Support

Becoming a member of a Traumatic Brain Injury Facebook support page has been very helpful. Now I know I am not alone; that the feelings and challenges I have are real. They are also common for those with a TBI. Just knowing I’m not insane is important. A real struggle for me is depression. Despite the antidepressant cocktail I take every day this is a big problem. Another is that I am always tired to the point of being nonfunctional. I spend a great deal of the day watching and rewatching DVDs. I can watch them several times before I remember them so they are always new. If the show becomes familiar I just put it aside for a couple months then it is new again. I am good for about four hours in the morning. Having been a high achieving active person this change fuels my depression. It has been 11 ½ years since the injury occurred and five since I stopped working and started taking care of myself. I worry if I will remain this nonfunctional or if I will improve.

To Whom It May Concern

African Americans majoring in African American studies are subjected to countless factual accounts of suffering, murder, rape, torture, molestation, mutilation, lynching, and other unspeakable acts of violence that were committed against African Americans. The study of the history of people of African descent in America consists of constant repetitions of these violent acts. The feelings brought on by the field of study may cause feelings of hopelessness, depression, and thoughts of suicide. The question is raised, can majoring in African American Studies and/or being a racial activist drive a person to suicide? In 1938 Charles Prudhomme hypothesized that the suicide rate for African Americans would increase as they assimilated into the dominant culture (Joe and Kaplan 2001). Although lower than the suicide rates for European Americans, suicide for African Americans is rapidly increasing, particularly for males. In 1970 the rate was 7.9 per 100,000. It increased to 10.9 per 100,000 in 1997 (Poussaint and Alexander, 2000) during period directly following the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements that paved the way for integration and increased assimilation into the dominant culture. In addition, Black studies programs began at several universities, giving the false impression that there was an acceptance of African Americans in the United States and the legitimizing of our history. According to Poussaint and Alexander (2000) stress related illnesses and self-destructive behaviors of African Americans are due to racism from the legacy of slavery. There is an increased chance of attempted suicide after “a confrontation or perceived victimization” (p. 22). They further state that social problems, particularly ones that seem to be unsolvable such as poverty, and unemployment can lead to a sense of hopelessness that can increase the possibility of suicide. Urban youth who know someone who was murdered are two times more likely to commit suicide while those who witness a stabbing are three times more likely (Joe and Kaplan, 2001). Those who have attempted once are at a greater risk for subsequent suicide attempts (Lyon, Benoit, O’Donnell and Getson, et al, 2000). It is, however, possible to make the study of African American history and the work of an activist empowering instead of destructive. Learning the history of the culture can lead one to feel a sense of pride that comes from being a member of a people who survived what few cultures could. Learning about people who progressed from years of being slaves to being doctors, lawyers, professors, teachers, and business people, to name a few, can be empowering. They moved from no education to masters and doctorate degrees. Once slated to be extinct by the 1920’s they continue to survive and advance. What decides which direction a person majoring in African American studies will chose? Is there a way we can help to assure a positive direction? There is a need to recognize, study and understand the effects of being a part of this field can have so that solutions can be developed. There is a lack of studies of the effects and the results of the effects of majoring in African American studies and being an activist. I hypothesize that the results of the studies would demonstrate that there can be intensive, possibly disastrous effects on African Americans who major in the field. There is also a need for awareness of the effects not only on the student, but also on the teacher, so that studying African American history and culture can be empowering instead of destructive. The following is a fictitious suicidal letter based on the feelings that may be experienced by those who major in the study of African American history and issues. To you who have discovered the shell I leave behind, plain brown and now still, and to the few with tears to shed and to the ones who ask why, I leave this explanation. I wish it were simpler for you and apologize for its length. If I was simply having problems or if my heart were broken from a fallen love, you could say, “Ah, poor thing. Why didn’t she get some help?” and then return to your life. But my story is long and deep. Many times I have asked, cried, begged for your help. Perhaps you did not know how to help or you did not hear. I think more that you did not understand the depth of my pain or the exhaustion of my struggle. After reading these pages you still may not understand. Even now that causes me to cry out in agony. It wasn’t you alone who shut your