Through maturity and growing up, we learn everything there is to know about ourselves, ready to embark on new relationships.
We learn about our likes and dislikes, what irritates us, what makes us happy and what makes us sad, what makes us, us. We become independent thinkers, and ready for the challenge a new relationship brings. Having grown, we’re comfortable with the concept and the challenge of moving on.
Having my specific brain damage, meant I didn’t have access to the usual emotional thought patterns and ability to grow. It would go on to take some 25 years to learn about myself for the first time, and how I function.
It would also take me the same amount of time to learn about myself in my relationships and that hasn't been easy. Waking up for the first time to a diagnosis, but not knowing anything about it, I am having to learn everything from scratch, including my neurological symptoms and how those symptoms play out in my life: not easy.
Going into any relationship and not knowing things about yourself means you end up growing in the relationship and thinking differently, as you find out new things about yourself. Years on and I am not the same person. My ideals and aspirations have changed with a different thinking from me.
I’m now not only older and more informed, coming through those late experiences, but I’m also emotionally and spiritually different and that has changed me. I now have less tolerance and patience for the petty stuff.
You did a little more than just live your life Ilana, you explored it. Always searching for facts not fiction, light not dark. You were starved for the truth and you didn't stop until your life looked very different.
That's growth, but it's also audacious, the way you went about studying your challenges; I witnessed it, very up-close.
Thanks Tim. I'm pleased you have witnessed my journey close up.
It's a journey I decided to take, primarily because it helps me get my thoughts and experiences out into the open in a way that brings understanding on my life and experiences and I felt that needed to happen.
Those thoughts also allow others to explore their own lives and experiences, so that they too can challenge their own perceptions on what they deal with. Unless these things are pointed out to us, it's not something we always see for ourselves.
We all grow up at different stages in out lives, to varying degrees. What is unique about your experience is that you lived in ignorance of the real you. But you have since more than made up for those times, a thousand times over.
And keeping you in the dark about your Cerebral Palsy has actually led you to the place you are at now and that, ironically was the best thing they did.
Thank you. I would have still been in the same place emotionally had I not been strong enough to work through my ignorance on the not knowing.
My strength of character and inner thoughts carried me through those dark times. I always believed and never stopped believing that one day I would get to find out.
I didn't think about my writing or the diary at that point. It was just important I know. Both of those things have now put my life back in order and I feel more settled because of it.