All the things that brought me joy seemed to have been taken away from me. But I refused to see it in that negative way, because I was afraid I’d never come back if I let myself focus on the losses. I knew I had to find the light in the dark. After living an extremely busy and noisy life, I had to learn to live with myself in the quiet. My Dad passed away from a rare disease called MSA (Multiple System Atrophy) 3 years before my injury, and that was part of the reason I had kept myself a little *too* busy ever since… now that I had so much time alone with my thoughts, I had to learn to deal with that, too.
I worked on learning how to meditate. I learned more about myself and my spirituality. I journaled about the things I knew I wanted to see myself do in my lifetime. I had time to dream about where I would go next since my jobs had been left behind. It felt like my world was a blank canvas, which was both terribly scary and exciting. As time went on I realized it wouldn’t be about getting “back to normal” because I would never be the same - it was more about moving forward and hoping I could make a life for myself where I could do the things I love and be happy. I learned SO much more about myself, how I relate to the people around me, and about the world in this time that I may not have slowed down to discover otherwise. And I got to spend so much of this time with my Mom, which now I appreciate more than ever. I chose to see this as an experience of growth that would shape me into a stronger person rather than loss. I thought deep down that I would come out the other side healthy and strong… of course the only thing that all of this dreaming was dependent on, was my recovery. It has been much slower with so many more strides forward paired with even bigger setbacks than I ever could have anticipated. For many months of the first year post-injury, I felt useless and lost, wondering if I would ever be able to be a musician again... I wanted to write music to make something meaningful out of the cards I had been dealt, but all that would come out would be fragments of thoughts that my brain couldn’t piece together. I even discussed with my rehabilitation therapists how I felt like my creativity had been stripped from me. In time, I found that slowly music began to return to me. As I was building tolerance to spending more time at the piano with coping techniques like using earplugs and a keyboard instead of real piano, I started putting songs together. It was a sign to me and my therapists that I was on the right path! In March 2019, I traveled to NYC for a few days with my Mom to see how my brain would handle the stimulation of the city. It did not do well with the noise of the city and the travel of the subway, a sad realization that my brain was not ready for the next move - or at least certainly not for a career in NYC just yet. In April 2019, I traveled to California to visit friends and my brain handled the pace and open air better than the stimulation of NYC. That gave me hope.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
January 2022
Categories |