Shattered Worlds

Life is too short

and so very tragic

how is it our worlds can be shattered so many times?

and we have to keep picking up the pieces. Keep going...

my cousins

Oh, my beautiful cousins

only two on my mom's side

...but now we are down to one...

And my cousin, his sister,

I know how her heart breaks 

only she has no other siblings to help her pick up her pieces and survive

and no mom either

her mom is the one who died falling from the sky when my one remaining cousin was one. 

How our worlds can be shattered.

we all go through it

but some more than others. 

....my head hurt before, 

it really hurts now

But my heart is strong now for the survivors

Life is too short...

Please God, love my cousin and help him to find his mom and his cousin (my own brother) in heaven or wherever they hide. 

Please God, help and watch over our sweet beautiful cousin whose heart is broken and breaking and feels so very left alone...

Words

they only fall short

...yet silence can be so much worse...

a different person.

Twice today I am told, "you are a different person" in a good way. I am hearing this a lot lately.
I am.
And I am not.
I am happy to hear this and I am happy I can talk about things without the flood of tears that had been accompanying way too frequently.
I am glad that I feel so much more level and rational on a more consistent basis.
I am happy about it and motivated.
I come home and take care of some things I have been needing to get more consistent about. I edit an essay and offer revisions. I find myself looking at the process of applying to a graduate program.
I find it a bit hard to focus on reading things like what I need to read to figure that kind of stuff out.
Maybe it is just because I am out of practice.
So I keep going knowing it will get easier.
It does.
But really it does not.
My head starts to feel swimmy and it all starts to feel like a giant load of ... fake
Games
foolishness.
Maybe because I am trying to read about the professors of psychology and their interests of studies and how to get into a PhD program with them.
It is silliness and ego
and maybe I am too jaded for this field now.
But the real problem is that this intense focus is making my head hurt and feel swimmy. So I stop. I am shaky. Very shaky.
I am sensing frustration from my husband. Our kids need to help out more.
I try to get them going with helping to take care of stuff. My son pushes back, for no good reason, probably just because he is a kid and that is what they so often do...
But I explode. I am yelling at him.
... Now my husband is even more annoyed and my head is swimmy and my ears are ringing and so shaky and I don't understand why. I begin to cry because I can't keep up, because I want so badly to do these curricular things but I don't know if I am actually physically capable.
I am a different person but my cognitive stamina is not... It is still too low for me.
And the yelling and crying is just further evidence of that.
I will try to get more sleep, eat less sugar and adjust a few things in hopes that tomorrow it will be better... But it is hard to accept and I don't want to.
It is especially hard because I don't have my "head injury expert" team to help me figure this out...
"there is something pathological to that" says Dr. Concussion the last time I saw her.
"pathological? explain," I ask. She does and to it I say, "Thank you for recognizing that."
But she still would not see or help me. She tells me she will help me find a new team. But then her response two weeks later when I followed up was she could not find one with the qualifications I need so I should just go through my insurance and have the wrist doctor refer to the neurologist. My insurance and others say go to them but the problem is they will not see me because of my "previous undisclosed" pathology that I was trying to show them and explain the whole time.
...
They refuse to see me and treat me but they continue to bill.
How on earth can this be ethical and okay?
It's not.
but I have no voice and no rights and no protection.
And that is why I will keep talking.
I'm tired.
but strangely hopeful again
as I have written it out to speak out.

Why do our hearts betray us?

