I am still I

We're not close to any anniversary of a car hitting me nor my recovery from the brain injury, or at least not any I can remember (cough, cough) but in the last couple weeks I've had a few moments of a sweeping emotional gratitude that I've regained as much as I have. I can think of three people I've met after they suffered a TBI who were distinctly altered by the impact on their central processing unit, and I've seen the frustration they experience at no longer being able to function in the world as they once did.

In the medical recovery process from a TBI, the focus is on functionality, be it speaking, walking, or simply remembering, but I find myself contemplating that I could have lost much of what I consider the core of my being, my personality, how I think. I'm not claiming that my personality or thinking is flawless, far from it, but I've been quite happy living life as the person I am, and I could have lost a lot of that. The person partnered with me at the time, and still a close friend, can attest that for a time I did lose a bit of it.

I've been fortunate to enjoy perceiving and processing the world with the highly distractable mind that landed in me. For years, I've said I'm pretty safe from boredom, and all I need for entertainment is a place to sit and a blank wall for staring. From there, I can let my mind wander, and I'll be pretty well content. That's a luxury, and I'm grateful my damaged lump of cognition can still achieve that. Heck, I even remember that a reflexive verb like "am" is followed by the subject form of a pronoun, resulting in awkward sounding phrasing, like the title of this post. Sure, I could've reworded to be less clunky, say, "I am still myself," but me just gotta are me.

Cool blank wall!

Now, what was I saying?