eyes. Nor do I blame you for failing to save me from taking my life. I have journeyed through this pain long enough to know that you do not recognize it and may not still. But you at least deserve an explanation for the coldness of this form that has hopefully been found with eyes closed so that no one must look into their faded darkness. I have chosen not to be politically correct as I have had to live. As I will not be here to hear the judgment that is placed upon me, I do not care. It is this caring that has helped to bring me to this place, or to this time would perhaps be more accurate. By now you may not even be caring of the language that I use as long as I get to the reason so that you will be able to complete the paperwork, close the chapter and go on. Even with my skin now an ashen tone, it is obvious that I am or was a woman of color, an African American, a Black woman, a sista!, a girlfriend!, a Negro, a Negress, a descendant of slaves, former slaves, and from rich African kingdoms. Less obvious is my being a descendant from people without color, Caucasians, European Americans, whites, slave owners, enslavers, brutal people from Europe who I have never known and who have displayed no interest in knowing me. I dutifully learned their collective histories during the many years that I was forced to receive what was said to be a well-rounded, accurate education of history. So I feel that I have given them enough of my time, mind, and energy, enough of my life. As I think about it, it is due to this side of my ancestry that I have taken my life. How can I blame you in your ignorance, you who I have never met, when it was my hand that accomplished this deed? There is really no one else to blame. I am now, I pray, at peace; a peace I have never known in life. Now you may be demanding of me an explanation, direct and honest, since you now feel accused and responsible. You are weary of the tales of how black skinned people suffer, do without, are treated as unequales and on and on. Yet have you ever thought of what I have lived because of your racism, your ideas, the treatment I have had to endure from you? I cannot wholly blame you, not personally, because I do not even know you. And you are, of course, not responsible for the choices I have made nor the direction my life has taken. You did not force me to dig so deeply into history that I covered my ears, screaming the suffering of millions of ancestors who wanted to be heard, who wanted everyone to know that even in death they could not find rest. Rest can only come when their stories have been heard. They rushed at me to tell them but it was too much for me, so much all at once that I cried out with them. I ran leaving them still in their disturbed darkness. Though it was not my will, I had to go back. It was my destiny to hear them, to help them, to attempt to free them. But they had to slow down. They had to talk to me one at a time of lost sons and daughters, of longing to find fathers and mothers, of rapes and sales and laboring hard in the fields. They could not just tell of their lashings but held me down so I would feel each blow while staring into the twisted face of the one doing the deed. My back bled. My voice was gone from ignored screams. My eyes were drained of tears. I, as they had, eventually stopped begging for mercy, for there was none in the eyes of the one who unleashed his fury on my back after having risen from laying between my legs. So they sat with me on a small patch of grass in the shadow of a tree. The sparkling cool river ran at our feet. I could see others waiting their turns in the distance, fearful that they may again frighten me off before their stories were told. They spoke, looking down or off into the distance, as if I would not believe the horror that had been their lives and that the peace they were promised in death did not come. They felt, truly believing that I could carry their stories, that I would tell them to those still alive. Then maybe they would find rest. Some reached out their cold hands from tattered dress and shirt sleeves to touch me for emphasis or to be sure that I was of the living. When they were done, they would gracefully rise as if a burden had indeed been lifted. They would leave, only to have another quickly take their place. One stayed longer than the others. Her dark face had a familiarness. “Great-grandmother?” I whispered in my heart. From her the story was the hardest, my flesh and my blood, the one responsible for my existence. For her I had my own questions, knowledge I needed. I explained to her that I did not want this calling – that it was too hard – too painful to carry so many voices and so many hundreds of years. Finally she stilled me with a gentle touch of her hand. I laid my head in her lap as she stroked my hair, promising to give me what strength she could. Her shining black face had known no smiles. She could not save me as she could not save herself or the children she bore her master. So now you see me as insane, claiming to have talked with the spirits of those long dead. Perhaps it was a dream or only a description of how one may feel majoring in this study of Black lives in this rich country. Let me put it in more acceptable terms for you so you will understand how one is “called”. Fight if they will, they must eventually follow the path that has been laid for them, fighting and kicking as I have done. In the end there is no resistance. We continue the struggle for rights to a full life in the United