Learning to live with my injuries was never going to be easy; I broke my back for christ’s sake. The best way to deal with it all that I’ve found is to just crack on, and do the normal things as best you can. It’s not necessarily easy, but what in the world worth doing is ever easy?

I love music. Playing, listening, watching others create magic, all of it is fantastic. It’s another world, you can be transported wherever you want to go. So, with that in mind, clearly music is going to play a big part in my life, and is going to really aid my recovery. I briefly mentioned music in an earlier post, about Iron Maiden influencing my hallucinations. In order to get my head around this, I’ve listened more and more, and tried to own what happened.

Another way in which I can help my recovery and aid my return to normality is by playing guitar, something I’ve done on and off for 14 years. I am my no means any good, but I enjoy it. I see it as a release from reality, a simple way to meditate if you will. And today, after a rather long struggle to be able to, I managed to plug in a brand new beautiful Epiphone Les Paul (Gibson are great but I’m happy, come at me purists) and perform my medition rituals, much to the dismay of my fellow residents. I had a blast, it was so good just to play a few riffs again; I’ve not really played since well before my crash. Practically, playing in itself is good therapy. It practices fine motor skills, allows relaxation and, as anyone who’s played one of these guitars can vouch for, is good weight training for the neck.

Overall, despite only being able to sit and play for a short while as I had to get back to bed and off my baboon arse (see previous post) I feel great. This period in my life is always going to be up and down, and thankfully the ups far outweigh the downs.