My experience of life has become a daily struggle. There is little sense of “winning,” of accomplishment, of fruition. Every day becomes another confrontation with the same issues. No matter how I exert myself, I make no headway.

This is a bleak, but realistic statement of the facts. Yes, there have been some minor improvements. But these positive changes are the same as a year spent learning to bake chocolate chip cookies. After a year’s dedicated effort, you stand proudly in the kitchen and announce only 97% of the latest batch were burned black. An improvement? Certainly! It is better than burning 100% of the batch. But given the amount of time spent (years) and the focus (daily, hour by hour) it seems a little rich to announce any improvement at all. It is similar to making the claim  “This year I am drowning, but I’m drowning 2% slower than I was last year.”  And I am nowhere near being able to get out of the water. The true message is  Never get out of the boat!  But I was pushed.

There are other aspects of struggle. These include the following:

• Fear of slipping back into vacancy
• Problems with learning
• Problems with effective functioning
• Learned behaviour issues
• Looming financial disaster

I intend to examine each of these in future posts. The one topic I wish to address here is the fear of slipping back into vacancy.

I do not know exactly how to describe the vacancy. In my reading on TBI (which is not extensive and which suffers all the faults associated with poor comprehension), I have not come across any mention of anything similar. Perhaps this item should be subsumed under a general fear of the unknown, of being knocked out of regular life patterns, and habits, and being unable to easily resume them. When we talk about “knowing” we are really speaking to the fact that major elements of our life constantly repeat. We know where we work – we go there almost every day. We know what we do – our work typically does not change very much. We know our friends – by definition friends are a constant presence in our lives. We know where we live – unless we are young adults we tend to remain in one location for extended periods since moving causes such disruption in our normal patterns. We know our daily routine – our diet tends toward the habitual, as does our choice of garment, hairstyle, and all the rest.

We think of ourselves as being engaged in constant change. When it comes to cellphones and service plans this may be true. But, for the most part, we are deeply embedded in a series of long term, unvarying routines. It is not until you are injured, and unable to continue with the routine, that you realize the degree to which you have come to depend on constant repetition to ease your way through life. We speak of brain injury rehabilitation but we might more accurately speak of a process involving involuntary loss of old routines and being forced into the acquisition of new ones.

Exactly how the vacant state fits in with this pattern I do not know. I do know that becoming aware of myself sitting, staring blankly into space, was key in forcing me into a daily struggle to recover.