I’ve already talked about my brain hemorrhages. I was in a coma for quite long until the neurosurgeon and his team could identify the origin and be able to attend to it. I was on a ventilator and a feeding tube for a while. As they have told me, the long wait and their inability to predict if I would live or die made my family and friends think of my potential loss and increased their concern for me. And when my friends who weren’t that close and synagogue members found out, the severity of my illness and its effects made them feel the need to support Eric and me.
All of these things brought about quality changes in my relationships, from the closest to the most distant. Acquaintances behaved as I would have expected from intimate friends. Neighborliness turned into warm relationship. And as others changed, I, too, changed – their different behavior stirred new feelings in me: I experienced what being cared for meant; people were there for Eric and me.
There’s something else that has changed in me, and that’s my attitude regarding other people’s past or present conduct toward me – my views have experienced a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. I look at my feelings years ago, and they seem petty and self-centered, and I react in a completely different way. Because of this turn, I think of my injury as a watershed; I jokingly refer to my life history as “before March 23rd, 2018” and “after March 23rd, 2018.” I start reacting as my old self used to react, but I immediately tap myself on the shoulder.
I had distanced myself from an old, close friend because I’d decided, somewhat pettily, that she was behaving unfairly toward me. But since I’d inadvertently kept her as my WhatsApp contact, I sent her a happy birthday voice message. I got a very warm reply right away. In it, she expressed her affection and care for me. This reconnection brought the past back. I recalled my anger, but I also recalled the good times we’d had and our fondness for each other. And I wondered why I’d gotten mad and had decided to stop being in touch. I told myself that no matter my ambivalence toward her, I had no reason for keeping my distance.
There are many examples like this: many friends I illogically criticized, and many I lost solely because I (unreasonably) made the decision to part from them. My injury has caused a lot of damage, but it has also given me a lot of things, among them, a different perspective from where to look at things, a different perspective from where to look at myself. So, while I have reasons to be upset about it, I also have reasons to be grateful (although sometimes I have to remind myself of these).
All of these things brought about quality changes in my relationships, from the closest to the most distant. Acquaintances behaved as I would have expected from intimate friends. Neighborliness turned into warm relationship. And as others changed, I, too, changed – their different behavior stirred new feelings in me: I experienced what being cared for meant; people were there for Eric and me.
There’s something else that has changed in me, and that’s my attitude regarding other people’s past or present conduct toward me – my views have experienced a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. I look at my feelings years ago, and they seem petty and self-centered, and I react in a completely different way. Because of this turn, I think of my injury as a watershed; I jokingly refer to my life history as “before March 23rd, 2018” and “after March 23rd, 2018.” I start reacting as my old self used to react, but I immediately tap myself on the shoulder.
I had distanced myself from an old, close friend because I’d decided, somewhat pettily, that she was behaving unfairly toward me. But since I’d inadvertently kept her as my WhatsApp contact, I sent her a happy birthday voice message. I got a very warm reply right away. In it, she expressed her affection and care for me. This reconnection brought the past back. I recalled my anger, but I also recalled the good times we’d had and our fondness for each other. And I wondered why I’d gotten mad and had decided to stop being in touch. I told myself that no matter my ambivalence toward her, I had no reason for keeping my distance.
There are many examples like this: many friends I illogically criticized, and many I lost solely because I (unreasonably) made the decision to part from them. My injury has caused a lot of damage, but it has also given me a lot of things, among them, a different perspective from where to look at things, a different perspective from where to look at myself. So, while I have reasons to be upset about it, I also have reasons to be grateful (although sometimes I have to remind myself of these).
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