We're So Damned Lucky

Nope.  Not kidding.

Now, before you conclude that my brain injury is obviously more serious than first thought, please hear me out.

My Mother used to always say something about, “having to pay the piper.”  I never really understood the quote but I knew what she meant.  It usually came hot on the heels of a wicked hangover I had just conceded.  Accompanied with a snip of a smile.

“Hot pipes, Swanson?  You got hot pipes?  Time to pay the piper.”

She’d laugh.

It seems, at some point in our lives, often several times, we realize it’s time to pay the piper.  There’s the guy sitting in the dentist’s chair with all kinds of horrifying things going on, sweating while he’s trying to figure out if the $ 1850 bill will fit on his all-but-maxed-out credit card.  He’s lamenting all the yearly cleanings and checkups he canceled and failed to reschedule over the years.

There’s the traveling salesman who still owes seven grand on a car that has just hit the 230,000 mile mark.  When the economy tanked and business screeched to a halt, so did his ability to keep up on his car maintenance.  Now he’s looking at a car the mechanic won’t even release because it’s too dangerous to drive.   He’s got a hemorrhaging engine, leaking transmission, no struts, no shocks, no power steering, brakes that are barely working and he just spent $ 800 to fix three additional things he didn’t even know were wrong.

There’s the woman who gave up her career to raise the kids and, now fifteen years later, she has four under twelve when the husband starts buying new underwear and coming home late each night smelling like someone else’s perfume.

Pay the piper.

We all do it.  Whether we let our health go or our waistlines, our homes or our cars.  Maybe it’s our relationships we don’t pay attention to, our kids we don’t keep an eye on.  Jobs we didn’t stay current on, warnings we didn’t heed.  Preparations we didn’t make.  Safety measures we didn’t take.

We end up in a situation that sucks the life right out of us.  There’s no measuring happiness or satisfaction when everything we do from the second we open our eyes each morning to the second we close them each night is spent getting ourselves out of the situations we find ourselves in.  Or not even getting out of them.  Just surviving them.

In this crazy world where most are working two jobs…where many take care of both their parents and their kids…where there are ten things to run around doing after work or three things to do between two jobs that start an hour apart and are twenty-three miles from each other…

Most people don’t have time enough to ask themselves what would make them happy.  Many don’t even have time to realize they aren’t or they sadly realize, given their situation, it doesn’t much matter because they can’t change it anyway.

The piper’s collecting in spades.

But what if everyone got a do-over.  A Mulligan.

What if time stopped.  All the craziness stopped.  Everything that you used to fill and overfill your days with.  All stopped.  What if you inserted a block of time, an intermission, a half time…

And you found yourself with time enough to figure out what would really make you happy for the rest of your life…

We’re so damned lucky.

Of course, most people don’t consider me lucky.  Or any of us survivors.  Other than the fact that we survived, we don’t get many envious glances.

True, there have been a couple of knuckleheads who told me I was “so lucky” to not have any balance because I get to park in the handicapped spot.   There was one person who told me I might be “lucky enough” to qualify for food stamps.

But, by and large, no one really wants to be me.

They think I’m crazy, in denial or just plain brain injured to be as happy as I am.  Happy as a clam.

Twisted bliss, they concur.

After all, I don’t, for a second, resemble the successful business woman I once was.  The money, the suits, the house, the car, the body, the freedom to spend, to go, to do…

But I’m damned lucky because I survived the tornado.  No, not the head injury one.

The life before it.

We survivors of brain injury are damned lucky because, for the most part, we are afforded and awarded a big huge adult time out.   The hurricanes we called our lives before we were hurt fall uncommonly still.   Quiet.  Utterly quiet.

And many of us find out it’s the first time in years, maybe decades…that we can actually hear ourselves think.

From a near-death experience comes the inevitable realization that, OMG!  we’re actually going to die one day.   And, as the world rushes by outside our windows, from the quiet of our new realities, comes the earnest whisper.   The nagging question.

How can I be happy?  What’s going to make me happy?

What’s truly great about brain injury is that most of us don’t have an endless supply of energy any longer.   Late in the day, most of us are cognitive mush.  Our brains slow down and we simply cannot cram our days silly with a thousand activities any longer.

So we learn what’s really important to us.  We learn what we really want to spend our precious time doing.

Many of us, when cognitively fatigued, can no longer depend upon our memories, our judgements and our sound decisions.

So we learn who in our lives we can really trust with our safety.

Many of us lose our financial stability, our credit ratings, and our incomes.

So we learn who in our lives has compassion, understanding and acceptance.

Many of us now have the time and a new perspective to look at our relationships.

So we learn who really makes us happy, who we simply don’t wish to tolerate any longer and who we want to spend our lives with.

And many of us find a clean slate and a new, exciting tomorrow that beckons us to recreate lives better than the ones we had before we were hurt.

So we learn to try new things, to recheck our dreams, and to cultivate new abilities.

We’re so damned lucky.

What a crazy path to take to sanity.   What an incredulous irony to find that it took our brains to be broken before we finally can think straight.

If anyone in their lives, brain injury or not, can:  Learn what’s really important to them and what they want to spend their precious time doing, learn who they can really trust with their safety,  choose the people who are willing to be helpful and who have compassion, understanding and acceptance, learn and decide to try new things, recheck their dreams and stop to measure and nurture their abilities….

That, I’m pretty sure, is a recipe for happiness.    That is a reason to feel damned lucky.