Character Lessons - Part One

To think that we only have a certain window of chance is to render ourselves powerless. There is always a chance. There is always hope. There is always a new beginning, if you're willing to believe and do the work. Anything is possible as long as you still exist.

I pull up my pants leg. My aunt is there, smiling. Hair flowing from her head, lush and thick. Eyes piercing. Eyes welcoming. Eyes soft. When I was little, she took me to the river. El río. She told me, siempre bailar con él corazón. Incluso en la lluvia. Even if it rains, dance with your heart.

You were so right, Tía. So right. La lluvia can’t melt me now. La lluvia can only bring me good. Pura buena. Pura buena. Pura. Buena.

You still hurt, Tía. You are red. Rojo. Inflamado. Como él fuego. Just like you were. Just like I remember. Where are your ashes, Tía? Where is your espíritu? Here, like always? Or thrown up against the sky, like el ave?

You say, Le felicidad es una ilusión mí niña. It is not a mountain that you scale once, but many times. As many times as your eyes desire a new one.

Le felicidad es una ilusíon mí niña. It is in you. In how you see. Mañana le dará. You see. Mañana estará libré.

I park my car across the street by the fairgrounds. I push my purse underneath the seat, lock the doors and start walking towards the grass. My hand is shaking as I dial the number. The sun shines through the leaves above me. They begin to shake gently, like they want to dance.

I hang up the phone and stare back at the sky. The clouds are wrapped on top of the mountains, still. Sitting. No longer grey. Just white.

Siempre bailar con él corazón. Incluso en la lluvia, mí niña.

Turbulence

An airplane ride over the Rocky Mountains almost always brings a little turbulence. Sometimes the force of the wind off the Front Range is enough to make the plane sway back and forth. If you're a novice at Denver International Airport descents, it almost feels like it's going to tip. Sometimes you notice the pilots are flying the plane at an angle--to keep it from doing just that.

Today was one of those days. But as the lady behind me freaked out and one of my iPod playlists blasted in my ears, I had this calm feeling everything was going to be okay. Not only because I've been on these bumpy rides before (and survived without a Bloody Mary), but because the turbulence made me smile.

Turbulence has that power, even though it seems counterintuitive. But, you're up there for the ride anyway--with no guarantees--only faith, and hope, and a view you can only imagine from the ground. You can enjoy those bumps or you can fear them. Either way, you can't stop them from coming. The wind knows what it needs to bring, but it never promises that it will be smooth and easy.

Smile. Laugh. Throw your hands up and pretend you're on a roller coaster ride, like the woman seated a few rows in front of me this morning.

Sometimes turbulence is the only way we stay awake. Sometimes turbulence is the only way we figure out how to survive.

Rebirth

After my accident, my brain changed. And consequently, my mind along with it. At the time, I was too stubborn and determined to slow down to notice any of it. I had to get back to work the next day so I could get paid, make sure all of my accounts were taken care of, and make sure that no one else at my company was inconvenienced. I also had a final to study for. And like all the finals before it, I was going to get an 'A.' No questions asked.

I was still drinking after work almost every night to wind down from the stress and the emotional taxation, so I didn't notice my inability to stay asleep for more than a few hours at a time. I also didn't notice my brain's inability to calm itself down and drift off into sleep without some sort of sedative as an aid. I didn't notice that I would wake up feeling unrested, as if I hadn't slept at all. I didn't notice the apathy, or the carelessness around my house, or the simple inability to wake up and find something joyful about the life around me. I noticed the dizziness, but I thought it was just because I was tired or exhausted. It was just my job and it would go away once the cause went away too. I don't remember if I noticed the nausea, but because it wasn't as bad as it was during the first week after the accident, I probably shrugged that off as exhaustion, too.

I didn't want to believe that there were going to be any consequences from a contusion, a concussion, a hematoma, and a scalp laceration. I'd stuffed down and ignored "the bad" and "pain" all my life; why should this accident and its aftermath be any different? Well, after I'd gotten all my 'A's' and quit the 'exhausting' job, I finally had to admit that something was different. I was different. And I was going to have to make peace with that and find different ways of doing what I had done for most of my life. And I was going to have to let go of some things, no matter how painful or how much of a struggle it would turn out to be.

When I started this blog, I wanted to give a voice to HSPs. But I am more than an HSP. I am also a traumatic brain injury survivor and so today I choose to bring a voice to that experience. I am not complaining. I know I am one of the 'lucky' ones. I am not in a coma, I am not in a hospital bed, I do not have to go through physical therapy sessions, I can still talk, and for the most part I can still think. Even if that 'thinking' is a little slower, a little more haphazard, and more frustrating when I can't quite be as 'sharp' as I used to be. But even the 'lucky' ones know the aftermath is still a struggle. You have to work slower, especially when it involves thinking, writing, or studying. You have to take many more breaks and sometimes you can only concentrate for a few minutes at a time.

Some things you can't control anymore. Like naps. You may have the intention of closing your eyes for only a few minutes, and then wake up 3 to 5 hours later wondering what happened. You want to find happiness and for a few moments you do. But then it's back to the irritation and the apathy, and the 'I just want to sleep and zone out.' Those 3-5 mile runs you used to go on? Maybe tomorrow you'll start. Maybe tomorrow you'll try walking instead. And sometimes you do. For weeks, even. But then you stop. You have to take a break. It's too much. The effort is too much. The effort of living is too much.

Not living, breathing, taking life in. No, it's the demands of living. The demands of 'our culture.' I finished a book this week about learning how to live and what's really important about living. It is only when we learn about 'dying' that we learn about 'living' is the gist of the lesson.

There are all kinds of death. There's physical, of course. And emotional; spiritual. But there's also the death of our self-concept. What we must do; what we must be; who we think we are by definitions and labels. It's all a bunch of nonsense. Silly, really. The truth is, we are everything. We will be everything. If not now, if not in this life, then soon. Pretty; ugly. Young; old. Ambitious; content. Self-serving; self-sacrificing. The list goes on.

Rebirth happens because we die. Is it something to fear? Is it something to avoid? Many of us try. Some of us eventually realize that love is what brings us back. It is what keeps us from staying away. It is why we come back.

And many of us soon find out that we're going to have to tell ourselves "I was who I was, but now I am simply something undefinable. I am simply life."

The Values Behind Choices

Everyday we are faced with choices. It's part of the gift that we're given when we come here. By "here," I mean the human experience. I love the gift, even though it brings heartache, deliberation, triumphs, and crises. What I love even more is that you almost always have the opportunity to "re-choose" as long as you keep living.

But why do we make certain choices? And why do people faced with the same set of "circumstances" and/or "facts" make different ones? I think it comes down to values--what each of us deems as more important or more true to who we are. Although I do believe that there are some external things in life that we do not choose (e.g. child abuse, rape, child poverty), at many points in our lives we have the ability to make both internal and external choices.

When faced with an environment, a situation, a job, or a relationship that begins to violate one of your values, you must make a choice. You must decide what is more important. I believe that one of the signs that change needs to occur is unhappiness or conflict. Sometimes that means you change your internal perspective. I think that is a good place to start--the best place to start. But when that doesn't work or it involves violating your truth, it's time to remove yourself from the environment.

So, some of you may wonder or have a hard time understanding why I might remove myself from an environment and an experience that I wanted to be a part of? Because several of my values are being violated and I deem other things to be more important. I value passion, originality, the ability to think for oneself, figuring out what I have to say vs. what others want to hear, hard work, a strong work ethic, compassion, inspiration, a down-to-earth perspective and quiet servitude over the pursuit of potential fortune and fame.

This is my truth. These are my values. These are my choices.