Once in psychotherapy I remember telling my shrink that sometimes I feel like there is a congress or conference going on in my head where several voices argue and discuss any topic that might be worrying me in life. Quite innocently I asked him, “Do you think there is more than one Me inside me?” His quick response was, “Well, we know that there is at least one of you.” No, he didn’t mean I was crazy and that I had multiple personalities. I went with the idea that we has underlining the numerous contradictions that define the neurotic that I am.
I bring this up because last weekend I went to the movies on my own. I went to the Angelika Plano to see the beautiful A Separation. As I was walking from my car to the theater, there they were…my voices. We were all talking at the same time, quite happy actually. In order to keep up with all that I had to be said, I saw that I needed to talk to myself with my outside voice. And though one of us kept telling me to lower my voice because I would get caught by the “normal” foks around me, I just couldn’t. All of us were really happy to be out and about again!
We were in a celebratory mode because I had just realized that lately my weak leg is feeling much, much stronger, so much so that I don’t feel I’m going to fall with every step I take. Sometimes I have the audacity to walk without my cane for extremely short distances, say to the vending machine at work (in spite of having no business there); or from the bathroom at home to my recliner-cum-bed. I quite flippantly and childishly tell my husband when he insists I take my cane, “I don’t need it!”, something I wholeheartedly desire to believe and am convinced and will come to be.
So my voices and I were congratulating me on how strong and quick I walk now; of course the slowness and limp are still very noticeable, but the improvement is something none of us are willing to ignore or deny.
Another day I took my daughter to her soon to be high school. It was sort of an Open House to meet with the clubs and become familiar with extracurricular activities she will be able to choose from. Because of my own experiences in U.S. schools, I was a little nervous, but I have to say I did fantastically well. I got very tired, but I was thrilled with myself.
The resurgence of these voices that to me seem to come from distinct individualities made me also realize that they had but disappeared since I had my stroke in June 2008. I commented to my husband that perhaps the part of my brain that died that June night was where these voices resided and now they have found new neuronal pathways back home.
I do hope so, because that means my brain is probably furiously, desperately working to regain its power over my left limbs.
May it be so.
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