The question most people ask themselves: "What if?"

Dear Bloggers,

Life is sometimes pretty miserable at this moment my spouce is struggling with some difficult situations at work.I don’t want to become to detailed but we talk about serious and mean bullying. According to the physician and the psycho therapist we are dealing with a boss that has a dangerous level of narcism.This boss is putting systematically employees down that they either quit there job or joining the game by putting her on statue. If you get mentally wiped of your feet by such a nut case your brain needs a total reset and the therapist will teach you to have a mind and opinion of your own.

This can give some hard conflicts in your surroundings as you change from the soft side to the hard side as your mind is changing. This can be pretty tough for people that have known you for all those years as the easy party. They feel like being stabbed in the back as they do not recognize there own behaviour. So just sit back and relax. The problem is that people near you have the biggest struggle to adapt to this new you. Time to let them deal with the questions:”Who is in charge in your life?” or “Is the inner child winning by crying and pounding with his feet or is the adult side in charge dealing with the situation by starting a normal conversation?” Tricky but not impossible I would say

Several years ago my life was upside down when I  fell down the stairs in our own home my brain has been scattered and I still suffer from gaps in my memory and my character has changed in a negative way according to my wife and some good friends that have known me for many years. Somehow there is a lot of work to do to get the old me back as my wife fell in love with a guy that was a real gentleman. Will I ever be able to get this old me back and restore all these good sides of me? Is it possible to get these memories back from the good old days?

What if you forgot who you used to be? And what if you didn't realize you had?

Imagine have uprooted your life to pursue your dreams. You shed all of your past hangups about making it big in your career, decided money wasn't worth pursuing anymore, and decided to dedicate yourself to a noble cause. And what if after you got there, while you were still basically in shock from the major change, still getting used to your new life, you suddenly lost all memories of your past, all memory of who you used to be. You don't notice at first, because you can recall all the major facts - where you used to live, schools you went to, people you knew, good times you had, even some bad times.

What then? Can you imagine not knowing who you used to be? In a way you would be like a child - devoid of any memories of life. Worse, your condition was such that you "remembered" emotions, but had no tangible basis for the memories so they didn't seem like real memories, just a blur of emotions which you cannot connect to events, or even times in your life. Walking past a store, you smell something that suddenly makes you afraid, not realizing that the memory of your first fight and the beating was accompanied by the smell of tobacco. Other times, a new acquaintance is treated badly by you because, unbeknownst to you, that person looks a lot like the kid who beat you up in school. But above all would be the overwhelming frequency of these kinds of things, and the complete lack of understanding of your own emotions.

If you haven't guessed I'm talking about myself by now, welcome to my blog...

I had no idea how effective the memory therapy that I conceived for myself could be. I started by watching movies from my past. I bought an entire 500-title laserdisc collection partially for purpose. I also started listening to music from my past, but somehow it didn't click how much more effective it was. That, or perhaps I understood how overwhelming it was to get those memories back and put it off.

But two weeks ago, I had a visitor leaving me a copy of his music collection which encompassed an expansive collection of music from the 80s. I began listening to the music, dozens and dozens of songs I hadn't heard in soemtimes 15 or 20 years. And each song, despite memory loss, and despite not having heard them for that long, was so well remembered that I could sing along in tune, to the correct words (at least, as I understood them...)

And with each song comes memories often associated with it. And each song will have several memories attached to it, some stronger, some weaker, some never to be retrieved. Some memories are good, some are memories I would have rather have kept forgotten. But all memories are important, and each completes the history of who I used to be, of what I used to be like.

And until the past couple of days, I hadn't realized how important it was to know what I used to be like. I remember now what the basis was for decisions I made throughout my life - my past motivations, and the history of my decision making, my perspectives, my point of view how things in life should be and connecting these thoughts even as I type this. The story of who I am, by way of who I used to be, is being nearly restored, digitally, in Dolby stereo...

Is there a bright side? Can there be a bright side to forgetting who you used to be? Yes. If you lose all of your preconceptions, you are free to create new ones. And by sheer coincidence, on the eve of what I now know (as of this morning actually...forgot...better make a note) to be at the beginning of the end of the society, I turned off the television and later the radio. Thus, my new development, the creation of the new me, was in the absence of the influence of corporations and the capitalist system which I now understand runs our lives (well, your lives anyway.)

I became a new person, my development influenced by my old body being disabled, my new found perspectives, and from a fare more independent, influence-free perspective. Unfortunately, I was also plagued by the ghosts of my past, the lack of memory of who I used to be, especially given that I no longer had any contact with anyone from my past. This caused problems with socializing, and other symptoms of the injuries that my memory and brain had after the accident. Something I got along the way and it created a situation that made it nearly impossible for me to get medical help or even recognition that I have the problems I do. Life became hell.

I owe my survival to my intellectual gifts, and my drive to always be the best person I could be. It's easy to be open minded, to embrace new ways of thinking, when you have hardly any memory of your past, when you in fact have lost all of your old ways of thinking.

Is my ordeal a tragedy? Absolutely not. Tragedies don't have happy endings. Did I suffer unecessarily? Hell yes I did, but only relative to my personal goals going in. Have others suffered what I have? Have others experienced the injuries I have? Do others have the gifts I have? Have others fought as I have? Have others made the kinds of changes to their lives and perspectives as I have? Yes, absolutely. But I experienced all the right things in all the right ways at all the right times. Yes I have plenty of these kind of questions.

I feel as though much of the burden has been lifted off my shoulders. I'm still dealing with a lot of crap, oh boy am I ever. Events and circumstances in my life haven't changed. My awareness of them and ability to deal with them has. Now that I understand my past, I can better understand how I interact with people, and how to better succeed in my interactions. I have finally succeed in getting medical help for my diagnoses and needed accommodations; which I can attribute, at least in part, to my new interpersonal skills. Those who have been actively fucking with me would be well-advised to stop now while you can. I no longer have fear. I'm not going to run away, I'm going to turn and fight. And those on the border, who merely stayed away because it was the popular thing to do, realize your error of listening to the wrong crowd.

Things are still in the process of gathering up the old me and my old thoughts. I still have a few gaps in the thread of my life's paths to fill, but the bigger threads are there and the gaps are being filled even without conscious effort on my part. There is also the ever-important fact that I still have other problems, both healthwise, as well as from brain “damage.” I still have difficulty making and recalling short and long-term memories. The therapy I underwent on my own was merely to retrieve my past. It doesn't help me relearn how to think or how to make decisions. The ONLY thing it has provided is understanding of who I am by way of how I got here.

And now that I finally understand (mostly) who I am, others can have the opportunity as well.

The Old Sailor,