Chapter Seventeen

A new bar of soap starts this Tuesday off with a new direction. Yuuuummmmm, honeysuckle.

Chapter Sixteen was about last Tuesday. A whole week has passed since I wrote that chapter and I’ve not been able to write anything but timeline work until now. This has been a long week of grieving and sad. I will spare you the bulk of it. Working on that timeline really brought it all together for me. Right there in black and white, all the reasons. In looking at it, seeing it, acknowledging its realness and ability to hurt. Letting it hurt, allowing the anger, the sadness. Acknowledging the waste and the irrationality. I have to give up on trying to understand why people do what they do, or make the decisions they make. You can not rationalize someone else’s irrational thoughts, actions, or behaviors. It is devastating when their actions have such a brutal effect on your life. My biggest mistake was believing words, and not paying enough attention to actions. Until the actions were so blatant and hurtful they punched me in the gut. The accumulation of year after year of suppression has an outcome of fetal position on the floor.

Stress. Such a small word with so many meanings and so many deadly outcomes.

I had my weekly meeting with Leslie yesterday. She says my brain is injured. I can consider it as broken as a broken leg. Sometimes legs heal up just fine. Sometimes they look all healed up, but when x-rayed there are issues and need further work. Sometimes they heal, but you have a limp. The same with brains. At this point we don’t know if my brain will return to its pre-breakdown abilities or if some of this anxiety/mental fog is here to stay. Long term stress changes the chemicals in your brain. We just have to wait and see as I recover, how much of the old me comes back.

I have had personality changes on a fundamental level. From an extrovert to an introvert. From optimist to pessimist. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I don’t know if this is a permanent change or a temporary one. I feel like I do not know me. Leslie says that how I am now is just fine. I should add some sort of affirmation that what and who I am is good enough. Perfect even. Some of the old me may come back. Some won’t. Some of my wacky sense of humor is coming back and I am relieved. Right now my recovery is being aided by medication. I don’t want that to be lifelong. Dr. Nancy and I have discussed possibly a six month period and then see how i’m doing, and try weaning me off slowly.

I am scheduled to return to work towards the end of this month. Yesterday the thought of driving through Jacksontown made me sick to my stomach and gave me a pounding headache. I could not make even simple decisions the rest of the day. Ken asks did something happen? You are so out of it Tamara. No, no, just scared. Ken says we can drive through Layton, we don’t have to go that way. Leslie suggested that sometime next week we go to Jacksontown in the evening and walk around. Take a whole pill before we leave, recite affirmations, come up with a strategy. Holy crap! If I have to do that just to go to the town, how on earth am I going to work? Too big picture, for now all I have to work on is a strategy to walk around the buildings. That’s it. Don’t think too far ahead. Don’t scare yourself. How ridiculous this all seems to someone who knew the old me. How lucky I am to have Ken, who just loves me, in whatever incarnation I am in at the moment. How lost I feel. Almost like i’ve been plunked down in the middle of someone else’s life.