Pretty Real Behind the Veil

“I see, said the blind man, when he could not see at all.”

I feel as if I saw a horse for the first time yesterday—I mean really saw what a horse looks like,and they are incredible!  In fact, I feel as if I’ve lived the last 44 years of my life, prior to this past year, as if I’d been blind in so many ways.  During those years, I can count very few, very brief memories of actually experiencing the pleasure of just being, of really connecting with the world around me, in the absence of external or internal judgment or criticism, regret or worry, or the nagging feeling in my gut that something was badly wrong or missing. 

Having struggled most of my life to uncover information that would lead me to some sort of enlightenment about what was wrong, I didn’t have a clue about how I was actually “supposed” to feel.  I just knew that I didn’t feel right.  And the more I learned as I searched for answers, I was afraid that I might not even know what to do with them if I ever did find them.  Experts would  sometimes conclude that whatever was wrong with me was “all in my head”, and those opinions certainly didn’t get me any closer to the answers that I needed, or help me restore a feeling of wholeness and normalcy that was unknown to me. 

Well, I found the answers I was looking for, and what can now be remedied has been or is being remedied, and the rest is with me on this journey for now.  Some of the fallout is physically disabling, and incurable, and I often hear from caring and concerned people that they don’t know how I get through the day, how I don’t feel like giving up, why I’m not bitter, depressed, and so forth. I can say that I did feel a lot of frustration for years, and it was a bit of a shock when I finally discovered what was behind everything. For a short time after discovering the truth, I thought that doctors should have tried harder to figure it out, since they were supposed to be the “experts”, but honestly, I just don’t think that is very realistic, nor does it matter to me any longer.  However I got them, I do have the answers I needed, I’m still alive, and more alive in many ways than I ever was before. 

The thing is that I don’t really see my brain as “damaged” now, even if my body has suffered some setbacks, even if the various growing collection of inflammatory diseases, surgical complications, etc. can be traced back to a very nasty accident that should have killed me before I saw the inside of my first classroom.  The injury healed a long time ago, and just happen to have reprogrammed my brain, but I can hardly call it brain damage, when the “experts” couldn’t have sorted it out with my brain’s help!  That is one of the advantages that I enjoy with this reprogrammed brain.  I prefer to think of it as just different, but it is about as unique in how it functions as a fingerprint, or so I’m told.  In fact, I am blessed to have a brain that gives me significant abilities when it comes to making these kinds of connections, apparently due to massive connectivity & coordination between right and left hemispheres, with amazing abilities to intuitively sense patterns, relationships, and make connections of many kinds, that are not readily apparent to many people, even without particular expertise in those fields. Now that I’m not getting pumped full of intolerable chemicals that interfere with my brain, it does this even better.

I feel no bitterness about the past, what I didn’t have, or don’t have now, I’m not worried about what I won’t have or be able to do in the future.  I’m not afraid of the future, and I’m not miserable about the past. I feel really peaceful right now. Because the thing that I do have now, is what I have been searching for my whole life: to be able to be in this moment, and experience everything that I can experience right now. I LOVE that!  To take all of my living right now, and drink it in, to experience it without judgment or fear, makes me feel more alive than I’ve ever felt before. It’s true that a lot of my body parts don’t work like they used to, and I can’t do all of the things that I used to enjoy doing, but who is 50 and hasn’t experienced that, even if not to the same degree as me right now? Hell, I could have died 100 times from all this stuff, but I didn’t.  Instead, I have lived long enough to be able to experience life fully, and to understand me as a whole self today!  How great is that?!  Things finally make sense, and for the first time in my life, all the experts work with me as a team, and I couldn’t be happier!

And although I can’t do some things that I used to, there are so many new things that I am discovering every day that I can do, that I never dreamed of, like drawing a horse!  This gives me great joy. I can SEE things now, that I could never see before!  And what I see, I can draw, and I see so much more than I ever did before, things that used to be so elusive to me, like what a horse’s eyes actually look like, its muscles, and so many other things that are fantastic and amazing!  I think I first felt the NEED to draw, not in spite of pain, but BECAUSE I was in pain.  Now that I was feeling everything, I needed a way to process things, and integrate it into a more aware ME.  I started drawing for the first time ever in July.  It opened up new ways for me to connect with life around me, to experience it, to see it, and to feel more alive and whole.  Now my mind’s eye can see new things, too, things that spring from my own imagination, many possibilities, and delightful impossibilities!  I can show what is inside of me through images now, and not only with words.  How incredible!   Why wallow in disappointments of the past, when I have this to experience right now?  I don’t need to run away from anything, and I don’t need to desperately search for something to fill a hole in my bucket—I have all that I need right now, experiencing this moment.  I am blessed!