The common thread
Finishing a day at work, school or just doing life - maybe part of that day is returning home and having a bit of a chat about how that day went. A very regular thing to do.
Finishing a day of rehab after a stroke, returning to a bed, not being able to communicate about how that day went, no one to communicate with any way and lots of changes to a life once lived. A very different experience to live with.
Still the same need to somehow process and put into place all the changes after stroke. I continued on with a thread that somewhere, sometime, any noticeable improvement was better than not noticing,
I've recently re read my discharge summary from what I though was rehab - turns out I was discharged straight from a major city hospital to a mental health facility in the same city, 3 and a half hour from home. The rehab section was a part of but not the main part of this hospital. Nearly 33 year on - I hadn't put those pieces together. It makes a lot of sense to how I remember the time.
I remember the disconnection from my very human need for sensitivity only to be continually met with distant, cold, attendance from that facility.
Knowing that the Young Stroke Service is out there - specific for stroke. I think that's what I've been pouring out my heart of falling down gaps for. To see some change, so that maybe when someone receives effective treatment, they might not be reflecting on a life of falling down gaps and trying to put their best foot forward on unstable foundations, I've lived on very shaky ground since that time.
THE PASSING OF TIME
When the barrier of pain disintegrated
And rawness of a disconnected moment is felt, relived like it's the present.
I want to feel grounded to the passing of time.
So I can exude the sorrow from my being
An invisible cloak between then and now
And within that second - if it were an object, the resistance to a narrative would vibrate,
Separation of my defense of an unmet need and an impossible collection of tasks before me,
All because I kept breathing.
