Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

It’s like your mind is a library, and all of your memories are books. Someone has come in and stolen a bunch of the words from the books. You are reading along and then – Blank. Something is just gone. A memory – an event that you know happened and you know that you should know the details – is gone.

Only that someone did something to the new words you are writing, too. So that you look at the book titled “Last Week” and it’s got moss growing on the pages and mold in the bindings and the words look like they’re at the bottom of a lake. If you focus reaaallly hard or if they are written in Big Letters, you can read them. Otherwise the words are as good as gone.

The library used to be a nice place. Now it’s really drafty and way too bright and way too loud. I have no idea how I used to exist in the word with all this goddamn noise and so many things to look at. It’s maddening. Like all of the input is just banging away at my senses and my consciousness. I took the bus the other day and it was torture. It made my entire body physically hurt. I used to like taking the bus.

Conversations are hard. I can’t remember the right word very often. I get totally exhausted from doing nothing at all. I wake up tired. I am weepy. I’m frustrated. I don’t like this.

I’m in constant pain. The whiplash is getting slowly better – sure, my muscles are still hard as rocks from my neck right down to my elbows and hips, respectively, and my whole body is sore – but it’s still getting better. The headaches are another story. I wake up with a headache and it gets progressively worse throughout the day no matter what I do. Some days it gets so bad that I am nauseous and my vision is blurry from the pain.

I spend the majority of my time sitting in the dark doing absolutely nothing. It’s called Brain Rest. It doesn’t seem to be helping. I’m still totally exhausted after I do it. Sometimes I nap during brain rest. Mostly not – I can’t sleep. I’m exhausted and I have insomnia. Lolz.

Enough complaining I guess. Silver lining: at least I am going to get an insurance settlement, and my dad helpfully pointed out that investing it wisely now could cover up to 1/3 of the money I will need to retire! He is a thinker.