I’ve been told on several occasions “welcome to the real world” by friends of mine. It’s a statement that really makes me steam with anger. I get that it’s a joke, but it still hurts. Yes, I am an adult. Yes I’ve been able to have fun a lot in my twenties. However, I’ve been living in the “real world” since I was ten years old, when the facts of loss and death became very real after having emergency brain surgery. Childhood was stripped away from me. My teenage years became a blur of anxiety with an everyday struggle just to survive. So after I graduated college I had some time to explore life and enjoy it for a change. I don’t live in the past, but for me the past is what has defined my present, and it has been a journey to learn to accept that.
The difference between now and then is that I’ve become a lot more vocal about what I go through because few people know, and even fewer understand the everyday struggle that has been my life since having emergency brain surgery for an AVM. It’s great to be alive, but when you’re unsure of how to enjoy it, the journey of relearning to find joy is a long one. A brain injury just doesn’t “go away” and it’s not really something that you can forget. You constantly need to remind yourself of the methods you need to cope with whatever you lost- be it vision, memory, or the ability to live anxiety- free. You can get help for all of these things, but it never cures you, it’s just a band-aid that helps cushion the struggle. The biggest part of the fight is up to the “survivor.”
So yes, I do understand the real world. Yes, I understand death, panic, and fear, struggle, and silent suffering. I also have learned that this “real world” is a heck of a lot less scary when you don’t have to face it alone. This is my story, but it’s also the battle cry of many other survivors, who know that surviving and being alive are two very different things.
Stay tuned for my book on living with a broken brain out later this year!
