A brain injury is like the color blue

Maybe I am special. Not many people can say what I can easily. My life is divided into two personality experiences. I was a person until the age of 44. Then a different person took over to inhabit my consciousness or what we call “me.” Let me explain.

Blue has always been my favorite color. Everyone knows the color blue, right? Maybe not.

If someone is visually impaired or blind from birth, they may not have a clue what color it is, regardless of the actual color of blue. And, as far as we know, what one person sees as blue could be another’s red. When we learned our colors from our parents and teachers, they pointed to a color and said “this is blue.” Whatever color you saw in the area they pointed to, you now know it as “blue.” Perhaps what I see as red you call blue. Perhaps our brains do not interpret these color impulses in the same way and you have a totally different landscape of colors than I have with colors that I could not even begin to recognize.

What if we just try to describe it? The color blue. Describing a color without using color as a reference point is impossible. “It’s blue, like the sky!” Well, if you can’t see the sky, that description wouldn’t be of any help.

Trying to explain something to someone requires a common reference point on which to base your explanation. Without that, we cannot communicate a thought, idea or situation. Can you describe a color to someone who cannot see, a scent to someone who cannot smell, or a sound to someone who cannot hear?

Which brings me to my point. Since I was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 1999, I have found that there is no way to explain my deficiencies or the effects of changes in my consciousness to someone who has not experienced changes in their brain. Having a “new brain” is far from everything that most people experience. The only people who really understand are the ones who live with it. The “insiders”. And, even for us, experiences are often quite unique due to the complexity of the brain itself.

As much as our friends, family, and loved ones try, they can never really understand. For them, it is something that happens in certain events or places or while they are trying to do something in particular. For us, it never goes away. We carry it with us wherever we go. We do not forget it because it is part of us. It is who we are now. It is a reality that we “get used to” or learn to accept.

This is not a pity party. In fact, I have learned many positive lessons from this experience. For me, it is a brain injury; for someone else, it is being amputated, someone else, losing a child; everyone has, as they say, a torch to carry. As much as we want to empathize and understand what others are going through, we have to accept the limitations of our abilities to do so.

I believe that accepting the fact that people cannot fully understand is fundamental to a true acceptance of our situation, whatever it may be. For me, it’s time to stop trying to explain. It is time to let go of the frustration that arises from repeated failed attempts to explain why I behave the way I do, why I need certain modifications in my environment, and why I react the way I do.

This understanding is very new to me. I am sharing it with other people in the same or similar situation because I really believe that this is a key element to complete healing … not worrying so much about understanding others. In some ways, realizing this is quite liberating for me.

I write this because I know that I am not alone. After 19 years of this being my reality, and after 19 years of trying to make those around me understand, I stop. How can I expect someone to really understand without any personal reference point on which to base their understanding?

It’s like trying to describe the color blue to someone. It just can’t be done.

I have freed myself. I hope I have helped free at least one other in the process.

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