The brain is so amazing, and if I were well enough, Id want to do a study on myself, my own illness and the traumatic brain injury symptoms I endure, simply because they are not just daunting, but fascinating. I feel like theyve possibly given me insights into such things as autism, or senility, and amazingly, my illness has only confirmed for me all the deepest things I know to be true. Whatever happened to me, over those three fateful days when I became so ill in 2012, and when I had five of seven major symptoms of stroke, it either did something profound to my brain (that the technology at the hospital Ive been to isnt equipped to detect), or it ushered in a disease that attacks my brain, to this day. Either way, I feel I have unexpected insights into certain things, such as sudden, dramatic sensitivity to stimuli - where lights, computer screens, noise, commotion, etc crash the central nervous system, in my case, both body and brain, and make certain instances of varying stimuli completely unbearable. Last year, for example, my brain was so ill-equipped to handle the stimuli we all take for granted, that standing on a sidewalk next to traffic, or being in a loud restaurant, not only made it difficult to see and hear and speak, but actually physically hurt - as if I was being bludgeoned. I had unique instances of a distorted sort of synesthesia. And it was (and still is, when it happens) incredibly difficult and horrible, and I had to counsel myself to never be afraid when these things happened, for fear and stress exacerbated my symptoms. I wonder if this is some of what autistic children experience, such overwhelm - physically - not mentally - from stimuli, that it is literally unbearable, either on brain, on the body, or both. Moreover, if I allow myself to stress at all during these times, stress makes it much worse. For example, my memory loss becomes much more pronounced. And I watch this happening to my 93-year-old grandfather. He has always been more hail and hearty than most people who are decades younger than he is, and for the last couple of years he has been slowly losing his faculties. As a subtle sort of senility has crept up on him, and as hes become increasingly forgetful, of things like basic words, the names of people hes known for many years, directions, etc, he starts to stress out over this, and beat himself up, as if hes stupid for forgetting. Ive been able to be a crutch and a source of humor and succor for him - because I GET it!! Omg, I get it. And it is heartbreaking. If I had to get sick like this, I thank god that I did now, at my age, with my levels of confidence in who I am and what I was once capable of - my trust in my (former) brain, and my deep, deep sense of myself. I am thankful for that every single day, for if it didnt have it, I may well lose my mind, with loss and grief and fear for what has, and is, happening to me. But, despite my great loss, I still DO have my sense of myself, even as that sense has been forced to expand, tremendously, and differently than ever expected, through profound disease. And so I can joke with my 93-year-old grandpa that we are two peas in a pod, that we make a great pair, that memory isnt everything:). And I help him find basic words, or we agree to let it be and find those words together, later. And we do. And we laugh about it, though his laugh is more hesitant, more full of loss than mine, as he lives with the knowledge that he is near his end, and he comes to terms with this. Ive lived with that knowledge in a much different way than he has: He has had a full life, a difficult but ultimately good life, and he benefitted from our old, dead, American dream - for he rose up and took its reins and ran with it. He worked very, very hard, all his life, and he invested every extra penny he had from his second job, always conservatively, and he made himself a millionaire, and then he supported his wifes vast family, for many, many years. And they lived well together, and now, as his brain and body go, he is sad and afraid, but ready. He was able to move himself and my step-grandmother into a high-end retirement home (as of today, in fact), leaving behind the home they made for the last three decades, in Santa Cruz. In the doing, his mind has been fading ever more quickly, for the stress of trying to move when youre 93 and your mind is no longer working, and the loss of that home, it hits hard, signifying the end-time, of your living. My case is so different. I didnt have his financial sense, and though I certainly can develop it, Ive spent my life, much of the time, surviving, instead. I watched my middle-class parents lose everything. I survived two natural disasters, in which my former boyfriend and I lost everything, twice, in two months, the second time surviving when two of our neighbors were buried in mud. I overcame severe, bilateral tendonitis in my arms, and did graduate school almost entirely by voice - ever plucky, ever resilient, ever determined to wrestle Fortuna to the ground, even as she visited incredible things upon me. I started my own organization, to help change our world, and we took on the United States Government, and initially won, and I got very, very sick, with almost no warning. And even before I got sick, I knew that I would have to contend with this fact: I was born to help change things on this planet, and that was never going to make my life easy. But I have known this - I mean known this - since my earliest memories, that that was my work in the world. And it has been my unfailing compass from day one, even as I had to survive tremendous things. That compass is still with me. But that compass doesnt align with, say, the likes of Suze Orman, and her work of intense fear-peddling over money and how we should be in this world. It doesnt set me up for a future of retirement, or ever being able to be taken care of, properly, in my old age. That compass, and now my illness, they dont go in a country of incredibly cruel systems, where people who are struggling were led so facilely by the nose to vote in a Republican majority Congress, who are foaming at the mouth to take away their retirements, their social security, and their Medicare, while shaming them and convincing them to blame - oh - everyone but the actual culprits for their hardships. No, my illness, my love for this planet, my total dedication to global paradigm shifts for the human race - these things dont go with our tight, obsolete American, this is the right way to do it rules, or the way our representatives are selling every single one of us save the 1% down the river, in every possible way - financially, environmentally, labor-rights-wise, health-wise, human rights and civil-liberties-wise - peddling the power to shape life on this planet into the hands of a few sociopaths, or at the very least, a few people who are very sick with their unchecked greed. My disease, the loss of much of my former brain functioning, it has taught me a great many things. I understand our sick and our poor, our marginalized, our shamed. I understand wild, wild constraints - the kind that make the preoccupations of the mainstream seem bizarre and quaint. I understand life as I never, ever did, and I understand a bit of death too. I suppose I can end this by saying: Im willing to die for what I believe in, and every single cell of my body will continue to fight for a world that makes more sense than the one weve made, even while my own wings are partially broken. I may never have my grandfathers security - and even if I played by all our bizarre, not-very-life-affirming rules - even if I were a good little girl and acquiesced to this, even if I werent sick, those rules no longer work, no longer serve me, or you - for they are now utterly rigged to serve a very tiny few. And this - this is why I call for nonviolent revolution. Not because I am an outsider but because I cross all boundaries, because I know almost all classes, because I refuse, I refuse, I refuse to be beaten down by our collective madness, by the greed of a few, by a world that desperately needs us to re-make it. I will not kowtow to broken systems, sick human beings, or cruelty, as our world cries out to us, as beneath all our dedicated distractions, there is so much that is falling, and the long long cry is what the hell are you all doing? What the hell are we all doing. No, I will not ignore that cry, and I will not be beaten down by the madness of those who willfully ignore it, while trying to abide by non-working rules. I will keep rising up, broken-winged or no. And I will keep urging you to do so too. I will keep singing to you, keep calling to you, rise up, rise inside of you. Rise up, rise up, rise up.
Posted on: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 17:51:18 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015