States. There is no top to this mountain that we must climb, only continuous rough terrain with always the possibility of falling. There are those who believe that we should forget our past, our history, our ancestors, who we are, where we are from, our experiences, and our accomplishments. I was told by supporters that if I helped one, changed one mind, or got one person to a least think, then I was successful. Yet it was those who I could not reach, whose eyes burned into mine with disdain, who remained deep in my memory. You have not had to live as I have lived. You have not had to think as I have had to think. You can shop without being followed. In airports your bags are not dusted for signs of gunpowder, even though you have never in your life touched a gun. You do not know the complete list of what are considered to be weapons when questioned at the Canadian border. Your food has never been spat in before being served to you in restaurants. You are waited on in stores, never skipped over or ignored as if you are invisible. You don’t have to think that at times being invisible would make your life simpler. I studied. I read. I listened and I watched. I took in the history, trying to numb the feelings but being thrown into the dark pit of tar. It is the fate of an artist to go too far to understand. I have tried to accomplish my calling to the best of my ability, but it has proven to be too much for me. As my words rolled off deaf ears, I have tried not to let the stern faces and folded arms affect my mission; though at times I was haunted by those piercing blue eyes. The hardest to bare was the fear in the eyes of the blond haired children as my brown body merely walked past. The continuous frustration of not being heard, believed, understood, or taken seriously has taken its toll. The miles I have traveled to go so short a distance only to lose much more has taken its toll. I should stop now, but you – you must always know why, have it totally explained so you don’t have to think. So I am forced to continue with this intense pain. Give me a moment to close my eyes and calm some of my spirit so I can go on. After a news event of the murder of a Black man while in jail or in prison or at a traffic stop or the mistreatment of a black child or yet another unsolved rape of a black woman or child, or if I am denied yet another service, talked down to, or have my success labeled as “ Well, I guess they have to fill their quotas,” I began to look for a place in the world that I can live safe and free. My mind scans the world’s countries to find one that is not tainted with prejudice and fear of my dark skin, golden brown, shiny and soft. There was a call, or another call, of another hate incident at another university and I reach for a bottle of pills that I don’t have or didn’t have until now. I have been saving them to have just enough or maybe one or two extra. There is no room for failure in this ending for I am too tired to try again. It seems that with this constant work of equality and equal rights that we are still taking unsteady baby steps, one forward and two back. We are always looking up the steep jagged mountain, never seeing the last peak. There is no end to this work. There is no time to lay down the weapons of war. There is only falling back into the trenches while bullets fly over head, taking a breath, two breaths with eyes closed and chest beating. Then we reload and jump back into the line of fire. Have I explained a reason to help you to understand? I have noticed during my short life that people insist on having everything explained to them quickly and shortly. They do not want to have to look anything up or feel any quilt, sorrow, or pain. I do not offer any apologies as I have had to for my entire life, as I am tired, just tired. It is because of you that I have over compensated, over tipped because you believed that I wouldn’t tip you. Tired from over smiling muscles so you wouldn’t fear me; from being overly honest making sure that you saw I could be trusted as you glanced out of the corner of your eye, as you never tired of following me through stores; as you crossed streets and danced away from me in your speech because you feared the darkness of my skin interpreted as darkness in me. When our enslaved ancestors were so down trodden that no word or touch could help them, they would let it be known through the singing in a slow moan, “Sometimes I feel like a mother less child, a long way from home, a long way from home.” I cannot count the many times I moaned so low. My death will be quick and sweet, as the suffering I have lived with has been too much to add to. All I long for is relief. Do not cry for my death, but shed tears for my life. I will wander through a dense darkness to the river that so many have crossed over. I will take hold of the thin rough black hand reaching out for mine, younger and light brown. She will say to me “It’s alright, Baby, Great-grandmother understands,” and I will be at peace. References Joe, S. & Kaplan, M.S. (2001). Suicide among African American men. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, 31, 106-121. Lyon, M.E., Benoit, M., O’Donnell, R.M., Getson, P.R. (2000). Assessing African American adolescents’ risk for suicide attempts: Attachment theory. Adolescence, 35, 137, 121-134. Poussaint, A.F. & Alexander, A. (2000). Lay my burden down: Unraveling suicide and the mental health crisis among African-Americans. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Up Date

