My Ground Hog’s Day Spectacular…with 50 First Dates!

Have you ever felt like you are trapped in the same day – everyday and that there is no escaping it?  I have. It is not always the same day everyday…most of it is the same—just small variations make adjustments of the outcome.

If you have every watched Bill Murray in “Ground Hog’s Day”, you may have been amused…even laughed a couple times or through the entire movie. I wish that it were that simple to laugh about.

*DEEP BREATH*

For those of you who are not familiar with my life, let me explain to you that my husband was injured three years ago in a construction accident. He was hit in the head (while wearing a hard hat – thank goodness!) with a 9 foot steel beam that fell 12 feet.

They diagnosed him with TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury). He suffers from continuous pain that is sort of like a migraine, short term memory issues, behavior issues, and blanks out to where he sort of spaces out and walks around and ends up in places that he does not remember going. This has resulted in him not being able to hold a job or drive. Plus they just told us this is all permanent and he is unfixable.

So when I say Ground Hog’s Day that relates to his short term memory. If you have ever watched “50 First Dates” with Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler…then understand that he is my Drew. Once he goes to bed, the slate wipes clean and we start over. He is supposed to keep a journal so that he knows what happened, but doesn’t always do that. So for those of you who have had a marital spat…try having the same one three days in a row because your husband forgot that you told him something or forgot that you already had that fight.

Things have been hard on us for awhile now with this work related injury alone…but I must keep going because we have five children. Two are his, two are mine and one if ours together. His daughter lives with her mother and the other four live with us. Well that was up until two months ago. My 16 year old daughter moved out and moved in with her father because she couldn’t be in the same house with my husband’s behavior issues or lack of good behavior. This broke my heart but I am dealing thinking that the medications that they are giving my husband will eventually help him and we will get him in a good place. In the mean time…I miss my daughter terribly.

One minute he is supportive of my writing, the next he is tearing the internet satellite out of the ground with the tractor…so for those of you that I was beta reading for—it is not that I was trying to slack—I love the work you are doing and it is all brilliant and hope that you send me more. I just had to start trying to squeeze things in on my lunch hours and at breaks at work. I even got an iPhone with internet…

I can come home and if he is bored from staying home he will rip a room apart to be remodeled and then I am stuck with cleaning up a mess and spending all of my free time redoing a room. So he is a box of chocolates because you never know what you are going to get when you go home. He could be nice, sweet, loveable, bitter, jealous, rude…basically my own Jekyll and Hyde.  So if there are any of you out there that have a loved one that is suffering with a traumatic brain injury, you are not alone. I know how you feel and may know what you go through.

So when I say I am muddling through…that is what I am trying to do. So tell me my wonderful faithfuls that keep me motivated and that I adore very much…have you ever had anything that you would call your groundhog’s day or even have the same dream over and over again?

Of course you know this is why I have so many raw emotions to use in my writing and so many ideas. Writing is my escape and it has saved me more times than I can count. It keeps me sane.