Reentering Life After the Hiatus

The anxiety created chaos and confusion. Like waking up in my own dream where I am detached from my own body, thoughts, and feelings.

I am misaligned with my surroundings, and I am in a state of confusion. A single lone molecule permanently suspended in the vacuum. People and objects around me feel unreal, they all looked disproportionately wrong.

Time passes slowly in this delirium with daily life become monumentally hard. I had trouble reading and writing. Permanently searching for words and spellings that don’t make sense because letters and words are all jumbled up.

My thoughts are like ropes tangled up in a messy knot being unable to find the beginning or the end of it. A very tight knot. When I try to write, my thoughts just do not translate well in written form.

I’ve taken up huge chunks of time just to come up with a sentence, even at the time of writing this. And forget about those indecipherable scrawls that I hand wrote. Pity my doctor and counselor for putting up with me. I wondered how they figured out what I wrote in my journal.

Everything seemed so difficult…

More often than not, day to day basic activities appears to be insurmountable. My limbs feeling heavy and unable to move. It lasted for hours or more at times and I would spend days lying in the bed.

This feeling is more intense than any normal level of tiredness when breathing alone could deplete the last bits of energy left.

I observed that there’s a small window of time that things are less intense with a little sense of normalcy. Taking full advantage of it no matter how little time it lasts; I would try to cram in with whatever I could.

Catching up with neglected housework and self-care. Even in sickness, I loathed looking sick on the outside. I still want to look pretty. I learned to color and cut my hair with not-so-ideal outcomes but at least it is taken care of. I taught myself doing some manicures though it took me weeks to complete the entire set of gel nails but it is worth the try.

One is the reason for difficulties in daily life is my motor skills problem especially with my serious hand tremor, rendering all my previous manual dexterity related skills and experiences useless now.

I’m unable to perform any aesthetic procedures professionally anymore. It crushed me inside out, emotionally and financially.

Art therapy did help in providing some relief and the same time to gain some dexterity in my hands. There are times that they seem to have a mind of their own rebelling against me like they don’t belong to me. Whenever I try to focus, my hand decides to mess up everything. There will be paints across all surfaces.

So I started to paint with the smallest brush I could find, dot by dot and bit by bit. It’s a long process but the satisfaction is worthwhile.

On better days, I could even manage to hop on the rower for some workout. Although this is nothing much compared to the old days, I still considered it an achievement. Whatever that rows my boat, literally.

I have come to the term that things will never be the same again. I have accepted my handicaps and learn to work around them. Rehabilitation for people like me is not easy but it’s the journey that matters with minor bits of achievement along the way.

By hacking my way around my condition, I believe that I’m one step closer to reentering a semi-functional existence finding equilibrium at my own pace.

My life has been on hiatus for far too long.

©Emika Oka

Thank you for reading this.

Your support holds immense significance for a disabled neurodivergent. Your kindness is greatly appreciated.