Hello Steemit People!

I guess since I don’t want to keep being a lurker…I better do this right. Plus I keep reading good things about everybody here from my friend John /zero21mill, who I really like. And I have found some good reasons myself to stick around.

I’d like to start with something I was motivated to share with my facebook friends recently and I think that it will lead me to what I want to talk about and use Steemit for personally. I have a lot of things to get out of my head. And hey…maybe it will be therapeutic or help someone else NOT make some of the mistakes that I have. Can’t go wrong there.

Today I went to an appointment to get a “psyche evaluation”.

It was a complete waste of time. I thought, and I thought that my New Doctor understood that I was looking for someone to talk to about dealing with my Traumatic Brain Injury.
I saw a neuropsychologist back in 08...I need to find her (but I don’t remember her name) or one like her. They understood I guess how to help me retrain my brain for certain reasons. Like how to deal with my life, and decision making and time management etc. Things I should have had more therapy for earlier. They helped me learn to walk right again! That’s what I need and thought I was going to.

So anyway I get to this place and holy shit. Halfway through the intake process, I realize that these people are nuts. Like people that don’t understand the importance of bathing daily or that a coat isn’t really needed in Arizona yet. Especially indoors!
I think I'm in the wrong place!
But then I get called back...she asks me to sit down to do some input on a computer and I tell her that I already did all of this online. Ugh...at this point I'm thinking ok this is just the main waiting area for everyone, some of these people aren't too off, surely now that I see I'm in the computer it's all good.

NOPE! When I finally got called back by a doctor. Personally! he was the head of...something I forget what he said, but he apologized to me! for wasting my time and said after he read more about me this isn't where I belong.

I have a Traumatic Brain Injury. I'm not schizo or suicidal or need lithium (I heard someone talking about it, not for me but in the waiting room I heard it mentioned in someone's conversation.

So he was really nice and ended up talking to me for a while and said they wouldn't be charging me (I asked and what a relief!!) and he tried to find two doctors he knew of that would take my insurance but they didn't have anything until February. So...he made some suggestions and apologized again and wished me well.

After leaving, I thought of something. I just now could have got some major drugs. I don't even know what but the kind that I'm afraid to take. Major painkillers. Antidepressants or whatever they give people with Bo-Polar. And I'm not saying its wrong to take them if you have a real need. But those are not my needs!

I'm Bi-polar2 (I have extreme highs and lows but I never ever want to kill myself or hurt anyone else) and I have a Traumatic Brain Injury and all of the residual effects it left me with. I don't take any pills. I smoke cannabis. I have a lot of addiction in my family of origin and I am extremely afraid to take pharmaceuticals and get addicted. I don’t trust them.

So how is marijuana a gateway drug?

I could have played it off...I was through intake and could have. I bet a lot of people do. THERE WAS A LOT OF PEOPLE THERE to get drugs!

After that experience, I realize how okay I really am. Seriously I'm alright! I’m too hard on myself! Sometimes I hate the things I deal with now but I don’t hate myself! I’m awesome! I’m stronger than I ever knew I’d need to be!

I don't need, the things that the people I saw need! I'm just gonna keep using my medical marijuana card and hope the U.S. Government won’t fuck me over.

It’s super hard living with a Traumatic Brain Injury!

I was the passenger in a motorcycle accident in 2004. I’m lucky to be alive.
I was separated from my husband and the guy I was dating put me on his motorcycle instead of calling me a cab. I was wearing capris, a halter top and sandals. There is no way in hell I would have gotten on a bike dressed like that, had I been sober and in my right mind.
He got up and walked away. I woke up in the hospital 5 weeks later. Survivor of a closed traumatic brain injury. I’m so thankful for California helmet laws!!
Seriously…I went head-first, face-down into a giant rock! My head would have split open like a watermelon. The fall broke my pelvic bone and I had road rash including tearing away the skin on several knuckles. I’m so lucky I don’t remember any of it.

I was put in a coma until brain swelling went down and even after I was brought out of the coma I have no memory until 5 weeks later. I barely knew who I was for the next several months.

My husband and I had gone through years of separation before, but this time I was seriously ending it. Until the accident.
He was still my emergency contact and who was called and came to me, along with our three sons, then teens. When I was finally released from the hospital they took me home in November of 2004. By March 2005 we had to move and ended up in Tucson. (That’s another story.) But basically, you can’t live in California when you lose an income. MY career was dead.

In the beginning 3 years I was on all kinds of drugs for post-traumatic seizures, for pain, for neuropathy. Every one of them had side effects I couldn’t deal with. One swelled up the glands in my neck so bad for a week I thought I had the mumps. One curled my straight hair!! And one made me so foggy-headed and out of it…I couldn’t even do the touch your finger to your own nose exercise at the doctors office.

