Looking back on my life I realize now how I lived most of my childhood and adolescence dazed and stressed to the max. I have mentioned many times how I was always so concerned of the opinions of people and worried of everything. When I came home from my accident I felt so different from everyone. Let me first say I did suffer a brain injury from my car accident. I was hit on the right side of my head and it affected my whole left side. I also lost oxygen to my brain from a sever lung injury. This is what caused me to fall into a coma for so long.
A brain injury affects who we are, the way we think, act, and feel. It can change everything about us. This is what I believe made my nerves so bad all the time. Not to mention I was only 14 years old and I had experienced a life changing event most people would never live through. Now that I am a 34 year old woman and I have experienced so much more I see now how I dealt with what I have always told people was complete crap, post traumatic stress syndrome. It makes so much sense to me that I was going through all this, but when I went through my horrible divorce I didn’t deal with that problem. Of course I worried all the time because I had weeks I would have to go hungry because I had no money at all to eat. Even when I received those notices of foreclosure for the home my son and I were living in I didn’t go through that issue only a horrible type of worry but my strength would always kick in for me.
I believe every person finds their strength in life in different ways. For me my strength and determination was initially developed at an early age by having to fight for my life. Then finding the determination within myself to get out of a wheelchair and learn to walk. But we all find strength at different stages and times in our lives. After coming home from Boston and relaxing and getting back into the grind of my life I have began having signs of this post traumatic stress syndrome again. I never would have believed after everything I have lived through in my life I would develop this again and I wasn’t even involved in the area of seeing anyone hurt. The memories I have of that day are becoming more and more vivid to me now. I have had dreams of the sound I heard in that food court, and the people screaming! I didn’t go through this too much when I was younger although I did have dreams for years of things my mom later told me was what was happening when I was in ICU. My dreams lately are of pushing people up the road and hearing them ask what’s going on what’s going on???? I keep feeling that heartbreak for those innocent people doing what I love and they loved. But most of all I can’t get the fact that I stood directly across from the store that was blown up off my mind. Its all been such a shocker for me is all I can say.
Dealing with this I have been spending all the time I can with my son. I believe we all have the capacity not just to survive something traumatic like this, but to
overcome and thrive. So I have took this week off from work and I have been meditating, reading and doing some running. I have taken off from my routine from the gym because I am not ready to deal with any big crowds yet. I have made plans to go back to Atlanta this weekend and participate in a race on Sunday to help me get my mind together more. Plus I have some excellent running friends there that I want to see and spend some time with.
To end my entry I’d like to say I believe the resilience of the human spirit is amazing and I have maintained my spirit through many different obstacles and this is only one more of those hurdles for me to jump and it will only make me stronger and more determined to get where I want to go…
