Learning & Re-learning

The past 8 or so months have been an incredible learning and growing experience for me.  That's what failure does...as long as your heart and your mind stay open, what other people call failure can be both instructive and meaningful.   This doesn't make failure any easier to bear.  It doesn't remove the stigma you are forced to live with, nor the questioning looks of people who know you have failed, who don't understand and think you're either a dumbass or imcompetent.  Everyone is familiar with that look...the grimace. The raised eyebrows.  The "how could you do anything so stupid" look.  Failure can be excutiatingly hurtful and debilitating.

Failure is a way of life for those who have suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury.  This doesn't make it any easier to accept or to deal with.

Truth is, when one is failing all the time, one must be able to persevere through the failure.  To persevere, one must have, in turn, the ability to see into a time in the future when failure is passe, when it is unacceptable.  For me, the first five or ten years after my accident, failure was something I almost looked forward to because I knew I was growing.    It was, for me, the only way I could learn.  It's still that way sometimes.  I know that failure is something I constantly must face, and I have to accept it, even when others can't understand the role failure plays in my life...that I amost "need"  it.  It's as though you're driving in a car at 100 miles an hour, going around a turn on a rain slicked road.  The moment comes when you know you are losing control.  The crash is inevitable...and you smile waiting for it to happen.  This does not, however, mean that I expect to fail.  Failure always still comes as a surprise.  I never set out expecting to fail, and it always hurts. 

Over the last six months I have failed at two jobs.  Before that, my sixty three year old family business, where I was VP of Sales, closed, and I was on the street.  The first time I failed was not becaue I couldn't do the job...it was because I wasn't given the proper resources to learn it.  Those resources included understanding and time.  The second time I was given the proper resources, but ended up doing a dumb thing and breaking a rule when I didn't apply proper judgement, and failed to transfer that rule from one situation  to another.  My head injury has made me incredibly literal, and if a situation isn 't exactly the same, sometimes I cannot relate the two. 

Sure I have failed less and less over the last 30 years, and I know that it is an important part of my growth still, but it hurts more and more, even though I know the outcome may be positive in the end.

Some situations I walk into, I know full well they will be painful growing experiences, bringing up all kinds of awful reminders of what happened or the way I used to be.  I will not only remember these feelings, I will relive them...flashing back, almost, to the past...but I know it has to happen in order for me to become a human being.  In fact, these sitiuations serve to free me.

The second failure plunged me into a deep funk, and I started questioning myself.  Is it worth it?  I asked.  I was getting so tired of going through the same painful experiences.  I just didn't want to do it anymore.  I was almost ready to give up.  But I didn't  I have always been a fighter and I always will be

There is much stress right now around my work situation, applying for disability, and all the stuff that comes with having a family...and I find myself messing up.  I am not always making good choices.  But I am not giving up.  I am searching for the things that keep me on track...for those things that add structure to my life.

Embracing failure has become more difficult as the stakes get higher, but I know it is exactly where I must be.  Every day I see people who would not understand this.  People who have never known either failure or trauma.  I see how they live their lives.  I feel sorry for them.  My life is rich.  I am not coasting through life...I am truly experiencing it...and I could not ask for anything more. All the pain makes the joy more joyous.  The feeling of being alive more incredible.

Someone who takes a lot of vacations or has a lot of toys isn't necessarily living life.  They are living their life on one plane.  If they were a flying machine they would be a glider.  I am a thrill ride at an amusement park.  I scream sometimes as I go down a steep drop, but I also cry at the beauty I see, and feel the magic around me.

On my gravestone this is what it will , "He lived."say

Comments

[nancynewfreedom]

May I add a link to your webpagew on my site? I am trying to connect as many Survivors as I can ... to let them share thoughts & exoeriences!

[Susan]

I don't know what TBI means. I'm guessing-- does that mean Traumatic Brain Injury?
I wish you the best in life. Your blog is very informative.
Susan, mom to 2 daughters with heart transplants