So, when I had my stroke a few years ago, or ‘cerebral accident’ (as if I was just walking along and oopsy-daisy, I burst a blood-clot in my brain, what a klutz!) I was pretty lucky. A lot of truly horrific things could have happened to me and didn’t.
I remember spending that first night on the stroke ward, looking at my exclusively elderly ward-mates as they lay unmoving and unseeing in their beds, or struggled to eat with limbs made clumsy and uncoordinated. I watched a man walk past the nurse’s station, his hospital gown hanging open at the back, shit running down his leg. I saw all this and it scared me to death. Was I like these people? Surely not. I could walk and talk and do everything I could before the stroke.
Except…
A blind spot in my upper right field of vision that would prevent me from ever getting a driver’s license (I wasn’t going to get one anyways, that’s what public transportation is for) and some minor difficulty with my memory.
More than three years later and I’ve adapted to the blind spot, I hardly even notice it anymore. The problems with my memory however, well, some days it feels like a bad joke.
I’ve had a love affair with the English language since I was a kid. I was one of those who actually read the dictionary, who would never use a simple, understandable and common word to describe something if there was a multi-syllabic, obscure, outdated word I could use instead. I loved it when some of the kids at summer camp called me the “Human Dictionary” though I had to correct them since I was more like the “Human Thesaurus.”
I’m a writer. Not published, and I’ve resisted calling myself that for a long time, but if we accept that someone who spends a large part of their life writing is a writer, then that is what I am.
What I lost when I had my stroke, what was worse than losing part of my vision, or the loss of movement I could have developed had I not been so ‘lucky,’ was my easy access to language.
Just in the process of writing this short entry, I’ve had to look up several words, hunting for synonyms that used to exist somewhere in my head.
That would be bad enough, but I can feel the words there, almost a physical pressure in my brain, as if they were just behind a barrier and I could almost see them, almost free them.
I struggle to find the words I need these days, though I know it may not seem that way to people who know me. Besides the obvious halts in my speech where I just lose a word at the last-minute, something common to us all, there are many times when I’m forced to use a more basic, even inaccurate word, because I can’t find the one I”m actually looking for.
I’ve lost a lot of the confidence I once had in my ability to write. It’s just something I’ve always done, since I started writing poems and short stories in grade school, to the screenwriting I spent most of my adult life working on. I make no claims to being a ‘great’ writer, but I’ve always been a competent one (despite my poor spelling and weak grasp on grammar, weaknesses I admit freely).
I love writing. Even if no once else ever reads what I write, even if I leave stories unfinished, the act of writing itself has always provided comfort to me, allowed me to connect my often mis-matched thoughts to reality in some way.
Now, every paragraph is a struggle. I get trapped by missing words, like an insect in amber. Writing is the only thing I’ve ever been able to just ‘do’. Sometimes, when I get going, when the words are flowing, it feels like I’m high, but better because taking drugs that actually make you ‘high’ has never been all that great an experience for me.
Writing is my drug, it gives me that rush, that feeling of transcendence and pure joy of accomplishment that I imagine athletes, actors, dancers or anyone who creates something physical must feel. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does…it makes everything seem brighter and clearer.
And now that’s gone. I haven’t felt that high in years. How can I when my thoughts are constantly being blocked by the absences in my mind.
I know I can get through this. I will continue to write, not because it’s what I do, but because it’s who I am. I only hope that someday I can feel that rush of ease and accomplishment that I once felt, that it won’t always be a struggle to find the next word.
These are my tools these days, without which I believe I just would have given up out of frustration:
http://dictionary.reference.com/
And the most brilliant page ever : http://www.onelook.com/
Blood-Touched 