Hmmmm.
I visited the speech therapist this morning and while I was skeptical about them not speaking English and needing a translator, I went in with an open mind.
Only to find that the "translator" had the same, if not worse, English skills than the therapist.
It wasn't a complete wash however, as we muddled our way through and did some interesting tests to probe problem areas. Unfortunately, (if I understood right) they aren't able to help me as while I have some minor mechanical speech issues, most of the major problems lay in the brain, and damn, there are some problems.
I already knew about these, but being tested for them highlighted just how serious they are, as well as how uncomfortable it is to have them highlighted. Do you know in the movies when they zoom the camera in and simultaneously the background out wide to make the subject look tiny in the world? That is how I felt running some of these tests and I am quite sure that my discomfort and relative distress visibly showed in my face and body language.
Even though it is early days still, each failure felt like a nail in my proverbial coffin and while I am taking the water off a duck's back approach to this at the moment, I couldn't help but feel a bit downcast on the drive home. My entire life has hinged on my ability to think on my feet, so the prospect of losing much of this ability is having a pretty heavy affect on me.
Life goes on though and other than the exercises that I have been given to improve the mechanical issues, I have to wait for the next step on how to deal with the mental implications. The biggest problem (that I see) is my inability to visualize well or quickly enough. Even simple tasks that require me to build some kind of image to learn and recall (for example comprehending and reiterating a story) is highly challenging, as while I can read and understand, my brain doesn't turn it into a visual representation that allows me to make sense of it. I can listen and understand each word and sentence in isolation, but the overall context gets lost near totally.
As said, this is with relatively simply tasks that are really only a fraction of what I would normally need to negotiate in my daily worklife. This is quite a scary proposition for me to face and yeah, there is a long way to go until I have to resign myself to a level, but that in itself is also quite a thing to face.
I have written about loss enough throughout the years and have spent my own time coming to psychological terms with it, but it is never going to be easy. I have always said that it is good to remember that what we have can change at any time and we should never get accustomed or rely on conditions of really any kind, as it always changes.
Often I have used something like support on Hive or an external income as an illustration of this, mentioning the times that people expect a certain level of support and feel entitled. When things change, they can react quite strongly and often, poorly.
This is a bit like that too in many ways, except what I have come to rely on is my own abilities and in the case of my thinking, I didn't expect to have to face losing their support anytime soon, but here we are. The other thing that I am wary not to attach my expectations to is my ability to recover, as even though I am positive I will improve, I am keenly aware that there are many things standing in my way and potentially, some of those things might by insurmountable, meaning that I cannot overcome them, no matter what I do.
But, that is no reason not to try and I am not the kind of person to resign myself in the belief that there is nothing that can be done - even if it might be true - because there is no point in living that way. I'd rather live under the illusion of possibility than in the reality of the impossible. After all, Impossible is nothing and that means that it is something that we can never actually know, because even if something is absolutely impossible right now, it doesn't mean it won't be possible tomorrow, when things have changed again.
So much of what we think is impossible is only so because the conditions are not suitable for it, that the ingredients for success is not aligned. But, as things change over time, new possibilities arise all of the time and perhaps if we are lucky, the recipe for the things we have been working for might just fall into place and we get what we want. Sometimes, we are really lucky and things align to not get us what we want also, because we tend to be pretty poor at desiring what is good for us.
Honestly, I don't know what happens with my life and my ability to earn if I don't recover, or even if I don't improve significantly in the next six months or so, but there is not much I can do to affect it, other than the work I can to improve. I have no idea what happens if I can't work in the way I do, or what kind of job I can get in Finland without the skills I had, but I guess I will have to cross those bridges later, if the journey leads me down that path. Regardless of the weather, it is still one step forward at a time and possibly a few steps to the side, a couple back and maybe a few pivots.
Rather than sitting in the rain, I can choose to dance.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]