I admit my plan for writing 15 minutes a day has been a failure so far. I’m still confident that I’ll get there. My little dogs, Gina and Charlie, are a pain when it’s time to change the bed. They’re not as bad as cats but run a close second. First they will not get off the bed. Then when I finally get them off they sit on the pile of blankets on the floor while watching my every move. Of course they try to jump back on the bed and I stop them. As soon as I throw on the bedspread I tell them okay. They jump onto the bed and inspect my work. Sigh. We are defiantly having spring showers in Seattle. There have been a few sun breaks. I once lived in Los Angeles. The constant sun shine aggravated me. There was never a cloud. Just day after day of unbearable heat and smog. The water was so hard soap would barely lather. It tasted terrible so I drank sodas. I thought of how good the water tasted in Seattle and how the lakes turned different colors, I thought of the clouds. I returned to Seattle. On Easter I could have my own Easter hunt by myself. I wouldn’t remember where I put the eggs.

Gina and Guilt

My two dogs, Gina and Charlie sleep under the covers tucked against my back. To keep from rolling on them I can only sleep on my right side, never moving towards the left. This past Sunday I rolled to the left and injured Gina’s left front leg. She sounded like a baby crying for three, yes three, hours. I ran with her to the vet without even calling first. Thankfully her leg was not broken. Now sometimes she hobbles holding the leg up and wearing the saddest face you’ve ever seen. Other times she runs around on all four. I don’t know if she is still in pain or just working me. I still feel so guilty for having rolled on her leg. Sigh, motherhood.

