Mud

My brain is so muddled. I guess this is the infamous widow brain. I feel like it will be the death of my memory. I forget things. All. The. Time. I forget to respond to emails (I just found some important ones from June... oops), I forget to return messages, I forget where I'm going. Much of the time, it's like I can't concentrate or focus. I have to really buckle myself down to do my school work and I often read the prompts 4 million times before doing it because I can't remember what I'm supposed to be looking for when I start reading (definitely not typical of me from when I was in undergrad).

A few months ago, I was heading to a friend's house. This is a house I spent nearly every day at, literally. Probably a good 5 out of 7 days were there (and probably 4 of those I spent the night), so I should have known where I was going. I made it on base, turned into her neighborhood and then completely blanked out. I had no idea where I was going. I was on the phone with another friend and had to get off so I could concentrate. I drove around her neighborhood for a few minutes and realized I had absolutely no clue how to get to her house! My grief counselor had warned me this would happen so I was semi-prepared. I called my friend half in tears and half laughing. WHERE DO YOU LIVE?! She laughed at me (good-naturedly, since I was already laughing... of course) and guided me to her house and when I got there I jumped out of the truck in near panic attack but still laughing. Luckily I've got the sense of humor to still find it funny and I laughed it off, thank you widow brain, for screwing with me yet again.

Sometimes, it's a bit scarier. When we were in Florida before the funeral, some friends and I went shopping for my funeral attire for the week. I was in the dressing room with a friend, and the rest of my friends were waiting outside and keeping the baby occupied. All of a sudden, I couldn't remember anything... about the accident. I looked at my friend and I can only imagine my face must have been white as a sheet because when she looked at me she knew something was wrong. I told her I can't remember. I can't remember. What happened?! She looked at me like Oh shit, I'm going to have to tell her her husband is dead. I saw that on her face and assured her I knew that much, I couldn't imagine having to re-break the news so I let her know I knew he was gone. But I couldn't remember how, what had happened to lead to this? She had to literally walk me through what had happened. Mind you, I was very involved with my husband's career and I grew up in a military environment, but I couldn't even remember any of the acronyms. When she said MRAP, she had to explain what that was. When she said IED, I was lost (and really people even outside the military world know what that is!). Literally step by tiny step. As she told the story to me, it came flooding back and I could once again remember. I made her promise though, that if that ever happened again she'd have to do it again. I know it must have sucked really, really bad for her telling me all the details, but I just can't not know, ya know? And I was so thankful I had a friend who could do that for me.

My point here is that the brain is a tricky thing. Our brains do what they can to protect us and help us survive. My brain must have thought I needed to put that out to be able to get through the pain, I'm not really sure. It is amazing and unbelievable and scary and difficult all at once. And now I still experience brain-blips but it's mostly in the form of just forgetting every stinkin' thing. My ears stop listening when people give me details these days. I don't stop listening, but it's like I stop registering. While you're telling me I could hear every single thing you said, but if you asked me to repeat it right after I would miss parts. It's frustrating because it doesn't just interfere with knowing about what happened but with every day life. Maybe there is some kind of supplement or something that I can take to increase brain power and memory. Ginko perhaps? Ginseng? Hmmm...


On another mud note... I am doing the USMC Mud Run! For those of you who have been here a while, you may have remembered at the beginning of deployment I talked about wanting to do it. (I looked but can't find the post, it's somewhere out there between December and March... hmmm). Anyway, I had said I wanted to train during this deployment and get prepared and do the mud run in September with my babe. I figured it would be super fun and a great way to get back in shape post-baby. Well of course since every thing happened it hit the back burner and I completely forgot about it until I saw on someone's blog about the Warrior Dash and I remembered how badly I wanted to do the mud run. So, I decided that I would carry over this goal from "before" and go after it now. And still give my husband a great laugh. I've got my team of 4 all set up, 4 of us wonderful widows (or as our team name says - Gold Stars Gone Wild - hahaha) and I think it's going to be a powerful experience for us. Where we support each other to finish and grow stronger after completing. I'm preeeeeetty excited. I also have some more friends doing it, since you can only have teams of 4 I've encouraged all my friends to create or join another team and we will still do it together. I wanted a big group of people down there, and right now I know of one other team of my friends, possibly a third, that will be with us.

If you are interested in the 2010 USMC Mud Run check it out here
It is on Saturday, September 25 in Columbia, SC and the proceeds go to wounded and KIA Marines and families (in the SC area, I believe, but either way - good cause!)