Monday, November 12, 2012

Missing

I had a therapy session this week.  My first since coming home from the hospital and afterwards, thinking back on the session, a movie line popped into my head.  It's a line from the remake of the movie, "Sabrina" with Harrison Ford, Julia Ormond and Greg Kinnear.  It's been awhile since I've seen the 1954 original or read the play so I don't know if it's an original line but it goes like this:

Sabrina:  "I found myself in Paris."

Linus:  "You were missing?"

Sabrina:  "I was."

If you dig into those three lines, there's really a lot said in them and I can really relate to what she's truly saying.  She wasn't physically missing, of course.  But she was missing in an abstract sense.  That's how I feel many days.  Sabrina found herself in Paris.  For me, I was finding myself in New York, finding what my personality really was as well as an emotional self and a physical self.  But my journey to finding myself in New York got stunted by the accident when I came home for a little break.  Now it's proven to be even more difficult cause I'm not just dealing with continuing on the journey of finding myself, I'm having to deal with how the complications of the accident has changed and/or shaped all that is me.  More than four and a half years after my accident, I'm having difficulties finding myself so I do feel a little missing.  I think though that even despite the complications of finding myself because of the accident, I have discovered some very genuine attributes to myself that I may not have ever found in New York.  But it has been a much more difficult journey since having the accident.

So how does one go about finding oneself when they're "missing" like Sabrina was and kinda like how I feel now?  Especially dealing with complications from an accident like a change in how you identify with yourself physically?  How looking in the mirror isn't the same reflection anymore because of scars and a feeling of a different set of eyes, scrutinizing eyes, looking back at you?  I know I don't get out as much as I should.  I'm not around people, my friends, as much as I'd like for whatever reason and that's a big part of finding the missing self - who you are around people and your friends.  That can tell a lot.  There's also being out in the world and discovering what you like and don't like.  And then there's finding out who you are when things are going right, and who you are when things aren't going so right.  The latter is where I primarily find myself because of the accident.  I'm struggling to find who I am when things don't go so right in life.  And I'm struggling to get myself out of the house to find out who I am with people and my friends because it should balance who I am when I'm just with me.  I used to be a social butterfly.  Am I still?  I'm having difficulty answering that question because the accident has left me with a foreign body that makes me nervous to be around people so I don't know if I'm not a social butterfly now because of that, or if I just am not.  I have a feeling I am because I remember feeling comfortable and happy around people and friends before. But again, the accident has complicated things for me.  I envy those who have a solid idea of who they are.  

Being "missing" and trying to find yourself can be a difficult journey.  I feel like I'm on two parallel journeys.  One journey is the road to recovery from a life changing trauma and the other is finding myself again.  They have both been so very difficult for me and I feel no closer to any kind of success or truths on either journey than when I first awoke from that coma over four and a half years ago.  I do understand that either journey is not easy and can take a long time but patience is not my virtue, though I have had to find it in myself to get through some of the things I've been through.

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