TBI Tuesday – Can you heal by confusion? Weird.

I’m in the big town this morning, at the apartment, and am kind of lost. Kind of on purpose. And I kind of love it.

If you follow my site, you know I had a traumatic brain injury a couple of years ago and still focus a lot on improving that three-pound ball of fat. 

I’m on the other side of town from the apartment, looking for oolong tea and the NYT at Whole Foods. Nope. Nary a one. I’m depressed about this: why go to the big town if you can’t find a decent newspaper? It’s the South, so every store is stocked with the who’s-in-jail-and-why newspaper, but I don’t consider this relevant news or good writing. Or interesting. The human animal, for all it’s beauty and horrors, reveals few new behaviors…

I expanded my search to Barnes and Noble. There are two stores here, and I asked Siri to take me to the one farthest away so I could snake a path through the old town and places I’ve never been. 

It was a great drive, passing rows of houses probably built in the ‘30s and ‘40s. Some were dilapidated and falling in on themselves, and some were shiny and bright. I drove under canopies of colored maples and sweet gums. When the tress broke, I laughed at fields still stocked with cows and salt licks, looking like dairy farm hangovers.

I said goodbye to Currier and Ives only to find that the Barnes and Noble I was looking for was actually a college bookstore. Oh, well. I asked Siri to take me home.

Here’s where it gets good and why I encourage everyone in any brain state to purposefully get lost: after driving for half an hour on strange roads, I didn’t recognize anything near the apartment. Not the roads or the lights or even Starbucks. It all looked new and different, like I was in another state. Maybe it’s just as weird, but I thanked G for my marvelous brain, and for me being so confused, knowing that when confused or unsure, the brain builds new understandings and new connections from what it senses. I’m glad, too, to remind myself that G is never lost or confused. No matter how wonky you are.

I finally made it home, letting myself in, and even inside familiar surroundings, I sensed that something was off, that I wasn’t entirely settled. That was weird, too. 

But it all came back. I did what I always do, and made coffee and then grabbed my iPad to write this, and the world seemed to fall into place, piece-by-piece. Then – ah, then! – I turned on cable news and saw that the Democrats hate the Republicans and the Republicans hate the Democrats, and I knew that all was right in the world.

Amen