The Protector

My brother, Rodney, was born premature. He weighed only 3.5 pounds. In those days, not having the medical knowledge or equipment, Premies were sent home with their mothers to live or die. Mom fed Rodney with an eye dropper. He grew to be six feet tall and very handsome. His personality could dazzle anyone. Unfortunately he also grew to be a heroin addict. The following is what I wrote about him following is death at the age of 46. While I never witnessed him shooting up, the rest of the story is true. I have never seen him do it, this practice of more than 30 years. I have seen it done on TV and in movies by strangers who meant nothing to me and who weren’t real anyway. I watch him ready the needle and tighten a tourniquet around his arm. He looks at me from the shadow that is now his face, all but his flesh and bones eaten away by AIDS. “Are you sure you want to see this, Sis?” he asks. I want to say no, to yank the needle from his hand and throw it 30 years away. But after so many years that have left him dying, stopping no longer matters. He looks at the veins in his arm realizing that none are useable. “I knew they wouldn’t be any good, Sis, but I thought it would be easier for you to watch.” He moved the tourniquet to his thigh and again searches for a vein. Then he wraps the other leg, his hands shaking now. If I had not been watching he would have quickly used any part of his body, his stomach, his groin, anywhere to hurry to take him to where he needs to be. I am touched he still wants to care for and protect his older sister. The drugs and illness have not taken that away. I watch his eyes close as blood trickles down his calf. His face seems to show a great relief as he empties the liquid into his weak vein. Then he sat with his head hung over and his eyes closed. “Brother,” I say. He looks up and says, “Huh?” then nods again. My brother is no longer present. I leave the room feeling my heart drain. This is the life he has chosen or that has chosen him from the first time he put the needle into his arm. Is this where he goes to escape, this place between joy and sorrow? I could no longer hold back the tears. The mixture of drugs and the diseases have so ravaged his body; his six foot frame is a thin rail. When I hug him I feel only bones and the smooth softness of his skin. He looks so old - as if he has lived a long hard life. Mentally he has become foreign to me, but I still love him and him me - brother and sister from the same mother and father. Lying in the casket a few months later, the coroner had restored his face so it was no longer sunken. His wasted his body which aged him beyond his 46 years, appeared to be healthy. His death is the first of the 10 siblings. Our mother looks at his body lying so cold and still and quickly holds a tissue to her eyes. She is escorted by another son to the car as she tries to hide her tears. That brief moment will stay with me forever, the look of the unbelievable pain of a mother burying her son. What made him begin such a practice of leaving the world for a while only to leave it again? Watching him drain the needle does not help me understand this stranger who is my brother. It must have been easier when he was sixteen and his veins where young, fresh and healthy, eagerly swelling to accept the poisonous sting. Which needle was the one that infected him, causing his body to waste away and his life to draw short? My brother who I never really knew is dead. With him goes part of me. My brother was the family protector. Fear from his reputation kept others from attempting to harm us. Once our youngest brother was threatened by a man in a building our bother managed. Word went to the protector who rose from his illness. Forgetting the sister who drove him was standing near; the protector raised the man by his collar and held him against a wall. The protector told him what would happen if any threats were carried out against our youngest brother. My sister, seeing the fire in the protector’s eyes, worriedly spoke his name. The protector looked around as if shaken from a dream. “Sorry, Sis, I forgot you were there.” While this same sister was visiting in New York her van was graffitied. The protector paced, “No body’d better mess with Dee Dee. I don’t want to go to New York. At least they let you smoke in Rikers.” The protector spent several years in prison for two armed robberies and finally gutting a man in a fight. It was a violence I could not understand. I also knew his drive for cash to fill the needle he needed to feed into his arm drove him. In prison he thrived, taking control, exacting payment from his fellow inmates on commissary day. Men followed his orders, no matter how brutal they may or may not have been. Now they will spend the rest of their lives in prison. They will die on cold metal lonely beds while the protector died in his mother’s arms. At the funeral, family and friends gather in the stillness. There were three flower arrangements – two from my job. After kissing his lifeless cheek, I sit beside my mother and stare at my little brother, wondering what he had thought of his life. He was a Christian, a Lutheran by faith. He was dyslexic. Despite being a high school graduate he learned to read in prison. He struggled to read his Bible daily. He was the father of a son he missed seeing grow up and the son of a father who missed seeing him grow up. He was a poet who poured his soul in colors on paper and in the end apologized for all he hurt during his life. He was an artist whose paintings should have hung on gallery walls. He gave me a little stuffed penguin the day I was injured. He ran down the stairs to hold me and to tell me he was about to go to correct the men who injured me. He checked on me as I rested, always the protector watching out, caring, loving. I knew the last time I visited home would be the last time I would see him alive. I held him longer than usual and refused to let him see me cry. Then I walked away from him, from his pain, from the needle marks on his body, from the life draining out of him. The night I return from the funeral I look out my kitchen window. There was a big glowing full moon. Airplanes leave a trail of smoke making a cross in the sky and I know my brother is home in heaven with our father. I keep a wooden sign that reads “JOY” next to the penguin. The sign has never fallen, but on the night the cross showed in the sky it did so. The protector is there, still watching over me, still my brother.

