Trying to run on ice

Imagine your automobile stuck in a snow bank. You hit the gas pedal and all the tire does is spin. Now imagine yourself trying to run on ice (without wearing a pair of skates). The faster you run, the more you get nowhere. These images parallel how each and every day of my life begins since I suffered my brain injury. I seem to spend a whole lot of time getting nothing accomplished



I walked without falling

I walked over these broken stones through the water without falling in the brook. This was a challenge.







Thank God there’s a handrail

This is the front steps of where I’m living. There are three stone steps. It makes it difficult to walk up them. Thank God there’s a handrail.





What do you do at a stop sign?

What do you do at a stop sign? My first reaction is to stop. No wait, my first reaction is to move forward by:
Spinning
Tires
On
Pavement

Oh crap, I seem to be stuck again. Since my brain injury, this seems to be the story of my life.





Keys in the freezer

My thoughts no longer correspond to action. Thus, putting things in places that have no meaning: like keys in the freezer.











Determined to remake my life

I was depressed after two brain surgeries: one to put in a shunt and one to clean up the blood on my brain. I was unable to walk. That’s why I’m in the wheelchair. It took me a year and a half to learn how to walk. When I was learning how to walk, I was determined to remake my life; ergo my advocacy story. Perseverance has helped me reach my goals: an apartment and a job.





Fitting the pieces into my life

What is photo of? Every week there is something in my life that was once obvious and easy to me, that is now confusing and almost unfathomable. How does it fit into my life now? Why is it so hard to understand? I need to stop asking these questions and move on to fitting the pieces into my life without answering all the questions. There is no good answer. It just is as it is—now.



Walking around with my head in the clouds

Since my brain injury, my life has been turned upside down. I have tremendous difficulty staying focused. Confusion is now my middle name. Furthermore, I am easily distracted. How do you think it feels to go through life when you are constantly: losing focus, easily confused, and easily distracted? For me, it is like walking around with my head in the clouds.





Living with chronic headaches


I often feel as if my head is laden with bricks, making my head heavy without room for thoughts.








Getting through the maze


Getting through the maze of daily medications is a challenge fraught with missed dosages or incorrect timing.










In a glass booth in the middle of the room

Remember what it was like at a New Year’s Eve party. You are in a room full of people eating, drinking, dancing, talking, laughing—just having a good time. Ever since my brain injury, I never felt more alone than when I was in a crowded room full of people. It was as if I was all alone in a glass booth in the middle of the room. People would be all around me talking; however, I couldn’t remember what was being said. The more I tried to remember what was just said, everyone else in the room was now talking about something else. Thus, I was always one or two conversations behind. If someone told a joke and everyone laughed, I too would laugh. However, I was not laughing at the joke because I couldn’t understand the joke. I laughed along with everyone so as not to feel out of place. Yet, this made me feel even more alone and out of place.


Life as a duck

I took a picture of this (these) ducks because it occurred to me when I saw them that there really might be something to being a duck. They likely don’t have things they can’t do that they could do before and, if they do, they probably don’t have near-constant thoughts about them, either consciously or in the back of their minds. How they are different from what they were, how other ducks might perceive their weaknesses, the lack of confidence it has engendered in their lives. Suffice to say, the photographer has experienced all of these.