This time though, it isn’t literal (I had a couple of brain hemorrhages back in 1998 and 2001, for anyone who doesn’t know). This time, the thing that is blowing my mind is actually the power of that very organ.

I had a pretty serious stroke right after that last brain hemorrhage, which I am still recovering from. But for the past few years now, I have been working on teaching my body to remember how to be functional. This is accomplished through some pretty intense visualization techniques, which really seems to be working.

Over the past few years since I began doing this, the visualization that I seem to use the most is that the inside of my brain is just a huge, really long hallway. All the way along the walls, there are electrical outlets, most with the cables plugged in to them (these are the parts of my body that were not affected by the stroke). However, in the areas where the stroke is, the cables are unplugged, left lying on the ground in front of their outlets. So what I do is I picture myself just going into the hallway and simply plugging them back in. As I plug them in, that’s when I really have to picture the feelings of energy surging through my limbs as the electricity is reconnected and the signals start working again.

Then all I do is focus. I focus on the small movements that my fingers are supposed to do… I used to play the piano, so I typically will “play” the songs just in the air in front of me. I focus on walking with even steps and the correct hip movement (the way that girls walk is really difficult to re-learn!). I focus on swinging my arms in a normal way (when you have a stroke, it is really quite obvious because of the way our arms tense up when we walk). I focus on just about every aspect of walking normally… and it is starting to work.

I am having longer and longer flashes of functionality. At first, I could only manage a few step, but today I managed to walk 5 kilometers completely normally.

In all honesty, the thought of regaining more or less complete functionality would be a dream come true for me. At the same time though, it’s terrifying. I mean, I think that I remember how to be fully functioning person… but that comes with certain expectations, and I am not entirely sure that I am up for all of them.

Yet.

I am getting there though. Every day, I work on it a little bit more. Every day, I get a tiny bit better. The goal is so close