Being home, means one’s effort to be can BE that much more REAL than in a setting where’s one future is totally dependent on a bunch of strangers, who all play their part. “Public self” has a great many limitations.
Facial hair, because for quite some time, there were other concerns.
The good
– I get my dreams back (I had not realized I had not dreamed in the hospital). It is like a friendly blanket, another “me” meeting me, regardless of the dreams. Officially I am told: REM sleep is back.
– I am like a sponge with silence: give me more!
– I sleep a lot, more than eight hours per night.
The hard
– My previous brain-bleed (cf. this site) is of no use. There is no comparison. I am even more so on my own, and more specifically: I have no idea which way is up. There is no path, no ledge onto which I could ponder anything.
The concept of healing or of any kind of roadmap is unavailable. I am there,where there is no “there.”
Making it home means one has done enough “genuflections” (passing the tests to demonstrate one is functional enough). I remember in rehab a four hour psychological evaluation starting at 8:30 a.m. where one element included the need to recall more than once a list of a great many disparate objects, and keep a friendly attitude. Towards the end of that morning, without any break, I asked if I could play on my phone some background music (Satie) to soften the hardship of these non-stop exercises. I was allowed to do so.
If one’s relationship with oneself is barely alive:
To speak (= to have to conjugate verbs) means affirming one’s ”I,” one’s identity.
When someone else wants any kind of attention – could be something as trivial as a “how are you?” – it is impossible to respond properly. There is nobody home, nobody who could properly answer.
If one is unpleasant to the outside world, it is because one has not yet established some kind of self.
It is impossible to speak without a well established subject, That’s why one shouts (as a way to say most indirectly: “I am not ready to engage in a conversation of selves!”).
And loud sounds and noise make themselves known as disturbances, absolutely invasive, and preventing any link to self.
Is that kind of hypersensitivity a phenomenon I should expect? Like a great many other questions, I am in the dark.
SURPRISE: “here is your book to take home” 271 pages…
Notwithstanding the actual care (surgery, wound care…) and “vitals checking,” it has felt like I have been on my own.