First Danny and Sefi, then Amir, and now Nava. Friends from long ago, from a land far away.
Over the years, people from my past tried to reconnect with me, but I couldn’t be bothered. I wasn’t interested. I didn’t feel the need. The land of my past was long gone. I didn’t care. Or so I told myself.
With my brain injury came a heightened self awareness and with it the realization that something had been missing in my life. I’m still appalled that I’d allowed it to happen. How had I managed to convince myself that there was no such void, that my life was full, that my past was of no consequence?
Now, I feel as if for many years, like a dog, I’d been unsettled, twisting and turning, searching for a sweet spot I had wiped out of my consciousness.
Now, since the brain injury that changed me so much, I feel an unrelenting need to reconnect with myself. In my quest to learn about this new person I am growing into, I find myself reminiscing and exploring my frame of reference, who I was, back in a time long ago, in a land far away. Many of the keys to my present hide in my past.
As I rediscover who I was so long ago, I feel more comfortable in my own skin, more comfortable than I had ever been. As I discover who I am, I find I like this new me, more than I liked the adult I was before the injuries to my brain.
Every time someone from my childhood slips back into my life, Amir, Anat, and Ze’ev, I feel myself settle farther into my sweet spot.