Oh, what a luxury it seems, to do nothing all day. The flip side of this though, is feeling like there is everything to be done and doing nothing about any of it. Lately I’ve had a throbbing head that is most noticeable when it’s silent, which is only when I lie down to sleep at night, and in the days when I’m home alone. It’s a physical and audial throbbing, accompanied by ringing in my ears as well. In short, it’s maddening. It’s distracting, it’s overwhelming, it’s tiring. It’s at the very front of my awareness and I just want it to go away. I’ve been looking for answers as to why it has come about, seemingly after the accident this past May, when it was first accompanied with terrible pain and headaches so bad that I didn’t really notice the noise. In retrospect, I realised that the throbbing started then, it was simply eclipsed by the urgency and intensity of the pain. Now that the pain has for the most part subsided, this bizarre and relentless symptom has, quite simply, begun to take over my life. It has sucked out of me any remaining motivation to be productive. I realised an unfortunate truth just the other day, which seems obvious now, that even if I figure out what is causing these symptoms, that doesn’t mean that I can do anything that will make them go away. If they are the result of what I suspect, a gradual damage to the audial nerves in my brain caused by the accident in May, there may not be anything to be done about them, or at least no quick fix. I may be looking at adjusting my expectations of how I live my life, with a slight disability even, including hearing loss and thought impairment. What a strange thing to imagine.

I am quite happy to be writing, as it give such clarity to my thoughts. More than ever before, lately I have trouble thinking about things, trouble clarifying my thoughts into action plans, for example. Simple things like what I need to do in the day, a basic sequence of events, seem elusive, and difficult to imagine. I’m forgetting words, names of common things such as a pot, or the name of a good friend. It’s like the words are there, but they are at a distance, through a fog, and I can see it’s there but can’t quite make it out. This is perhaps the best use I can think of for the french word apercevoir… to begin to perceive.

I have finally seen a doctor yesterday for this malady and have at last some reassurance. After being told by so many others that my symptoms cannot be related, that nothing is showing up as damaged, that what I have all makes sense as a whiplash syndrome, as the english-speaking french specialist told me. What a relief. I am not dying, or even worse, losing my mind. This is all a normal response to an unfortunate event. Thank god. Even the feeling of having less tolerance for simple things like loud music, background noise, light, stimulation, this is all normal, and can be treated. It will probably be many months before I am feeling better through therapy, and it will likely take a lot of work on my part, but I welcome this challenge.

I have recently realised that I have spent a lot of time feeling like things have been done to me. This accident is a real example of that, inarguably, someone hit me from behind while I was stopped at a red light. I had my foot on the brake and was tense with my hands on the wheel when someone smashed the bumper right behind me. I then got out of the car, walked towards the vehicule, a small older black SUV with dark windows, maybe an Izuzu, with Oregon plates, and as I was looking down, fidgeting with my phone to get the camera up, he took off and turned right down an alley and disappeared. Honestly, I was initially pretty pissed off as I couldn’t believe that he did that, that he would hurt someone and then just take off, but later I didn’t really care, as my sister pointed out that he probably had more to lose that I did in that accident, so fair enough. Seeing as it was on the street in Eureka, Humboldt County, CA, he could have very well had a truck full of marijuana and no insurance. A simple car accident could have ruined his life.

I ask myself now, is Izuzu even a word? At this point, I’m just working with my strange brain as best I could, maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but that is the word and the graphic of the word that popped into my head, so I’m going with it.

Back to my recent realisation, when I realised that no matter what the diagnosis of this, or anything else, there was not going to be a magic pill to fix it. I was finally in a situation that was so physically, mentally, and emotionally intolerable that the lesson couldn’t be more clear. If I wanted to get out of this mess, I was going to have to put all of my efforts towards fixing it. And thank god I have the opportunity to do so. It’s not cancer, or a missing limb, or MS, or something else really feeling insurmountable. No matter how hard the bad days are, I’m still doing really OK. On the bad days, I need to sleep. On the good days, I’m fine, I can work, and then sleep. I am very lucky to have work that will allow me to work on my schedule and in bursts of concentrated work. I am so lucky, so blessed, so thankful that this is my chance to learn this lesson. I just have to remember this on the hard days. That’s the tricky bit about depression, about anything that effects your spirit, your soul. It tricks you into thinking about all the bad things. Its inertia wants to drag you down into the darkness, the negativity. This state of doing nothing, can in be enjoyed for what it is? It seems a kind of meditation, can I be alone with myself, with my thoughts, with my body and just enjoy the luxury of doing nothing? Can I be grateful for the opportunity, the privilege, the chance to enjoy being still? Resting, like a giant tree in winter, who knows that spring again will come and that this time must be cold and still and slow, so that in the spring he will have the strength to continue to grow and blossom again. Can I meet this challenge of slowly getting up more and rebuilding a healthy rhythm? I must, this injury, its resulting symptoms, and this diagnosis have shown me that I must, as there is no other way to for me to recover. There is no chemo, no targeted therapy, nothing. No shortcuts, no magic pills, there is only me and my will, and my messy bun and messy brain. No one is coming to save me, no mother, no father, no husband will take care of me the way I want, so desperately, to be taken care of. No this time I must look deep into myself, with love and empathy, and tell myself that I am worthy of the work, love, care, and discipline that it will take to be better. I can do it, I must do it, and I will be ok.