They're Back - Dreaming 15 months later

15 months and counting past the injury. It's super odd how the pieces just keep coming together. things I didn't realize were missing until they suddenly reappear. In the last month I've been deluged with dreams. I hadn't realized I had stopped having them until suddenly they came back. It's as if that part of my brain is now in overdrive and trying to make up for lost time. My dreams are different than any dreams I have ever had, and at least one part of them are re-occurring. I've had several very vivid dreams where I can't tell if I'm dreaming or if I'm awake. Over and over again I find myself trying to wake myself up from a dream only to find myself waking up in a dream state. I've explained before, probably in my blog on sweetlife4me-jp.blogspot.com, that for a large part of last year I felt I was trying to swim up from the ocean floor, yet wasn't getting very far. I call it "swimming in glue". My dreams now are a lot like swimming in glue. Maybe a part of me wishes it was all just a dream, maybe a part of me is afraid the recovery itself is just a dream. Although the dreams have not been scary in nature, the inability to ascertain reality from fantasy in my dream is very disturbing. In a way it does describe how I felt for a large part of last year. I felt like I would take two steps forward, to fall five steps behind. Recovery was a lot like taking an escalator to no where, and wearing myself out trying to get there.Finding new pieces is like opening a gift every few weeks. I like getting things back that I've lost.

Missing Pieces

Since the TBI, there have been things return that  I didn't realize had been missing until they came back. I may have been told they were missing but I couldn't see that they was missing (I'm pretty sure this is only going to make sense to those who have experienced at TBI or similar event). The last couple of months I have been pleasantly surprised to find some of the missing puzzle pieces return to the picture creating a closer resemblance of my former self. Having struggled with an overwhelming amount of guilt and sadness during the last year, I have found those emotions have faded extensively. Yes, I still have sudden feelings of sadness, but it is a controllable sadness. Most often I can distract myself enough until it passes. Also, I have found that I am once again moved by sappy commercials and disheartening movie plots. It's been a long time and I couldn't wrap my mind around why that was a big deal until suddenly I sat and cried over a plot on Grey's Anatomy. I have always been a very emotional person, so to have those emotions literally knocked out of me was weird. It wasn't weird in the sense that I missed it, it was weird in the sense that I didn't miss it and when I saw other people moved by something I kind of felt like they were weird for feeling something I didn't (weird huh?). Another missing puzzle piece came in the form of music. I have played the piano since I was a child. Until April of last year, I played the keyboard at church (but to me the keyboard is totally different than playing the piano). The piano was something I've always used to calm myself or to pass time while waiting for someone or something. It's always just been automatic with me. Sometimes I played a little, sometimes I played a lot. Since the accident I had not played at all until a couple of weeks ago. Christmas came and went without me playing a single Christmas Carol. With great hesitation I sat on the bench a few weeks ago and although it was rusty, it was still there. I've been finding myself at the piano in my living room, more and more often. It wasn't until I saw the look on my husbands face when he entered the house one night while I was playing, that this was yet another piece that had apparently returned. Another strange thing is he says my playing is a little different than before, that's odd to me. I have also noticed in just the last few weeks that I am less hesitant to engage in conversation. Maybe I'm more confident that unwanted colorful language is going to jump out, or maybe it's just that my mouth and brain are beginning to be more synchronized (I'm not meaning that in a funny way).I'm not sure if me talking more is a good thing or something that should have remained "knocked out of me", but I do recognize it as being more like who I was before. Little by little things are returning, like tiny grains of sand being swept ashore, little pieces of me I haven't seen in a year are beginning to show up.   Now I'm beginning to truly look forward to the future to see what I might find that I had forgotten was lost. I feel like a child when I realize something that was lost has been returned. It's like opening a tiny gilded jewelry box that holds an heirloom from the past. It is a most precious feeling and gives me hope beyond hope that eventually I will be whole.