You never know when you enter a new year what the crash anniversary will be like. Sometimes you think you’ll skate through it, then the day dawns and wham: you might as well have stayed in bed.
This year, things went south early on in 2018, which to me, boded ill for today. Last night wasn’t great either. Fears picked at my nerve endings, and worries wormed through my axons. I finally fell asleep and awoke too early. I zapped my brain with what I used to call the light and sound show — audiovisual entrainment using SMR/Beta frequencies to paradoxically create calming brainwaves in my concussed brain — and turned to Twitter for welcome distraction. I stumbled on an article about a new way to objectively take the brain’s vital signs, sort of like how we measure the pulse and blood pressure to take the body’s vital signs. I emailed my brain trainer and the ADD Centre the article and asked if they’d heard of this Canadian research from out west. Their quick reply was enough to push me up and out of bed. In our world of being too busy to reply, we’ve forgotten how life-giving a quick reply, even the briefest of ones, are. Then Canada Post after subjecting me from late December to early January to the most exhausting experience of waiting for a package I’ve ever endured, suddenly turned up with my second one. I was expecting it to be shipped today, not arrive today! Whoa. The rest of the day unfolded like that, threading me from one unexpected good moment to another.
It’s the end of the day as I write this, contemplating a poster I made for myself in 2007 from the picture of the rose above. My (first) stint at brain biofeedback was ending. I was being discharged into an unknown new reality with both trepidation and faith that my hard work would return me to my dream. And now I’ve arrived at a new ending, the end of writing and publishing Concussion Is Brain Injury: Treating the Neurons and Me, the final version of my memoir; the end of believing that my PTSD can be treated; the end of focusing on my health care. Unless God answers prayer, I turn my face away from the idea I always held in front of me: that my brain injury can be healed fully, that I will avoid the heightened risk of Alzheimer’s. I’m eighteen years post-injury and am not remotely close to normal health. The poem I wrote for myself over a decade ago speaks to me now into whatever time I have left.
MORNINGS
Sun on the rose,
Kisses us awake,
To the possibility of hope.
