, sometimes, the way our injured brains behave.
Sometimes it makes me a bit sad and frustrated that I cannot keep up with what I used to be able to keep up with but at the same time, I am extremely grateful to have the brain that I have and the irony of these types of anomalies that make me better able to keep up with so many other things and that normal brains often have no idea how to keep up with.
And so I make the best of it and choose to enjoy and utilize my observations as I hope others may be able to do as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment