Song as a Memory Finder

~ Sahara ~ 9 Comments

This week, there is a prompt  about a song that really affects us, and while I don’t have the obsession over music that some people have, I do have one song that… I don’t know.  I have a visceral reaction to it.  The first 20 seconds of Pearl Jam’s  “Nothingman,” affects me like I didn’t know a song could. Even as I listen right now, as I sit here and write this… My heart clutches and it’s hard to breathe. I close my eyes and shudder a bit. I feel like a balloon with the air suddenly sucked out.

No matter where I am or what I’m doing, when I hear this song, I’m immediately back in a darkened house in the dark wee hours of the morning. I was a different person that night and at that point in my life. Though I didn’t know it then, it was the lowest I would ever be – the night before the accident. The accident that nearly killed me. The accident I would give anything to have not had.

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To Hear The Poem of Creation

~ Sahara ~ 11 Comments

Remember the first time I traveled solo.

And I mean solo, really solo.  I had taken a trip to San Francisco by-myself-but-with-others with Team in Training to do the Nike Women’s Marathon, and that was pretty cool. I went with other people to appease worried family members. But, in the spring of ’08, before I started my Master’s that fall, I wanted to go abroad. The problem was, nobody wanted to go with me.  Rather, they did, but they didn’t have the money or the vacation time to do it, and they didn’t really have an interest in seeing what I wanted to see.

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Sensitivity training

~ Sahara ~ 1 Comment

A daily prompt invited me to write about my weaknesses, or rather, the harshest but really accurate piece of feedback (criticism) I’ve ever gotten.  I started to comment on it a few days ago, but got sidetracked.

I found this prompt asking me to poke into corners of my memory better left undisturbed, the neat packages that you can barely see for the shadows around them. Because I rarely poke into them, I liked the challenge of looking into something new. So, though I’m a few days late to reply to this prompt, I still like the exercise.

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Express yourself to respect yourself (TM Madonna)

~ Sahara ~ 9 Comments

Okay, so the response to this prompt about not being able to verbally express yourself is kind of a gimme.

After my car accident and the coma, I had word finding problems, which is common for head injury.  That didn’t make it more manageable at the time. It took me sooo long to get a sentence out, because I was trying to remember what I wanted to say!  I felt so awkward with my friends because I felt so damaged and inadequate.  My friend Darren from rehab was such a blessing for me during that time, ’cause we both spoke slowly, so I didn’t feel inadequate around him. I also remember the frustration I felt at not being able to communicate with others, and fearing that I wouldn’t get better; that I’d be trapped inside myself.

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Small thing, big joy

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We moved offices at work!!

I normally don’t talk a lot about work; don’t grouse about what it’s like here, because I want to keep this blog separate from all that.  However, I’m going to talk about it today, because we’ve moved offices!!

This is a change that I”ve been aksing for over the past several years, we just haven’t had the time or money or support to do it.  Today it’s happened, and for the first time, I’m in an office with natural light. I’m sitting a bit away from windows so people aren’t staring at me all the time. There are plants in here.

This is beautiful.

Remember the time… I got really scared

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The time I got the most scared. I was a kid, it was the summer after 7th grade.  One day, I went to the theater (something we could never afford to do) to watch the movie “Aracnophobia” with a girlfriend.  We got movie treats before we went, and I bought Mamba. Then I spent the afternoon at her house, something I loved to do because she had such a beautiful house and she had so many sisters, so there was always a lot of things going on.

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