My weekly yoga class meets in one of the biggest physical rehab places in Minnesota. It seems that everyone with a disability who even lives remotely close to it has gone there at least once in their life. That’s because they do it all – sports, rehab, classes, stuff for kids. You name it, they have it. And I was a live-in resident (I lived there for 8 months learning independent living skills) back in 1998.
In 1998, I had just graduated from high school. I was green behind the ears and still not sure about how I was going to live as a paralyzed individual (I was 5 years post-injury at that point). I was dropped off by my parents and bawled after they left. Needless to say, it was a wacky 8 months. Simultaneously – it was the hardest self-growth process you can imagine, seasoned with hijinks and new friends.
And despite it being great for me, I would never want to relive those 8 months again. The process of finding the inner-strength to not be scared the first time you leave home, to not feel totally at a loss with your permanent paralysis, to learn that happiness can still be found; all of this is NOT easy to do (understatement of the year). And now, going back for yoga each week, rolling the same halls I used to as a 19 year old girl, all the memories are flooding back. Just the other night, my memory of chasing Steff, the most amazing bad girl paraplegic you can imagine who became my best friend (and passed away in 2005), hit me pretty hard.
It’s like going back to your old high school after years of being away. You feel old, like an alien. And since I’m paranoid, I take it even further and feel like I’m regressing somehow by being back (which is really stupid). I feel like I should’ve moved on by this point and think I should be far, far away (both physically and mentally). Maybe somewhere exotic, doing something amazing, with no thought of this sad place.
“…it was the hardest self-growth process you can imagine, seasoned with hijinks and new friends.” 
I feel awful feeling this way. This great rehab facility brought real tangible hope into my quadriplegic-life for the very first time. And now, yoga is doing the same thing for me. While learning adapted yoga definitely isn’t as hard as the life lessons I learned back in ‘98, I find it uncanny they’re occurring at the same place. I would’ve thought by age 31 I would rarely be returning, that I’d be married with kids, living somewhere warm all year and definitely no where close to returning to it’s confines on a weekly basis.
Since I love yoga, I WILL make this work. This is a strange dilemma to be sure, but I figure this is another life lesson I must tackle. And I’ve gotten pretty good at tackling things if I do say so myself. Yoga is always worth it, even if it calls for fancy shoulder pads and a steely veneer.
Have you returned to your rehab? What memories do you have of rehab past?
Photo courtesy of Matt Dempsey
Great story Tiff, I love reading your stuff.
Thank you Mark! It’s nice reading things we can relate to, isn’t it?
Yeah, it’s interesting how despite trying to treat visiting a former rehab facility as “no big deal” those buried, retrospective thoughts and feelings involuntarily surface. A few years after going home after rehab I had a kidney renal scan at the local hospital where I did my initial post-SCI rehab, and then had to go up to my old rehab floor for the first time since leaving to get a prescription renewal from my old rehab team doc. In general, I was pretty indifferent going back for all that until we ended up going down a certain hallway and taking a path that was almost exactly the one I remembered taking in rehab once to practice using my triceps more to push me in my wheelchair. Out of nowhere it got pretty intense as a lot of unexpected, related memories quickly flooded my brain. Then a few years ago in a frustrated moment while studying for the MN bar exam I ran my hands across my face, as people tend to do when they are really fed up, and the combination of smells on my hands and gloves gave me an instant, vivid flashback to how a skyway that connected the two rehab buildings at Craig Hospital in Denver, CO smelled. Not only that, but for a second it put me back there POV style wheeling myself across. It was crazy. But along those same unexpectedly intense lines as the example above. Those were trying times things for those of us who have gone through them and it’s not stupid for having certain thoughts and feelings that those return visits invoke because on various levels they will always be there. I also ultimately find those instances cathartic in the sense that it truly shows how far I have come since.