In 2007 I caught my oldest son sitting on his bed smoking pot. Rather than bust him which is what the look on his face thought I was going to do, I sat down next to him and ask for a hit. I remembered my reefer days and I was desperate for something to make me feel better. I’ve been smoking it ever since.
Now I choose edibles sometimes and have introduced CBD oil to my days. It helps me sleep. It helps my mood and pain and reminds me to eat and inspires me to be creative and want to be healthy. It helps me forget about tinnitus for a while. It helps with the depression and anxiety and I feel ok. One of the hardest things about having a traumatic brain injury is trying to explain how it feels. I am disabled but my disability is invisible to everyone except me.

Having a brain injury makes me feel really dumb sometimes. I often think one thing and another word comes out of my mouth. I like typing my thoughts because I can command Z/undo on my computer, and to be able to fix typos before hitting submit! LOL!
I often have this little one-second thought in my mind about doing a command Z in my life tee hee …IF ONLY!!
I forget things, a lot of things and have to leave myself notes. I cry about way too much! I swear I feel like a blubbering idiot sometimes but its real. I FEEL everything so intensely now its a trip and it comes out in tears more often than not.
Ive had tinnitus for twelve years! (its a wonder I’m not nuts)

In 2008 I started to really work. I’m an old-school print designer with a background in corporate advertising departments. I found that I had to focus on what I could still do instead of being sad about what I didn’t couldn’t in the new graphics world.

I did a lot of magazine ad design. I did just about any logo design or graphics work I could find. I even illustrated two children’s books. (They never have sold much ;-)
In 2010 I found Hemp-Eaze™. Darcy Stoddard is an herbalist, who lives and works Tierra Sol Farm with her husband Bill, in the mountains of Northern California. She hand-crafts a line of body care products made from a property blend of 9 herbs and roots including the cannabis root. I found some real value in her products and offered my services.
I’ve working with Darcy ever since and she says, the results were beyond her imagination.

At the start I was thinking I could use her small company as sort of a guinea pig. I needed to see what I could still do. Seven years later its turned into a pretty great online relationship. Darcy doesn’t use a cell phone up there. In seven years we haven’t spoken once but we make it work via email and facebook. (hence my facebook addiction)

In all these years since I didn’t die, getting back to living has been really hard. I can’t drive anymore, making it difficult to do much in the way of socializing or actually doing something besides work! But I keep going. I just have to get to where I can make enough money to take Lyft (like uber) whenever I want to go do something. I like to hear live bands!
So here I am twelve years later. I still haven’t figured out everything, but I’ve adjusted the best way I know how. I’m just over here trying to do this new chapter in my life.

Thanks for reading. I’ll admit it’s good to get that out.

I’m still learning how to format my posts. I hope this isn’t too obvious but learning new things takes me just a little bit longer maybe. My intent is to make a transition from spending way too much time on facebook and get more out of my online life than it provides. I’m not very argumentative. I don’t insult people who think differently than I do about things. And I don’t have a lot of interesting pictures of great events to show off. So here I am ;-)

##Things I plan to get out of my head##

John moved us out of California. I know he was freaked out and didn’t know what to do, but In twelve years I still hate Tucson. (I’m working on it.)

I didn’t have any therapy at all until 3.5 years later. (these are the cards you’ve been dealt.)
I had to take care of myself…and I’m still not that great at it. (the medical system sucks!)
I’m 50 and alone, my boys don’t need me anymore its worse than all of my pain.
I smoke a lot of weed but I don’t do drugs.
I miss the beach more and more every year.
I have a sister and a brother who hate me.
My mother disowned me “because I’m open to Satan.”
I never took my kids to church and they’re the best people I know.
Almost dying cemented my atheism. (If I had laid there in gods hands I’d be dead.)
I absolutely loathe Donald Trump and most Republicans. (seriously, he makes me wanna punch something…and I’m totally mellow!)
I was raised by one of them.

Ha Ha! Yes, you're actually right about that! I think in a way I've been observing the world from a very different point of view than I used to have and everyone has a story. Everyone IS a little nuts. Living in my head is a strange place but I think I've learned to accept myself better the way I am now and I don't really care about impressing anyone anymore. I'm just living, like everyone else.
I don't agree that pot is a drug. It's a plant! I don't think the way that I am with drugs and weed is a model for everyone. I just know what has worked and what has NOT worked for me. It's been a process of eliminating all the things that make me feel bad.
Thanks for saying hi Scott! ;-) I'm Shelley. And who hasn't picked their nose or peed in the shower! I just don't make a habit of it LOL!

You nailed it with being ourselves. I have no more filter. It's like I have this deep need to just be the full on me.

**Introduce yourself dammit!**

Hello Steemit People!

So how is marijuana a gateway drug?

It’s super hard living with a Traumatic Brain Injury!

Thanks for reading. I’ll admit it’s good to get that out.

Introduce yourself dammit!