Tag Archives: brain surgery

My World Never Feels Safe…And Now I’m Right

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The roads are all lined with eggshells. Tiptoes and feather steps, thinking back to a time when sidewalk cracks were the only items on a list of things to avoid.

Leaving a house full of physical walls to venture outside into a world of imaginary ones is a nasty little mind trick to navigate.

For many years I have maintained some semblance of sanity by following a specific series of patterns, habits, and concocted restrictive rules to live among the “normals,” and do my best to blend. Now, everyone else has systems, and there’s just too much competing static to cut clean s-curves without a face full of powder.

Monkey bar-swinging from one brain surgery to the next has saddled this lanky lad with a backpack full of trauma, and it’s a daily challenge to keep those shoulders back. But when that carefully calibrated balance is disrupted, and uncontrollable variables are added to the recipe, the already-crispy cookies in the oven tend to emerge blackened and burned.

If the personal side effects of this historic snapshot are nothing more than increased worry, discomfort, and agitation, I will consider myself incredibly lucky. Countless victims of this global tidal wave would gladly trade everything for a little increased anxiety.

Nervousness is temporary. Asphyxiation is not.

This is Chapter One. We are wading into dangerous waters, and we’re not even waist-deep. Stay vigilant. Stay clean. Stay supported.

Stay safe.

Adolescence Interrupted

Do Not Pass Go

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stop1“Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.”  —Pablo Picasso

Well, I have found a familiar friend in the rubble of my recent implosion. That sidekick is resilience.

I have been challenged, stomped on, and set off course more times in this life than I can begin to count. But there is one constant, and that is my bionic ability to rebound and strategize. With eyes wide, I find a way to see beyond the flames to find some piece of solace and security on the other side.

Being a hopeful thinker is certainly helpful, but something starts in the gut and propels me past the chaos of the sandstorm and into placid pastures. I am more than grateful for this gift, and I can thank the ruthless brain surgeries for building my armor. Drilling a sense of possibility and perspective into a head that would rather obey instincts by cowering in the corner, adversity has ultimately become an asset.

Now, I can’t for a second say that I relish the consistent destruction of my plans, but I can take pride in the way those broken pieces are observed, analyzed, gathered, and disposed of in an almost-mechanical manner. I waste no time on tears when the next chapter is waiting to be written.

Flexibility and perseverance have become fine bedfellows, and I eagerly anticipate the day those red lights finally flash green.

Adolescence Interrupted