Hopscotch… A Jump in Life 13

*Before…

Dad comes in and to the rescue with two of those flannel sheets from the heated thing he wraps one around Mom and he does this big hug and hold thing for her like he’s squeezing her back together and she grips his forearm like she’s hanging onto him…(Sniffle-wow…) and he unfolds it and sets it on the back of my chair and the heat…oh god it feels so good and there’s this relief-care-sob that comes out and Dad gives me this big hug not a hard one but just big and he holds me a few moments before kissing the top of my head.

“Breathe Kiddo, Breathe…it’s just a test, just an arbitrary thing it’s not you. It’s not a big thing.”

Breathe and breathe…oh…I can seriously breathe now…

(Sniffle.) “Thanks Dad, Thanks for the spoons.”

*And Now…

I take a few really deep breaths after the really cool hug and I finish the test while Mom and Dad look on with the doctor. I don’t do well on the timed stuff especially with the math questions and then there’s my vocabulary too. There’s word’s that I know but I don’t know…I mean I can read a definition and have the feeling of yay I know this but I can’t connect the word to the feeling and definition.

Aphasia they’re calling it and after a bit of talking and stuff from what I get after the tests and all it’s like my brain with some things is like trying to load something and it’s there but it’s doing that whirly circle loading thingy.

The bad news is this is likely to be with me the rest of my life though there’s stuff that I can do that will help it out I guess…so there’s some kind of good news.

The other doc says that I’ll have likely lifelong issues too with my back compared to someone without what I had happen but with physio I should get a lot better.

I look at them while taking this all in. “So…I’ll never fulfill my dream of being a trapeze artist then?”

Dad has this that was funny but that wasn’t funny look…..almost a smirk on his face and Mom too though I think that she almost laughed in the way that she coughed right after I said that.

The neuro guy actually grins at me. “You’re a smart alec that’s good.”

I blink at him. “Really how so, I’d think that it might get me in trouble.”

“Likely but it’s a good sign of how well your verbal processing works.”

“Oh well I’m glad of that.”

“And…”

“And?”

“And given where you’re headed with transition and all it’ll help you deal with a lot of the stuff that you’ll likely run into.”

I look at him. “You know many Trans people?”

“Some, I work with some and then there’s always studies being done with things in the whole brain-sex issues.”

I nod. “I’ve some articles on my Live Journal that are for and some that are against the science of it.”

He nods. “It’s very divergent people are still looking at things like genetics and birth orders and then there’s the hormonal receptor make up and then there’s a whole list of outside environmental factors that are being looked at too.”

I nod….kind of in that dazed semi there way.

“I…I know that, I mean I can actually sort of remember reading all this stuff about it.”

He nods. “You’ve a vested interest; the way that your brain will do some things is it will calibrate things that have an extreme emotional reoccurring response or a rote response.”

Dad’s like… “So like how she knows she's trans and remembers that?”

He nods. “That’s part of that but there’s more to her identity than that and that’s still being explored but her knowing those feelings is based in a chemical familiarity response.”

“And like learning things like reading and writing and things Sarah had taught herself, her brain by rote about the things that she researched about her trans issues.”

And Mom’s like… “So is that how she might be able to get past some of her Aphasia?”

He nods. “Doing the things she finds challenging will help, it will help her brain actually acclimate to its new condition while doing these tasks and the human body has a very strong tendency to like to try and streamline things if possible. It’s how we treat a lot of the things that happens with stroke victims.”

We’re kind of done after that at least with the other stuff to see about how things are physically with my head and then it’s off to the psychiatrist.

The first session’s kind of long and a three parter with her Dr. Johansen talking to us about what had happened and the discovery and coming outness of myself as Sarah and the incident in the coffin of doom.

Then it’s the big thing.

She’s looking at me.

“So Sarah given what’s actually going on with you physically and your memory loss do you think that I could see your Live Journal?”

“Okay…”

I take my tablet out and I turn it on and get my LJ up and I pass it to her and she gives it a casual look over then she takes out her own laptop and turns it on and everything.

“Would you be comfortable about me being on your Live Journal’s friends list?”

“Uhm…well it’s not just me on there I mean there’s stuff on my feed that’s posted about stuff that other trans people are going through and have like gone through and stuff it’s pretty private.”

She nods. “I completely understand and I can tell that you have reservations about this too but given what’s going on and how far back this goes I’d like to have time to look through all of this and see who Sarah is exactly.”

“I need to think about it some.”

“That’s fine, now there’s some things that I need to talk to your parents about if that’s okay.”

“It kind of makes me paranoid but I guess.”

“Paranoid?”

“You’ll be talking about me right?”

“Yes and we’ll be talking about them too, there’s a lot of sides to transition and a supportive family dynamic. They have questions and I have questions for them too.”

“Okay…but see…paranoid.”
She looks at me. “Why would you be paranoid?”

“With everything I’ve heard about stuff from people about transition and therapists and gatekeeping added to my whole medical condition and stuff you’d be paranoid too.”

She takes a drink of her travel mug and she looks at me. “Well with your medical history being a real factor and your memory loss I’d have to but I honestly try to not pre-judge people on things that are integral matters of mental health.”

I purse my lips at her. “Sure speak all logical and stuff.”

She smiles. “I completely understand that you have fears and that you need to feel the way that you do right now.”

“Sure you do….”

“I actually do before I went to school for this I wasn’t exactly the picture of someone that had it together either.”

“So…you were nuts?”

“I had issues and I got through them and had enough of a good experience that it gave me then inspiration to actually go to school and really learn how to help other people.”

“You know that might not be a good endorsement right?”

“That’s up to you but most of my patients seem to like the fact that I’ve kind of been there.”

I purse my lips again. “Damned logic.” I get up and head to the waiting room with my tablet. "I’ll think about it okay?”

“Definitely okay.”

I head out to the waiting room and then I take a seat and sit there with my tablet on and looking at stuff on my Live Journal but not…it’s a really big thing that she’s asking me to do and it scares the bejesus out of me really because it’s.

Because it’s like for me right now my like’s like Pandora’s box and I’m just peeking into it and into myself…. That’s scary as heck and now there’s someone that I don’t know that is one of those people that is just scary to begin with and now she’s there wanting to peek in and look in over my shoulder at me and who I am inside.

I actually journal that last bit as a kinda sorts update and then I sent out some PM’s to the people on my friends list.

“Uhm Hey everyone this is Sarah, I’m kind of in a bind and stuff. I’ve got a psychiatrist and she sorta seems alright but it’s still scaring me and everything really bad. See she wants to see this, all of this stuff here on my LJ because it’s the only stuff of me that I have that is any record of me…I mean I don’t really have Shawn-time as me to go by as stuff that happened before in my life.”

“I think, I think I have to do this which means I’ll be friending her to my LJ page here and that there will be a Shrink and an Adult here listening in and stuff.”

“Goddamn it, that scares the shit out of me.”

“If you all need to block or unfriend me to like feel safe and all I get it, it’s really my deal and my bullshit that this is all about and stuff…no judgment from here if you need to bail.”

“But I think, I think that I need to do this.”