I miss being naive. Innocence, and vulnerability, were my contradictory masque of life, as the performance of death had been avoided after my TBI(traumatic brain injury). Along with my loss of language all of my worldly experience had been misplaced, and as I re-gained consciousness, and conscience, the world was a pristine place to explore. On a rehabilitative walk while at the hospital the sight of a leaf on a tree was awesome, and the fact that people, those things that walked about in and out of that hospital, would say, “Good morning…” and smile at me was amazing. I did not know, then, that many would never do such simple things in their daily self-commiseration of life.
After my release from the hospital I was, luckily, sent home for outpatient rehabilitation and looked after 24-7 by my partner, and my friends.
And, oh dear, I started this in 2012, which some may consider long ago! So, yes, I was gently cared for, pushed along, and motivated to recover whatever may have been my entire self. What on this earth was that supposed to be? The answer to that question is mighty complex, and formed by so many different voices in the Western social structure through which I was raised and given growth. I was to be nice, kind, ambitious, successful, sweet, tender, unbreakable, tough, merciful, fair, equal, and all of the good angles of human behavior. Then I started to be aware of, to notice, happenings in which some pernicious creature with a human face is nasty to another creature, human or not, and there’s the rub, I miss the belief that all people are good, and that everyone wants other people to be treated well, always. Though the slap of what some may do, or not do, is harsh, and though I eventually became conscious of what can happen in this world I still hang on, tight, to the thought that, as said in Alice Walker’s book, The Color Purple, and present in the film which followed; What you put out comes back to you.
A simple statement, yet the message carries more than I may ever sift through, and so I take it as it is, day to day. There’s the self that I hope I had before the loss of me, myself, and I. Just saying good morning, to people around me, wishing them a very fine night, and hoping that they are well, is so small, but we are all so vulnerable, and tender, and hope is a necessity.