There other day, at physical therapy, I talked with a beautiful lady whose fun, short, wavy, perfect hair I was coveting. She told me she hacked it because she is going through a divorce and in her bright blue eyes that can't hide her pain I saw pieces of me.
Hacking hair as a way to severe -almost literally- the attachments to boys who did not value. That was a pattern of my past that I did not really think was a pattern until I saw a mirror of me in this lovely lady.
That was something interesting, but the thing I saw in her that stirred me the most was her pain as she spoke of her exes. This lady loves and loves deeply. She is beautiful, lively and fun. But she is also in deep heart-wrenching pain. I know the pain. I can see it in her and I know it but I cannot feel it right now. I cannot allow myself to feel it again. I will not. I cannot take her pain and I know this, so I don't try to.
Instead I want her to feel the love I think she deserves to feel but I can't give that either because it is not my place and I am not the person for the job anyway.
Heartbreaking.
And I am struck with confounding wonder about our hearts that are so treacherous at times.
How is it we can love and be hurt so deeply?
How is it our human hearts can love so deeply and completely somebody who does not return it?
We are told to trust our heart but I am beginning to wonder if this is very smart, as treacherous as they can be.
They betray us.
Why?
This is so confusing to me.
Like the way that it felt like a dagger puncturing and twisting so many times over so many months.
How do we survive?
Our bodies are so strong and resilient
and yet I am positive these breaks take there toll.
I hope this beautiful lady finds a love that will last and bring joy that is equal or better than the pain she is feeling right now. ..and yet if she does, eventually one will be lost at very least to the process of mortality and then a heart will be deeply wounded again. Which is probably the real reason no one lives forever in these mortal frames.
May our hearts be settled in forever and until then I pray they may bare the burdens of breaking, time and again.
And I pray we will be kind to each other.

Write a book

Write a book.
Write a book
It is a request I have heard a lot lately
Requests for a book about TBI- concussion
Requests for a book about transference and countertransference
Requests for a book about my therapist either grooming or falling for me and me exploding into a million amazingly managed manic pieces
Requests for a book on mental health
I want to.
But I also kind of already have
at least twice
one here on this blog
and one in my own report of myself, the flooding of memories and other processing that mostly was written in that first two weeks of my breaking.
So I am going back and reading some of what I have written trying to figure how I can meet those requests with a product that is quality enough to be published.
... I have books but they are not typical, in a typical pattern. That maybe could make it interesting but I also see, as I read about me, that I have been repeating a lot of the same stuff while stuck in my loop of insanity and working so hard not to be.
Looking back and reading is funny, interesting, embarrassing, annoying in my ruminating, infuriating, and probably a whole lot of other ings.
One thing I surely am is terrifying.
So intense. So deep. I'd be scared of me too. Wait, sometimes I am.
But it is also incredibly comical and some of the poetic intensities that have come out of me are so very amusing because I kind of don't think I am really like that and yet I am. Some make me really laugh because I can't believe that it came out of me at all; so angry and scary, or deep and disturbing. To me it is funny it is me because it's really not me and I'd rather be funny anyway. Not angry, scary, deep or disturbing.
Laugh and the world laughs with you.... unless you are bipolarish and have had a TBI then, unfortunately my friend, you will often laugh alone in your broken, deep, and fallible ways.
But at least someone is laughing.

