Tag Archives: Balanced Garden Acupuncture

WHY DOES IT TAKE SO LONG?

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Okay, it is just over 2 1/2 years since my encounter with cockroach boy, so why am I still struggling?  Don’t get me wrong, I am SO much better than I was and I know that I am a little better each day, but why does it take so, so, so long to feel ‘normal’ again?  Will I ever actually feel the way I used to?  Do I even want to?  All I know is I sometimes feel like I am just one unkind comment or one stupid injury away from the dark side.  The good thing is I do have the tools to get myself out of those places, and I am able to do it fairly quickly.  Still…

A few weeks ago, my car, Grazelda, bit me.  You may wonder how a car is able to bite someone.  Well, she is old (almost 18 years) and moves more slowly than she used to,  and one of those places that doesn’t move so well any more is the trunk.  I was going to yoga on the beach and was driving since I had to leave the island right after.  Because I did not need my purse on the beach and I didn’t want to leave it sitting on the seat of the car, I thought I’d put it in the trunk before I left so that no one would see me doing it and decide to break in and steal it.  So I walk around the back of the car, insert the key into the trunk and assume (and everyone knows that one should never assume anything) without really looking that the trunk is open.  In fact, it was not and I bashed my head on the trunk lock.  I thought, oh great.  I did not have time to go back in the house to deal with it or I would have been late to yoga.  When I got in the car and looked in the mirror there was no blood.  Five minutes later it was a different story.  It never gushed blood, but I still managed to get blood all over my new white jacket.

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I looked like I had squooshed a spider on my forehead and just left it there.  Luckily, it healed quickly and because I put vitamin E oil on it every day, there is not even a scar when the scab fell off a week later.  That day, though, I felt ‘off’ for the entire day.  I did not hit my head hard enough to give myself a concussion, but I definitely felt dizzy and light-headed.  I probably should not have done yoga, but I did.  I also felt like crying, not so much because it hurt, but for some other unknown reason.  My body was reacting in a way I did not quite understand.  It seemed to me to be overreacting.

I had acupuncture after yoga that morning, and Matt (Truhan,) my acupuncturist, explained it as, basically, muscle memory from my attack.  Because I hit my face/head on the pavement during my attack, there was something in my body that was remembering that incident and, I think now, because I was in shock that September day, I did not necessarily feel what was happening.  So when I hit my head on the trunk my body brought up those feelings.  What seemed at the time to me like an overreaction was just a memory from 2 1/2 years ago.  I took it easy and rested and by the next day, I felt much better.

And so I one back to my original question – WHY DOES IT TAKE SO LONG?  What I am slowly, but very slowly, figuring out is it takes as long as it takes.  There is really nothing I can do to hurry it along.  Now, though, when I open the trunk, I lean back as far as possible so that Grazelda cannot bite me again.

OLD FRIENDS

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Yesterday, I visited some old friends.

After my acupuncture appointment, I drove to Ocean Beach.  A couple of weeks ago, when I was sick, and mentioned to Matt (my acupuncturist) that I would love a milk shake, because when I was little and would get sick, a milk shake always made me feel better.  I used to go to Fat Burger in Pacific Beach, but it has closed, and I had no idea where I could get a really good milk shake anymore.  Matt recommended Hodad’s in Ocean Beach.  Somehow, that day, I went instead to Pho for chicken soup, and never got my milk shake.  Yesterday, though, I decided it was time, even though I am no longer sick, to get that elusive milk shake.  Having never been to Hodad’s before, I had no idea there would be a long line to get in.  At first, I thought, ‘no way am I standing in line.’  And then I thought, ‘why not?’  Let’s just say it was SO worth it.  I got a veggie burger, which was really good.  I also got fries, and though they were good, I didn’t eat many of them because the milk shake was GIANT, and I had to do my best to drink all of it.  Of course, the shake alone could have fed a family of four!  No lie.  It probably had 9000 calories, but it was worth every single one of them.  The good news is I now know where I can get a fabulous milk shake and the better news is, Ocean Beach is a pain to get to and not on my way to anything, so I won’t be going there often.  The fact that is also a Hodad’s located in downtown San Diego doesn’t seem to matter.

So, after my yummy lunch, I went in the shops along Newport Avenue, and  I saved the best one for last – Vignettes.  The owner, Lori Chandler, was there.  She said to me, “I thought you fell off the face of the earth.  It has been so long since I’ve seen you.”  I said, “I guess you didn’t hear that I had been sexually assaulted 2 1/2 years ago.”  She had not and was shocked and dismayed.  I gave her an abridged version of what happened and what I had been doing, or not doing, for the last, probably 3 years since I was last in her shop.  Among all the things she said to me, the comment that stands out most was, “I am so glad to see that you made it through and out the other side.  You are a survivor.”

She also said that when something traumatic like this happens, your creativity gets stuck, too.  I never thought about it like that before, but she’s right.  Part of the challenge I had when I was right in the middle of the healing was my brain not functioning properly, which made working or reading a book, really most everything, so difficult.  I never even considered that my creativity was somehow ‘stuck.’  The rest of me sure was, so why wouldn’t that aspect also be affected?  Looking back now, I can so clearly see that this was the case.  It’s why blogging was impossible to do.   Even now, though I am working and able to (mostly) think again, I am not engaging in, really, any of the other creative pursuits I used to involve myself in.  Well, except I am doing a post every week on A Little of This That and the Other.  Pre-attack, I used to do a lot of photography and a lot of altering of that photography in Photoshop.  I can’t even remember the last time I did that.  I used to come up with ideas of things to make and then make them, like my tulle dolls or lamp shades or collages.  Wow!  Just thinking about it now is making me remember all of things I no longer do.  Is this just a ‘side effect’ of my attack?  Will the love of creating things, not related to my sewing, eventually come back?  Very interesting…

Since I am thinking about it in ways that I haven’t, perhaps this will jump-start my creative mind again.  I used to get so many ideas of things to do and things to make that all I could do was write them in my idea notebook, because I didn’t have enough time to try them all.  Either I haven’t been open to receiving new ideas or that pipeline has been shut off since September 2011.  I’m going to go with the pipeline being shut off.  And unless my brain damage was more extensive than I realized, I have every confidence that the flow will come back one of these days.  Soon, I hope.  I miss all the ideas, and being in Vignettes yesterday reminded me of that.

 

So, thank you, Lori, for your insights.  It was wonderful seeing you, and I promise it will not be another 3 years before I come see you again.