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It's hard to fit into a world of schedules and plans and deadlines and timings when your own existence is, through no fault of your own, completely unpredictable.
I know I'm not alone. Many other survivors I've networked with also cop to often feeling out of control and unreliable; to never knowing how they will feel on any given day, to being no more, at times, than casualties of entropy...which I personally define as the tendency for everything in life to inevitably go to hell.
As proof of sorts, I offer this wee image, which I hijacked from the AVM (Ateriovenous Malformation) Survivors.org Facebook page the other day:
I love it...in one simple picture, life - especially life with a brain injury - is described in a way that would require a thousand words were I to try to do it in writing.
The image explains - all too well - what happened to the life plan that I had visualized for myself "before". (Actually, to accurately represent my life, a few more big loops should probably be added). Unfortunately, the picture also represents my every waking day.
Seriously...you don't want to know how many times a day I find myself asking "What the heck happened?"
I can wake up in the morning and write five things down on a to-do list. Very rarely will I get them all done.
A little too much salt in a snack and the heartbeat in my head will get too loud, scare me, and slow me down.
A rapid drop in barometric pressure will drop me into bed with a headache.
I may require a nap - recharge needed - after lunch. (Please, see my FB page at https://www.facebook.com/reinventingmy.life/ for the article on brain injury and fatigue).
I can be having a great day, getting things done on my to-do list, but then walk through a room and get distracted by something that, two hours later, I realize wasn't even on the list.
The struggle is real.
Even twenty years after my brain first went rogue, I still worry about being late, cancelling appointments, being unreliable, making excuses (not really making excuses but feeling like people must think I'm making excuses).
I do tend to overthink and complicate things. I know this.
Because the truth is, most people understand. I've not yet lost a true friend to my unpredictability, and, as I long ago accepted the fact that working out of home ( where I can march to the beat of my own brain's drum and roll with life's daily entropy) is the best option for me...I won't be letting down any future employers.
So, I know I should just stop worrying about it; that I should, in all truth, put "stop worrying" at the very top of every to-do list that I write.
Unfortunately...if I put it on a list, it'll probably never get done.
So, what's a girl to do...how does a girl let go of a thing like that?
It's a puzzler for another day's list, I fear.