Deep Diving into my Thoughts

Aaaahhhh I'm late. 

I was doing so well, too. 

Ah well, on with it. What on earth do I want to talk about today? 

I had a bit of an interesting thought today. It didn't start out interesting. Just bear with me.

A family member, who has some chronic pain and autoimmune issues, said "I'm just so tired of being in pain every day."

I wasn't upset, I didn't say anything out loud. I just thought to myself, "Ugh, SAME. I'm so tired of being brain damaged every day." Honestly, I think this is the case for pretty much anyone. We all have something we're really just DONE with.

Sometimes, you can be literally done with it, and it goes away, or you go away, and it's all over. This is not true in the case of chronic pain or other permanent conditions, such as brain damage, or other organ damage. Sometimes, you just have to keep living with it. 

It's no fun.

I mean, sure, there's always an out, I suppose. Some people take that out, and I'm not going to judge their pain. However, that's not always an out for everyone. A lot of people just stubbornly insist on living. We plod on, dragging whatever we have to, through life. We look for the next thing to keep us going. I haven't had a day yet where I thought "That's it. I'm just done with it. Nothing keeps me going anymore." I very much hope I never do.

Does it sometimes feel hopeless? Yeah. Yeah, it does. Sometimes, like everyone, this life feels a bit too hard to carry. It's a thing. If there's a single person on this planet who has never EVER felt this way, I'm extremely surprised. 

The difference between me and a whole bunch of people who are no longer with us, I think, is that I have something to keep going for, every time. Some days, it's my kids, some days its my husband, some days it's my whole family. Sometimes it's a goal I have. Some days I remember that I have something I really want to do, still. Sometimes it's literally "I'll never find out how this book/movie/situation ends." Thus far, though, it's always something. I can't fault that. 

But I am very, very tired of brain damage. I can't think properly. I can't remember things in the right order, or in the correct way. I can't do the job I love anymore. I'm not performing (this hurts more than pretty much anything else). I'm not a dependable member of my household anymore. 

Sometimes, I'm very irritated that I can still see all of this. I thought, originally, that if I wound up with some kind of memory loss (I didn't think of what I would feel like with brain damage, because who does that?) I would be ok. I maybe wouldn't remember that I couldn't remember something. 

But I do notice. Eventually.

I never notice in the moment. I remember when someone brings up the issue I forgot about. Or I remember when I find I haven't done the thing I needed to do. 

And it feels ridiculously bad. In the full sense of the phrase, to be honest. I feel ridiculous and I feel bad and I feel inordinately sad. I want to apologize to anyone, everyone, sometimes the entirety of existence, because I can't seem to do these simple things that I used to do. 

What good would it do to apologize to all that, though? I don't know. I just feel so inadequate and so...lost. In all of this. In my life, in life in general, in the world. 

I know I used to think relatively clearly. Not all of my life, no. There were some particularly sticky times in my life where I didn't quite function on all cylinders. But I always recovered from those times, usually all the better for it. 

Sure, I'm recovering from this, but it's never going to be a complete recovery. That damage to my brain cells will not reverse, it will not ever be the same as it was again. 

This is a hard thing to assimilate.

My brain, our brains, are everything we are. Everything we were. All that we could be in the future. Our memories are stored in this mass of matter and electrical impulses within our skulls, and we really don't think about them at all, until they don't do what they're expected to do. 

Odd, as our brains are used to think. So really, we don't think about what thinks for us. Or, the thinking somehow isn't actually self aware. 

This is a much deeper blog post than I was thinking of writing. (Ha, see what I did there?)

[Insert facepalm here]

We can't even really talk about our brains without kind of disembodying them, weirdly. We literally depersonalize ourselves when discussing our brain function. 

Does this shock anyone else, or is it just me?

This is what this brain injury has also done with my life. I am often forced to think about what I can't technically think of objectively. 

Does this all sound really confusing? 

Good, because it is.

The tangents just kind of spin out of control, and eventually...well, I think eventually I fall asleep and forget I've had this particular issue to begin with. Nice to know my self preservation is still in tact, I suppose. 

So. I just scared myself by going off script with this whole post. I feel I should give this information, as it's all part of the process. Stream of consciousness writing can do that. It takes on a life of its own, and sometimes takes turns we don't expect. If you've followed this post this far, thank you for reading. Even if you skipped a bunch of it to the end, thank you for reading. I know how confusing it is to visit my brain. I live here full time.