Realities, and Writing out a Headache

Every trial, trauma and/or experience in life seems to have little -and big- side effects that those who have not been through it or similar have no idea of or would not expect.
While headache is probably not a surprising effect of TBI, headaches like todays are especially annoying to me and because of my TBI experiences I find myself maybe more concerned and annoyed than I may need to be.
So I thought I'd try and write out my headache or at least the annoyance with it.
It is pushing on my eyes and making me tired and irritable.
I want to sleep but I cannot because my head also wants to solve and understand why and what is really best to do about this particular kind of headache - a new kind of headache. I feel only slight pain and pressure but I feel a bit funny and slightly disoriented. My vision is slightly strange but not blurry or spinning just slightly weird in a way I don't know how to explain. One deep breath seems to help but as I finish releasing the breath the headache feels more intense and more deep breaths seem to deepen the pain. ...
I think todays may be linked to too many nights of taking my medicine and going to bed later than I should. The medication was doing a pretty good job of knocking me out within about 30 minutes of taking it. This has made me not want to take it until my kids had gotten home and were at least close to getting to bed. My kids are teens and my daughter is dancing until 10 pm some nights. Then she comes home and wants to do homework or is taking too much time winding down when she needs to be up at 5 am for her extracurriculars she is determined to do. My son just won't follow through and takes about two hours to get ready for bed. My husband is a night owl and the irresponsibility my children have developed with getting to bed and getting enough sleep I can definitely pin on him (I say this not angry but rather humorously annoyed)... though I'll admit I have gotten more lax. So I am struggling with the balance here since if I take the medication too late it is extremely hard to get up in the morning and the medication is not knocking me out as quickly anymore. My mind is up wandering later than it should be. I do believe this nightly mind wandering could now be a habit formed from the racing thoughts I had to endure for too long.
I think this,
and I want answers. I want to be able to ask the professionals.
But those who I started this TBI journey with me have abandoned me with the blame for my ex-neuropsychologists indiscretions. The experts I have now do not have the equivalent training or expertise in TBI. My new neuropsychologist might comes close and in some ways I am certain she is much better, but the psychiatric PA is just that and though she wanted me to have a neurologist or physiatrist to over see the TBI stuff she cannot get me into any her company is affiliated with, which may be due to insurance, and the other suggestion her companies schedulers made is...dah, dah, dah... the damned Neuroscience Institute -who refuses to treat me because I have been defamed and labeled unjustifiably. And all for what?
So my tired headache is exacerbated by my inability to get any answers and I guess for most people their ailments are this way. I believe more and more and especially after so many conversations with so many people that our medical industry is full of egotistical fraudulent money grubbers...
So in reality I maybe should  credit myself with being a true expert in the industry because I seem to know better than they do.
If the definition of mania is what it is, it does not matter their opinion or why they missed or dismissed diagnosing, that is what I was and the chemistry and shit I have endured ever since has been absolutely exacerbated by the way they did and did not treat me.
I struggle to let go because, since I was a child, I been an advocate for justice and others and I know in this they need to be held accountable or they at least need to learn and improve because they are being ignorant and unintelligent, bias, discriminatory and deliberately harmful in a field where those traits and actions are not at all okay.
Am I judging? Yes, I am, because I know what happened to me and how easily it could have been avoided if they had not so quickly and arrogantly or ignorantly misjudged me and then continually tried to dismiss me because they felt I was a liability or not worth their time and effort.
I am labeling too. I see that also, but bad milk by any other name would smell just as sour, so I am calling it what it is after being too kind and forgiving, and putting so much faith in them....
...I am afraid I might be getting sucked into the rabbit hole again.
so time to get out... via a flashback memory?
"because I will just keep coming back, trying to kick the door down" one of the last things I said to him, begging him not to shut the door completely on me. It was an instinctive response that came out of my mouth not knowing what I was saying or why. But I did know, without any doubt, that I still needed him and his expertise. I was heading to Italy in exactly 7 days, just me and my kids for the first week and a half, and the discussion I asked him for I could not actually allow or even comprehend because of the condition I was in.  It hurt too bad and I needed to keep some strength just then.
What I needed Dr. He to see and understand was not that I loved him or that he could possibly get into trouble for loving or grooming me, I needed him to see that I was high and unstable, with flooding and racing thoughts. I needed him to see the intensity and I needed to know what it was from and what to do about it. He made it about him and I trusted him professionally and personally so then, deep in me, it also became about him. Manic was compounded and became much more complex because now it was all about him when initially it was about me and it was supposed to be. I also initially thought it had more to do with head injury, but he would not see or agree, personally or professionally. Can you see how this would mess with me? Mistakes I was fine to forgive, but he was not fine to admit.
Embarrassed, no doubt,
but is that fair to, on me, take it out?
Don't take out your embarrassment on the embarrassment. It's like craping on crapped in pants. Or was he simply wiping his ass and throwing away the pants that he accidentally shat in? Oh my, I have gotten of track with junior high or lower level potty humor... This it the kind of stuff I probably should take out but I'm going to leave because it is so stupid it becomes funny to me.

... and so as I am writing
my headache is subsiding
remembering how much I really do understand
breathing is settling
my thoughts are finding
the simple solutions at hand.
And I will be okay
alive another day
and living a life that's quite grand
I am glad for my struggles
over those of others
and I am happy with the progress I have made.
(even if I am shat in pants)
A headache will go away
or come back to destroy my days
but either way
life is a grand adventure and I love that I get to live it!
(because pants can be washed, you know)

High as a Kite

"She's sooo highhh, high above me she's so lovely."
Sometimes I feel as high as a kite
it just isn't right
but what do I do?
shaky and high
Probably why I was such a good runner in high school. I held school records.
I want to run now
but it is much harder these days
because age and my regular lazy phase
make injuries happen easily
plus I am still healing
it is pretty ridiculous how prolonged the healing of the ankle and back and hip are
but it is likely because I pushed it too hard too many times in the initial healing stages
push crash
push crash
head injury is so lovely
or is it just me
just how I am?
I don't know
I just know that right now I feel high again
similar to normal me high that is not manic and stuff
but different because I am shaky and sometimes a bit scared that I am flying too high yet again.

