Living with Brain Injury: Narrative, Community, and Women’s Renegotiation of Identity

3. Oneself as Another

82 > 83 place in communities and in a reauthoring of metaphysical meanings of self and world. It is in recovery and rehabilitation that one “meets” the post-injury self and in that meeting one also “meets” the pre-injury self on new terms and from a new position. But because it clings to the acute medical phase, the “rehabilitation regimen becomes little more than a return to the site of the wound that disability has become” (Snyder and Mitchell, 2006, 8). A central challenge for learning how to live with brain injury and making the transition from rehab to living, then, is overcoming the division from oneself: working out how and when to stop fighting one’s body and brain, disdaining one’s “new self,” and leaving the “site of the wound” and nostalgia for prior functionality. One is confronted with a different self, especially early in recovery when deficits are new and/or most pronounced. This is also the time when important others are responding to the changes, amplifying the effects of difference. There may be contradictory information (and wishes) about how much one will “get back.” Tracy was only six months post-injury at the time of our interview. She was aware of deficits and changes but still anticipating a complete or nearly complete recovery. But the major topic of discussion with Tracy was her relationships with her friends—and her “not so much” friends—at school. She has had some difficulty with her judgment, particularly in relation to social perceptions and the extent to which she may be misreading other people, or whether other people have themselves been behaving differently toward her. These discussions also involved questions about how Tracy might or might not be a different person after her accident: Tracy: Um, I’ve changed, like I said. I’m a lot easier going and I’m a little more cautious about some things. And, um, I don’t get out as much. And they said my old person, my old personality is not exactly what it used to be. So they said it might be a year, two or three years before I’m back to my old self. And, so, I used to get really hyper a lot of the time, constantly smiling and that kind of thing. Now I notice that I hardly ever smile, like only occasionally will I catch myself smiling or laughing, and I remember how I used to do that all the time. Tracy is aware of changes in her “old personality” resulting from the injuries, and she does give them some thought in relation to 84 > 85 his injury when he got up to tie his shoes, he was always reminded of how he used to tie his shoes, you know, prior to the injury. And it was just this constant nagging feeling that he had this self or this way of life, um, that existed before this event. But, what he said to me is: “Then one day, one day! [laughing] it occurred to him that he wasn’t thinking about the way he used to tie his shoes—the old way, anymore?—and that this is just the way he tied his shoes. The pre-injured self then remains, for Cindy and for others like Joe, a salient, haunting presence during and beyond rehabilitation. The difference is experienced—and reconciled—in the details of everyday life like tying shoes—or deciding not to. A key point for Cindy was when she had her son (and had to fight for accessible OB/GYN services): Cindy: I mean, you try to kind of achieve things post-injury that you maybe wouldn’t have thought about pre-injury. And once you start building these new experiences for yourself—and they’re not necessarily dissociated from your pre-injured life—but they’re, they’re, you know, they’re age-appropriate, like having a baby. I got married and had a baby, and I had never had a baby before in my life. And this was all within the context of being disabled. I mean it’s like such a major thing that after a while the injury itself recedes to the background . It gets to a point where it’s not like the injury, even though it’s been this massive thing. I mean you just get so caught up with living. [Laughs] Like getting involved in...