In one of my all-time favorite books, ‘Frankenstein’, Mary Shelley wrote: “Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.” Below, I’ve pasted a short essay that I wrote several years ago while I was trying to pull myself out of a dark and hopeless place—a place that I found myself after one of those ‘great and sudden changes’ sucker-punched me.
I like this piece because firstly, it is short (like my attention span) and in the few minutes it takes me to read it, I can look back at where I was and see where I am now. I think sometimes I forget my history and obstacles once they’re firmly in the past. The strength is in my carriage every day for overcoming and enduring these hurdles but it’s just a nice boost of confidence to be able to look back at the obstacle course behind me and it gives me courage to face the rest of the course ahead.
But first, perhaps I should set the stage, give you a brief history of this change that pounced on me on one random day. I was just driving along and my brain just kinda shut down. The best way I could describe it is if my brain had been a computer and some asshole had just come along and unplugged me and then plugged me back in. It felt like everything just shut down and then there was a surge of electricity. As my brain started to reboot, I came to my senses enough to get off the road but I was very dizzy and confused. Neurologically speaking, I’ve never been the same since. I ended up in the hospital but doctors didn’t know what was going on so they sent me home. In the year following, I couldn’t drive, I couldn’t walk very well because my balance was so poor, and I couldn’t even be a passenger in a car for more than 10 minutes because the motion was intolerable. I cried constantly for no reason. I couldn’t think straight, at least half my vocabulary was gone, and I couldn’t tolerate light or many sounds. It was a full year before a doctor was finally able to tell me what was wrong. I have a condition called pseudotumor cerebri that the doctors believed was related to an undiagnosed neck injury that was causing spinal fluid in my brain to not drain and circulate as it should and that build-up put pressure on my brain. With medication and a good chiropractor, I regained a good deal of what I lost, I was able to go back to work and drive and be fairly independent again. A few years later, I lost a great deal of weight and that helped even more. I’m not where I was and probably never will be. I would love for my balance to fully return—it hasn’t. I would love to feel completely lucid and write as fluidly as I did before but that’s still a challenge. Still I’m thankful, very thankful.
Below is a short essay I wrote during the darkest of this time. Understand that I’m being very generous in calling this an “essay”. I entitled it “Nobody Asks” and I wrote it during that first year when no doctors could tell me what was going on and I felt like I would live the rest of my life in darkness.
Nobody Asks
And now I face the likely conclusion that I will never be the same person I was four months ago. I may never have another lucid moment, alone in my own mind. The part of me that is raging against the change is the same part that’s eroding me from the inside. My thoughts may be eternally clouded and all the things I dreamed of and planned for just a few months ago will likely never come to be. I didn’t ask for it and it’s not fair. It just is.
Some days I feel like I’m making progress-baby steps. It helps to realize that I was not meant to live life on my own terms. I don’t have the luxury of calling the shots. Life is to be lived on life’s terms. I have to sow the lot given to me and it matters not at all whether I like it or whether I asked for it. Life changes and life gives you things you don’t want and you have two choices: you can either succumb to it or you can adapt to it. Nobody asks for shit to happen to them…nobody asks for pain or grief. Nobody asks for the doctor to say, grimly, the word “cancer”. Nobody asks for someone to run a red light and put them in a wheelchair for the rest of their life. Nobody asks to relinquish their health, their sense of security, their loved ones. And all these things, in time, we will relinquish in one fashion or another. Luckily, the human mind and body are quite versatile. In time, we adapt and by doing so, in a very real and small way, we overcome. Defeating our obstacles isn’t about eliminating them…it’s about enduring the pain of them and not allowing them to defeat us. Only in allowing the pain of change to become a part of me, can I overcome it.
It’s dark here now and it’s a very real possibility that the light may never return. But just because I may never again be where I was, doesn’t mean I cannot still grow from where I am.