The Five Stages of Grief

This weekend I took an amazing step in my healing. Recovery from a TBI requires me to go through the same five steps as grief. These steps are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance. There is no rule as to how long each step takes. For me the process to acceptance took several years. Denial and isolation is the first stage. My doctors claimed for years that there is nothing wrong with me. One neurologist suggested I was stressed, perhaps from money problems or I wanted attention. Another one told me to just forget about the head injury. With no medical excuse I continued to work and produce work for my doctorate. I reached a point where I could barely function. Most of my time was spent in bed re-watching repeats on television. I didn’t want to be around people or talk to anyone. I believed when I stopped working I could travel and attend music festivals. When I learned I wasn’t able to travel, only rest and rest some more, I moved into stage two, anger. My anger was crippling. I was angry at the job I left and many of the people there. I was very angry at doctors. They failed me. If one of them said to take three months off work I would have done so. I believe I wouldn’t be as bad as I am now. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I just stayed in bed watching DVDS over and over. Since I didn’t remember the shows, each time I watched they were new shows. During anger I easily snapped at people. My mood was dark. I think the third stage, bargaining, runs through all the stages. God If you just make me well I promise I’ll…. During this stage I asked why me, why did this have to happen to me? The fourth stage, depression was very difficult. I suffered from severe depression – major most of my life. An overwhelming symptom of a TBI is depression. I sunk to levels so low I didn’t believe I’d ever come out of them. Depression is like being underwater with no source of air. Depression from a TBI is like lying on the ocean floor with the weight of the water pressing down on your chest. For me my hope was the right mixture of medications and therapy. Some people with a TBI don’t want to take medications. I say give me any drug that will help me function. Now I am peacefully in the fifth and final stage, acceptance. This is me. These are my strengths. These are my challenges. My life is quiet and still and I am okay with it. As I will write about in following entries, I lived an interesting and full life. My final 20 or so years will be different but just as awesome.

Fear - May 2009

So many people spread their fear to me as they warn me of traveling alone. I find this fear to be interesting as I continue to prepare for my new home in a 22 foot RV. I have chosen a Holiday Rambler – Augusta Sport. The RV is big enough to be a home while small enough to use as a car. Downsizing my home to this bit of space is overwhelming. Am I out of my mind? If I do nothing to change the flow of leaving the security of my job, of knowing there is a check magically placed in my checking account twice a month, of the bills being paid, and having food to eat, of knowing the flow of my day; if I do nothing I will go, a woman alone, counting to ten so the fear will go away. They, whoever these authorities of my life are, warn me of traveling alone without a man to protect me from those who would harm me. Yet in my house are three dogs racing to the door at the sound of a knock and running along the fence to frighten away anyone who ventures too near. There is also an alarm set more to protect me inside than belongings when I am gone. I peer around me as I walk to the garage whether it is day or night. At the gas station I pull up to the pump closest to the store so someone can see if I am being abducted by some stranger who means me no good and will harm me because I am living the everyday life of a woman. Look for light, never walk in shadows. Be aware, always aware around you and of sounds near you and your house. Sleep lightly; walk confidently; don’t let them know you are afraid in your daily life. If I am to be afraid, let me also live. As of today, May 1st 2009, I am no longer employed; retired at 56, free, and if I think I become afraid but not of what others warn me. I fear I will become homeless, picking through scraps in a dumpster to ease the gnawing emptiness in my stomach, and clinging my threadbare clothing tightly around me, ripping one hole larger. I force my mind to pictures of moose walking through a distant rich green field in Alaska and of the excitement of touching the sleek coldness of a glistening blue glacier. I think of cheering at the folk music festival in Vancouver BC and of my head back laughing with newly met friends. Perhaps I should have a small celebration for the milestone in my life but all I can think of is being on the road, music blaring and my face nothing but a smile.

Fort Hood

Another shooting at Fort Hood. Men and women who vowed to fight for and serve our country are wounded or dead. Parents worried what if their child is sent to war? Will their child return alive and whole? Did any of them worry that their child may be gunned down on U.S. soil at the hands of a fellow soldier? Not by a fellow enlisted man. Not because of the madness in his mind that led him to pull the trigger again and again. I say a prayer for the soldiers killed and wounded. I pray for their families. I also pray for the U.S.A.