20 years Wow!

I don't know, it has always seemed to me that whenever a dramatic event in your life hits its 20th "birthday or anniversary" it automatically feels that much further away. But this is a very strange correlation that feel like they should be opposing forces. In some ways, it feels like a lifetime ago, but in other ways, it can feel like it just happened yesterday. Something as simple as smelling croissants from Panera (wish it was still Au Bon Pain but I digress; ok back to the blog) or feeling the blow of air from the preop day surgery suite on the way to the RAB can bring me back in a second even though I'm somewhere else.

I feel like there was a Kimi pre stroke and a Kimi post stroke. If you had asked me back then whether those two versions could ever coexist and/or intertwine, I would have laughed. Absolutely not. They were stark opposites in almost every way. Before, I was absolutely OBSESSED with my handwriting, what time I woke up in the morning, literally everything that went on in my life that I could control, I was obsessed with making it as perfect as I could. My handwriting had to be perfect—so perfect that I’d rewrite entire notebooks if it didn’t meet my standards. Test scores mattered way more than they should have. I would even obsess about what time I woke up in the morning. 

Now? My handwriting is barely legible—just chicken scratch, and there’s no fixing it. I’ve failed tests and I avoid early mornings like the plague, if I can. On the weekends obvi. Everything I once believed I had complete control over slipped just out of reach—not entirely gone, but close enough to feel like it was teasing me. Like I could almost grab it… but never quite hold on. Then something even stranger happened. Everything that once meant literally everything to me… suddenly didn’t. Not in a dramatic, overnight way—but still abrupt, almost imperceptibly. I could not figure out why. It felt like I had become someone else entirely. Honestly, if you had met me before and met me now, you’d probably think you were looking at two completely different people. And for a while… I thought that too.

And maybe the biggest shift wasn’t what I lost at first—it was what I believed. I used to think there was always something you could do to fix things. Always a second move, a correction, a way to regain control. After the stroke, that belief cracked, no it shattered. For a long time, it felt like my choices weren’t really mine anymore—that they had already been decided by what I could and couldn’t do.

 But somewhere along the way, something softened. I still try—of course—but I’ve learned how to stop at “I did my best” without tearing it to pieces afterward. I don’t pick myself apart the way I used to. I don’t replay every moment looking for flaws. That kind of perfection isn’t just impossible—it’s exhausting. So maybe I needed to have a stroke (that's dramatic but you know what I mean) to learn that things don't have to be perfect all the time; and that my life didn't have to be so rigid.

Twenty years is a long time. Long enough that the “Kimi pre stroke” version of me feels distant, almost unfamiliar. I don’t long for her in the same way that I used to. There was a time when she was all I could think about—when my only goal was to get back to who I had been. But chasing her started to feel like watching someone through the back window of a car as it drives away. Smaller and smaller, farther and farther, until one day, she’s just… gone. And there’s a particular kind of grief in that—mourning a version of your life while you’re still here trying to live it.

Sometimes it sneaks up on me. A song I haven’t heard since before the stroke will come on, and for a split second, I’m 17 again. I’m in that exact headspace, for that exact moment. You’d think it would feel warm, like coming home. But it doesn’t. It’s colder than I expect—familiar, but distant. And just when I start to lean into it, to try to understand it or hold onto it a little longer… it's gone, just like that, just as quickly as it came, it's gone.

This reminds me of a homily I once heard at church—one that has stayed with me in a way I didn’t fully understand at the time. It was about a small cup sitting in a gift shop, surrounded by mirrors. The shop owner had placed the mirrors there so the cup could reflect on itself, could see just how beautiful it had become. One day, a woman walked in, noticed the cup, and said, “I want to buy this—it’s beautiful.” And the cup answered her. It said, “I wasn’t always this beautiful. I started as a shapeless, brown lump of clay. Then the man put me on a wheel and began to spin me. Faster and faster until I was so dizzy, I thought I would fall apart. I cried out, ‘Stop! Please, stop!" But he only said, "Not yet—you’re not finished." When the spinning stopped, I thought the worst was over. But then he put me into an oven—so hot I was sure I would melt. Again, I screamed, "Stop!" And again, he said, "Not yet. Just wait." When he took me out, I thought surely that was the end. But he wasn’t done. He painted me—layered me in color I couldn’t yet understand, it tasted awful, but he kept layering it on, coat after coat—and then… he put me back into the oven. Even hotter this time. I cried out louder than before, certain I couldn’t survive it. "Stop! I can’t take any more!" And still, he said, "Just wait. You’ll see." When it was finally over, he took me out and placed me here, surrounded by mirrors… so I could see what I had become; I couldn't even recognize myself, I was so beautiful, but looked nothing like I did before.”

The cup paused, and then said, “Sometimes you have to go through pain—through heat, through pressure, through moments where you are certain you will break—before you can become something beautiful. But look at me now.” And honestly… I feel that. Because there were so many moments where I thought, this has to be it. This has to be the part where it stops—where I’ve reached my limit. But it didn’t. It kept going. I didn’t understand why. But now, looking back—even with everything I’ve lost, everything that changed—I wouldn’t give up the person I’ve become. Not for anything. Even if it meant going through it all again… even if it meant the pain was ten times worse. Because somehow, through all of it, I became someone I never would have been otherwise. To be honest, even though I said I would go through everything again, there’s a truth that sits quietly underneath that. And that is, do I say that because I know that could never happen? Perhaps, but what I've learned is profound, so maybe not. 

A stroke survivor’s world is heavy, and the survivors' guilt is so incredibly real!  Even for people I had never met before—people I didn’t even know existed. Lives that have never crossed mine. There’s something humbling in that… the unspoken awareness that I’m still here. That I get to keep going. When there are others who didn’t get that chance. Just that fact alone changes you. I see snapshots of other survivors' lives in Facebook groups, and it makes me so thankful that my limitations now are as minimal as they are, even if I didn't think so. 

It softens something. It deepens something. It makes you hold life a little differently. It’s quiet, in a way that’s hard to explain. It’s a place where your sense of identity feels shaken, where confidence doesn’t shatter all at once—but slowly dissolves. The world keeps moving as if nothing has changed, but inside, everything has. You look the same to everyone else. But within you, there’s this invisible fracture—one that reshapes everything. Every breath. Every step. Every thought. It’s hard. But over time, you adjust. Not all at once, not perfectly—but little by little. You start to remember that there was a “before.” The Kimi before the stroke. You don’t remember everything—just fragments, small flashes instead of full memories. Somehow, without even realizing it, you begin weaving those fragments of who you were into who you are now. What you create… is something new. Something different. Something, in its own way, more beautiful than you ever could have imagined. Sometimes I think—if my stroke could become something tangible, something I could sit across from and speak to—I would say this: I forgive you. You chose me because you knew I would be the one—the only one—who might eventually learn to carry you. Not easily, not willingly at first, but fully. Because most people would only hate you. And I understand why. But even with all the guarded hatred, all the tears, I can say, "I forgive you." You’ve taken so much from me. Half my body. Pieces of my mind. The life I thought I would live. But you will never take my spirit. I forgive you for taking my ability to walk, to speak the way I once did—for forcing me to rebuild a life I never asked to lose. But… I also have to thank you. Because of you, I found a strength I didn’t know existed. Because of you, I met people I never would have met, built connections I never would have known to look for. Even though part of me wants to hate you—wants to hold onto that anger with everything I have—I can’t. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be. They say time heals...But it doesn't. It just teaches you how to survive it.