This chapter of life just blows! To holy kingdom and back. Just blows!

This is purgatory. There is no two ways about this. It must be. With no idea where we are heading. Will this train-wreck continue? Are we going straight to hell or is a divine hand going to pull us back to life? Please tell the universe to conspire. It is time to help. Now.

This is not the life we worked hard for. Or hoped for. Or prayed for. This is not the castle we built in the air. I wish we could just blink our eyes and wake up from this nightmare. But, there is no wishing this away. I must be reaping the seeds of my mistakes and transgressions; some big cosmic payback. And now we just have to digest it. Some days I can deal with it. Drown it. Ignore it.

Our life has been snatched away. Our relationships have suffered. Broken. Crumbled. Tainted. We have lost our families, we have lost our friends, we have lost our colleagues. We are not the same we were. We don’t experience happiness, or joy, or sorrow, or anger the same as before. We are no longer the same people. We have been forced to lose ourselves, one day at a time. We have lost how our life used to be. Above it all, I’ve lost my husband. And my husband has lost himself.

I wish I could fix things. Fix his brain. Get him to talk and walk and dance and relax. I miss just having a cup of tea that meant just that. A cup of tea that is not minutes thinking about the memories we have lost, or planning the next therapy. A cup of tea over some lighthearted conversation. With Jitish and me just sitting on our patio looking out at the green. Fix it!

It gets excruciatingly hard some days, when it feels like it won’t get any better. And then one day it does. He starts to walk better. Articulate his speech better. He becomes calmer. But then, there is that painful curve in road. Something sets him off. And he takes us all down with him. I see myself yelling and crying all at once. Despite the wherewithal to not emotionally react. Never lose your temper. Despite everything, and against all odds, you keep yourself calm. It is not easy. Temper has its own little hidden switch that gets triggered at the most stressful times. Everything comes crashing down again. Like a wound that refuses to heal. Heals just enough for the scab to form and then rips open all over again.

Screaming in the car on the way to work and back is a good stress relief. Work keeps me on point. One thing that I can control. One thing that is clear and fixable. Issues to tackle and clear answers to resolve. But what after? Reality. So then I try to ignore. Ignorance works as a good option too. I must be borderline psychotic, to be able to ignore, compartmentalize and move onward with life. But some days even that won’t help. I hear a song on the radio and then I lose it all over again. There is no respite. Just screaming. I hope though, that it is just me who screams. And yells. And gets frustrated and disappointed. I hope not him. I want him happy. Calm. Playful. Relaxed. With over 70% traumatic brain injury survivors battling depression, I hope he beats that statistic and stays positive.

For now. I am nowhere. Limbo.

And So. Yell. Scream. Cry. Calm. Repeat.

This is life. How much longer?

Image source: “We used to live there” by Frank Moth