In my younger years this problem was also a blessing because it kept me form drugs, drinking and other bad stuff, because I sure didn't need any help getting high and screwing myself up. It happens so naturally with brain injury. Is that an advantage or dis?
I don't know again but it is kind of funny on one hand or two.
So high I fly and I don't know why
but fun for the faint of heart
to Work I must go and keep it contained -sometimes so much easier said then done
but hi ho hi ho it's off to work I go and
people will think more things of me that just aren't true
because I can't quite explain
though I manifest far different then the plain
that I am

Actions speak loudly. So does neglect and stonewalling

I'm still dragging my feet...
and I am sad and scared
I am sad because of all of it
I am scared because I don't know what to expect from myself and what is realistic for me. I am scared because my brain and chemistry got so very messed up and I felt it so very intense for so long but I was ignored and disregarded and punished, branded and vilified for being honest and managing or presenting well when I was quite broken. For doing exactly what the therapist are hoping to help people accomplish.
I am scared because I know mental illness does not get better with age. I am scared because I have been so discarded and disregarded by the professional that should know how to handle me.
I am scared because my brain still malfunctions.
I know I am not alone and I am likely better off then even the completely stable because I am so aware of my holes and my flaws. I will be able to see the breaks and crises's coming as I age, when for them it will come as a surprise with little experience to know how to manage.
So that is a good thing for me.
But what do I do about the professionals that abused? I think I can't just let this slide, because new dear friends of mine almost died... from similar neglect, stigmatizing and misdiagnosis.
But tired this battle makes my head.
and tired so many other things also
so slow I will continue to go
not knowing what and why
but proceeding with what was laid out
I am sad to say that they treated me that way because it really makes it appear that dear Perri was grooming.
I can tell you just how a psychologist might get his patient to take off their clothes without it seeming it was ever their suggestion. I can tell you this because I did not but from what I have read and what I have experienced and then the way that he hid and manipulated to make it look as though I was pursuing. The patient advocate, **, (I will refrain from adding the not so nice adjectives that I feel right now) said that I am "quite creative" but the thing is (and if you have seen my art then you know) that I really am not, I was simply relaying what happened. I can tell you how now because I see, with the exception of me, how his words and his actions would work very easily on other women who had head injury and presented the way that I had.
Why am I the exception? For many reasons, but ironically, number one is the very thing he could have banked on to make easy progress; TBI. He forgot or did not realize that mine I have been handling since I was 12 years old. I had worked very hard with, high moral standards, to gain and stay in control of my emotions and inhibitions and part of how I do that is by talking and being far too open and honest in the places I know it won't be missed (email, in this case). I have also always been easily comfortable with men and, broken the way I was from relationships and neglect, I did not perceive myself as a women that men would find attractive enough to act on. Which could have made me a more prime target yet also could be why his plans backfired, I internalize and accept responsibility blaming myself for far too much far too often, so by bringing to light just how I had broken I brought to light his transgressions without even knowing I was...
Sadly it is a possibility that at this point should not be disregarded.... I know because no one who loves you and is supposed to be your protector, not because of personal but professional obligations, would ever treat a person or allow a person to be treated the way that I have been treated.... I also know because how I was effected. Some stuff I have not shared here and maybe with nobody, because it is to profound, wrong, and confusing.
And I hate that I am going to have to keep remembering and telling myself these things to make it through this final stretch and make sure they are somehow help accountable.
No one should ever have to endure the months of crazy, abuse, neglect, hurt, and unstable when the problem and solution could have been addressed so simply and easily at the beginning but was not simply because they did not want to admit or be held accountable for their mistakes.