Falling again
I had a moment of “Oh god, my past has caught up with me”, and I’m not doing too well as a result. The mental demons are with me, and they won’t leave.
I’ve been putting off this meltdown all day because I had to get other stuff done. I had to be functional. I knew that the later I put off the meltdown, the more it will affect me for work tomorrow. But I didn’t have time for it. I had to get other stuff done.
What started all of this was realising this morning that I’ve missed yet another committment. I’ve broken yet another promise I’d made to someone, because I forgot about it. My life is full of unfinished projects and broken promises because I can’t remember things.
I’ve not been able to remember things ever since the car accident in 1994. I explained this on LiveJournal today to my friends, and I feel that for the first time I’ve really outed my situation fully and publically. That was really hard to do but I need HELP with remembering shit.
I’m reposting here what I said on LiveJournal so I have it saved for posterity:
The reason I am so forgetful is due to a car accident in 1994 in which I bowed out the windshield with my head. I was not wearing a seat belt. My boyfriend at the time made a left out of a shopping center driveway in rush-hour traffic after oncoming traffic stopped to let us go. Who didn’t stop was an SUV speeding down the center lane to make the light. They hit us going approximately 50MPH head on, while we were doing roughly 20MPH out of the parking lot.
All I remember was seeing the grill of the SUV and gasping.
I woke up in the ambulance in a neck brace and strapped to a gurney. Blood leaked into my eyes. The paramedics shot me up with something and I passed out. I next woke up in the hospital E.R. in a private room, lying prone, facing the open door, waiting for a doctor to tell me what had happened. My boyfriend was nowhere in sight. A doctor eventually came in and told me they’d stitched up my face and that I had no broken bones. My jeans had been cut up the left leg because I’d smashed up my knee. I got several stiches in my left eyebrow, and in the underportion of my chin.
And then they released me. The bastards released me that same day because I only had shitty self-paid HMO type health insurance.
My parents and boyfriend were in the waiting room. He’d only hit his head on the rear-view mirror and he was shaken up. The car was totaled.
My boyfriend got me home and that’s when I discovered the hospital had forgotten to sew up my knee. I could see all the way down to fatty tissue and freaked because I thought it was bone. Back I went to the E.R. where they sewed me up and released me again, despite the fact that I complained about being VERY dizzy and my head hurting A LOT.
I’d just bowed out a fucking windshield and they sent me home again instead of keeping me overnight for observation. I know I bowed out the windshield because we eventually went to see the car in the junk yard. I saw the windshield and started crying. I could have died.
My nose felt like it was broken for months. I was diagnosed with TMJ and had to wear a jaw splint for a year. I was off work for two weeks after the accident, and I had dizziness the entire time that was so bad, I’d have to CRAWL to get to the bathroom or to the kitchen because I’d have fallen down if I had to walk. My boyfriend did not take care of me, despite promising my parents that he would.
Ever since that car accident, I have been very forgetful. I forget one of my nephew’s birthdays every year, whether it’s the firstborn or the second born, one of them gets forgotten. I will tell B that I’m going to do something, then walk into the other room and forget what I was supposed to be doing. I can’t remember where I leave my keys, my shoes and my glasses, and B is always having to tell me where these things are.
My pockets are full of post-it notes and scribbled notes to remember things.
I bought a cell phone with a calendar tool and forgot to add items to the calendar.
And that’s not all. Ever since the car accident, I have speech outbursts that resemble Tourette’s, but I can mostly control them and they’re highly embarrassing when they slip past my conscious filter.
I’ve had MRIs done and I’ve had Xrays done. Xrays show that I have bulging disks at C5, C6 and C7, with moderate damage to C5 and C6.
Recent MRI’s show a ‘normal’ brain.
But I’m here to tell you that I was NOT this way before the car accident. My entire personality changed because of that car accident, which is common with brain injuries. Just because a doctor tells you you’re fine, doesn’t mean you are fine. You know your body. You know when you’re not fine.
This is not the first time I’ve mentioned the forgetfulness. Perhaps the first time on LiveJournal, but I’ve mentioned it here before.
I’ve mentioned my car accident in general several times in my old journal, on Wed Feb 12 13:33:38 PST 2003, Fri Jul 11 18:13:31 PDT 2003 and Thu Jul 1 16:24:52 PDT 2004.
I’ve mentioned forgetfulness in my old journal, but it was always in context of being really stressed out due to unemployment, so I can’t say definitively that the forgetfullness in those cases was due to the accident. There’s the entry on Sun May 16 16:15:18 PDT 2004 where I mention “I’ve forgotten to attend no less than three events in the past week for various friends and aquaintances, even though I’ve had these things marked on my calendar and even though I’ve talked with my bf about going to these events. This is horrible and it doesn’t make for keeping the respect of my friends. I’m so sorry.”
Yep, stings like missing my friend’s opening night last night.
Also mentioning the Tourette’s-like condition right there in the open on such a public forum today, what was I thinking? I got even more depressed after I posted. I felt like I couldn’t take it back. I felt like I’d truly admitted that I’m a fucked up invalid type mental patient who needs institutionalised care.
I’ve mentioned the babble here before, and I’ve mentioned the babble thing in the old journal too, on Wed Sep 10 00:43:44 PDT 2003.
But this journal is not a public forum, linked to friends lists and such. Sure, the journal itself is public, but it’s not widely linked and advertised the way LiveJournal is. I dunno why that matters to me, but it does. It always has.
As with my post here back in December, I started drinking upon even mentioning the babble issue in LiveJournal today.
Oh the drinking thing… I’ve not been able to remain fully sober ever since my grand falling off the wagon three weeks ago, September 10, 2007, at a local nightclub. I had a bad day at work and off the wagon I went, in pure Edina Monsoon style.
I’ve not gotten trashed since September 10th because I don’t feel like being a living tribute to Eddy again. But I have continued to drink here and there. Like, tonight. To dull the noise. To quiet the demons.
I don’t like having to admit I have so many problems. I don’t want to be dependent on people. I want to be tough and cool, to quote my friend Justin, the way I used to be a dozen years ago.
But no. I’m broken. Life and my past doings and abuses to myself have all caught up with me. I have Endometriosis, bulging disks in my neck, scoliosis, gluten allergy, yeast sensitivity, chronic forgetfullness, congenitally misaligned knees that crack loudly and squick people when I walk up the stairs or bend my legs, Tourette’s-like babble that I can barely control, and major depression.
YEAH, GO ME, I’M A WINNER.
Why am I not institutionalised, yet? How is it that someone like me can still run around all free range?
Lock me up. Give me the good drugs. Remove me from this constant awareness that I’m only going to keep getting worse.
I’ve even forgotten to tell you about the raging wildfires last month, and about the car accident that shut down one of the bridges, whereby I had to take a day off or risk being fired for friggin being TARDY again.
And I had such a good day, yesterday, too. I would have continued that good streak, had I only remembered that I had to be somewhere last night. I kept checking in with my man, kept looking at the calendar. But there was nothing on the calendar.
But there was.