Life Cycle
Notes from January 25 to March 1…
My symptoms are parallel with aging – I have felt what my grandparents feel (or what I suspect they feel)¹. I think when meeting people with concussions, there is a feeling of “I understand what you went through/are going through.” But with vertigo, arthritis, and memory loss – I have a feeling I might not actually know what it feels like because I don’t have the age to back it up. It all started when I was 15; I’m 20 now, but is what I feel the same as what they feel? Are our tiredness relatively the same? Am I just gaslighting myself? Invalidating my feelings for the sake of what I believed to be honoring my elders–holding their experience in too high esteem?
When I type, my hands periodically go much slower. I type the letters of a word in the wrong sequence. Sometimes, I will have typed a word correctly, but because it was intuitive, I will spend 30 seconds staring at the word, feeling like it’s wrong, but then I forget why I’m staring at the one word and continue typing–that is if I remember what I was writing about.
I make myself sick when copying quotes out of the book–eyes moving right to left, book to computer. But I’d rather type than sleep.
I think my brain coding (INFJ) was exemplified when I got my concussions, or at least since my concussions. I am never not examining my thoughts and the world around me. It’s the only thing I can do or am doing. Or maybe I just have more time on my hands now that I only socialize with my family. I’m not constantly in defense mode. Maybe it truly was my concussions unconsciously stealing me away from a social life that now the only thing I know how to do is be aware of myself and my thoughts.
What if I’m here to understand, not be understood? At least I can try.
For so long I was obsessed with returning to who I once was. To who I was as a child: to 12-year-old me and 6-year-old me. It was before my concussions, before the first car accident I was in, before true social turmoil, before familial confusion, before my love of softball became construed. Before I stopped playing in the fields, and before I focused on everyone else instead of what was in front of me.
At those ages, there was a lightness to me–it was like the innocence before your first sociology course, and then when you’re in it, it’s all you see —> But that’s the beauty in all types of media: learning and applying to oneself/the world around you–the lessons you read and watch.
Today, I walked to the park and read. I went to the park farthest from the main roads with few people who walked or cycled past. I started Crying in H Mart, well technically, I had already read the first chapter, but after skimming it, I got to read the next two.
Today is the only day of a projected eight-day storm for the sun to break through clouds for almost half of the day. So I ventured out before lunch and hoped not many people would be out on a Saturday afternoon. I was correct.
I wore my favorite dress and my favorite hoodie. A light brown 40s inspired (couldn’t actually tell you when this dress was made) above-the-knee-dress that has brown polka dots and a peter-pan-collar and possibly a puff sleeve? Maybe it’s a short-leg-of-mutton-sleeve–I can’t really tell.
Today, the sounds and the wind and the sunlight and the birds were very reminiscent of my elementary school days. When I would play in the grass at lunch and look for the bees and ladybugs; or unravel the spiked plants to reveal a small bean. I couldn’t tell you when the last time the air smelt like it had today.
On my walk home, I knew 6-year-old me would have imagined herself the giant in a fairy world as we passed holes in the sidewalk that looked like fairy-sized ponds. And the small birds who didn’t fly away until I was on their square of sidewalk were protecting their kingdom and speculating whether I was a threat. Or the birds who I couldn’t see were gossiping about something or other. And the plants I passed that were straight out of Horton Hears A Who were asking to be listened to.
Today, I was closer to 6 and 12-year-old me in a way I hadn’t been in a while. I like being 20-year-old me and seeing life through their eyes, hearing it, feeling it, sensing it.
As I focus on how that breeze smelt like elementary school spring and that sun ray was as healing as [²] affirms, the dull buzzing of a sinus headache reminds me that I have different problems. And though I wouldn’t trade my problems for my childhood obstacles, the prolific imagination she procured was like no other.
Why does the winter sun make me nauseous?
Last Sunday, at the end of practice when I collected a ball from the outfield, my dad (head coach) told his athletes What a privilege it was to play The Bunting Game with his daughter. I would presume this got their confused attention. Coach is still in recovery from concussions she suffered back in high school. Her hitting alongside you, having me pitch to her without a helmet, is a big deal. I’m very proud of her. A player asked how old I was, and I don’t know what their reactions were to me being 20. Her career ended on that field over there, he pointed to the Varsity field and was then interrupted by me gallivanting back into the pitcher’s circle asking what they were talking about because they had all collectively looked from the Varsity field to me. I already had a sense of what they were talking about.
Mother Web
Kinnie Starr writes in Impact: “I was certain that I was dying because even taking the few steps out to the wood pile made my heart pound so heavily that I might black out, which I did at times. I thought I was losing my mind, and aging very rapidly, like I was palliative…I felt that death was near as a result of me aging a decade every week” (102-103).
There’s a specific quote I’ve been ravaging to find, and I can’t find it. Nevertheless, somebody wrote about how light went from a factor of overstimulation to a factor of survival – aiding in their–what I proclaim—‘photosynthesis’. The writer had laid down on their couch, and the warmth from the sun through the windows gave them strength to continue. The following quotes from Impact resemble this transition:
“I drifted in and out of a light dream state. The edges of the material world dissolved, objects merged with one another in confusing combinations, nonsensically, a thing taking on an emotion, for example, or a colour embodying a person. I felt nauseated. My eyelids flickered, their thin skin pierced by shards of bright afternoon sunlight. Golden red shards” (Claire Snyder 51).
In caring for her concussed sister, Adele Barclay “imagine[s] spooning golden light into her bones…I feel if only I can lend her my life force, she’ll get through the night and heal” (253).