Trauma Brain

Trauma brain is like the on ramp on the highway with the stoplight that lets only one or two cars through before it turns red.

My brain lets one or two thoughts through before the light turns red and I have to wait maybe a couple minutes (or days) for the next car to arrive. I can hear the blink blink of the light, protecting me from information and emotional overload.  The traffic of my thoughts has to slow down otherwise I will crash. If I take it in all at once, I will explode.

The funny thing is, one of my superpowers has been my ability to let like thirty cars onto the highway at the same time and drive them all safely to their destinations.  I’ve always been able to multi-task like a boss: keep the distant mountains in my view, weave in and out of traffic, obey the speed limit, and navigate potholes simultaneously.  

I can’t do it anymore, and when I’m asked to, like when I get home from the hospital and there is junk mail to sort and bathroom trim to wipe down and school events to volunteer for and emails to file and I have four kids instead of one kid, I find myself thinking, “How the hell have I done this for fourteen years?”

“This is totally impossible business. I can’t keep track of any of this.”

Most of the cars I used to steer sit abandoned on the side of the road with blinking hazards.  

There are only one or two that still matter, that still need to be driven. How did I end up with thirty?

What was I trying to prove?

Am I deficient now that I can’t do as much?

Is this a passing stage, a trauma response, and eventually I will get back to my old, hyper-productive self?

I think about this: if there comes a day when I CAN do as much as I used to, do I want to do as much as I used to?

The answer is a clear and emphatic: NO.

I don’t want to live that way ever again.

I’m calling it Trauma Brain but maybe it’s Crisis Clarity, when everything gets streamlined to essence.

Maybe it’s my new superpower: being able to say no to everything but the essential.

I like driving one car slowly, almost like I’m wandering (side note: I’m convinced this is why I see so many hawks).

I try to be tender with my new self who cannot brag about how much she got done in one day.

This new self prefers to put the heated seat on high and relish the limited view. She goes like 5 miles below the speed limit and steals glances at the clouds.

She listens to music instead of texting at stop signs.

Her thoughts wander. There are less of them.

Some of the cars she used to drive have been taken over by other people who are doing a better job than she ever did. 

What she really likes is following the lead car, that vehicle with flags and blinking lights letting everybody know she’s coming with her BIG LOAD, a guide making the way.

Like right now, she’s driving home from the hospital for Phoenix’s birthday and Phoenix and Kyrie and Michael are ahead of her in the van so she doesn’t really need to think that much; she can just follow the lead car.  She can dictate these thoughts about driving and trauma brain into her phone because someone else is doing the guiding.

Trusting someone else to make the way feels like deep nurture.

…While I am dictating these thoughts about what it feels like to only take care of one or two cars on the highway of life, there are five or six women at my house decorating the shed in the backyard with streamers and balloons and setting up our dining room table with all the gluten-free snack food and tiny maracas and chips served in sombreros.  There is another woman filling a pinata and another woman picking up the custom cake. I don’t accurately know how many women mobilized to make this birthday party happen because my whole focus was to get Phoenix through five days of 24/7 cytarabine chemo and get him off the IV by 11 am so he could be discharged by 1 pm and home by 2:30 pm for his 8-year-old birthday party that starts at 3 pm. 

I did one thing: get Phoenix home for his party, and it was enough.

If I was still the driver of everything, I would be present for nothing.

Crisis clarity means pick one thing and do it with all your heart.

Let yourself off the hook for the rest.

Most if it didn’t matter anyhow when you get right down to it.