Half a Decade Later...

... and I am still alive. Today is the anniversary of my release from the hospital. I have strongly mixed feelings about all of it, as it is also the anniversary of my Godmother's husband's death. Uncle Mark was a good man, taking my cousins in and raising them as his own, and yet knowing that he was in for the hardship of being a step-parent. As I had dated a couple of women at different points in my life who had children of their own, I can empathize with the difficulties in having to deal with the nebulous relationship with kids who were not his own.

My ex, "Lynn," had said that, if she and I had gotten married, that I would have "absolutely no authority to ground" her daughter. Um... I dunno, I would've been the primary source of income, housing and feeding and all that, and I would have no say if she was to do something like not do her chores, for instance? What was I supposed to do, go running to "Lynn" and "tattle" on her daughter - "Oh, 'Lynn,' your daughter didn't take out the trash so I had to, and it made me late for work, do something about it, please!"

Yeah, no.

Granted, her daughter was a great young lady, already 17-18 when "Lynn" and I met, but it definitely helped me to reflect on Uncle Mark's situation as a stepfather and it gave me a new appreciation for my Godmother, who I know had better conditions for her relationship with him than "Lynn" did for me.

Again, I find myself reflecting on my survivor's guilt, in a sense. Even though our conditions were not related whatsoever, I also know that it felt selfish and weird and even rude to celebrate having survived the ordeal of the TBI and the stay in the hospital - which was in some ways worse than the TBI itself - knowing that my Godmother had lost her husband.

Internally, I also have been struggling. A few people have politely and supportively commented on some of my other posts relating to my TBI and subsequent struggles to and through CBT, and accepting the need for medication, and they have praised me for my strength and endurance. I try to accept their compliments with humility and dignity, especially not to throw it back at them, because the sad fact of the matter is that I have not been as strong as I have wanted to be for the past 5 years. I have been struggling, I have been hurting. I have backslid into each of the stages of grief, even to this day. Case in point, I was studying for class with one of my friends - we're taking a class on Jewish Thought, and we had about 40 pages of reading to do - and we reached a point where I had to stop. I was exhausted. We were studying in my room, and I am embarrassed to say that it is a chaotic mess at the moment. I explained to him the nature of exhaustion, how even a simple task of cleaning my room at the end of the day can be arduous, stressful, and taxing beyond what I can handle sometimes.

Still.

5 years later.

The struggle is real. And there are days when I want to throw in the towel, when I am just so angry that I am stuck like this, stuck as this person who is still a stranger to me, still someone I don't know as well as I knew the old, pre-TBI @phoenix32. I have raged, I have cried, and then I have felt exceptionally pathetic about the pity party, as there is my Godmother without her husband, my cousins without their stepfather, my cousin's little girl without her grandfather. And yet here I am, still living and breathing, still with a chance to make something of myself.

This week has been a massive rollercoaster for me. The 5 year mark has a certain resonance. As people, we tend to mark particular milestone increments: the 1st year, the 2nd year, 5, 10, 20, 25... Maybe it is the sociological effect that is bringing a particular awareness to the forefront of my consciousness right now. Or maybe it is the fact that, in recapping all of it to the best of my addlepated memory, I walked through some of the trails that I have not actively visited in a couple of years as I strove to move forward.

So today, I mourn the loss of Uncle Mark. I celebrate his life and his contribution to the lives of my Godmother and my cousins, how his presence enriched the family.

I also celebrate my survival, both of the TBI and the house of horrors that was that crappy hospital. And I mourn @phoenix32, the guy with the memory, who didn't have panic attacks, who could keep himself organized, who had energy to do everything in his day.