Not screwed up enough

...Used to be called Catch-22

Imagine two groups of people on any subject. One is the group of experts who know it backward and forward. The other is the group that “doesn’t know it at all.” They’re the same people, only they’re brain injured now.

We were custodians, the dean of a college, a pre-k teacher, a former attorney, an FBI agent, a fiddler, a farmer, a food cart owner, a baker, a builder, a short-order cook. A strange mix of genius, forensics, falafels, and corporate law.

Robin forgot the names of her kids. Steve forgot his mom and dad. I couldn’t remember favorite times with my child and the sound of her voice and the scent of her hair.

Although supersonic jets are perfect for high-speed travel, you wouldn’t want one to land in your head. But this is the impact most things make on your bruised and broken brain. I mean my bruised and broken brain.

Once, someone in scrubs said something about not wanting to pressure me. That almost seemed funny. She added something like I could decide what I wanted to know, or how much I wanted to know, or when I wanted to know it. That seemed almost funny, too.

It wasn’t like the book I’d been reading had been taken out of my hands to be replaced with another. No, it was like the book I had been was ripped out of my head. What I knew and did and saw and read and cared about.

In Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Private Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. Let’s try that again. If Orr flew them, he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to, he was sane and had to.

I encountered a Catch-22 at the end of year one of Cognitive Training. The head guy (pun intended), who looked like the Wizard of Oz, said that I was both too screwed-up and not screwed-up enough to receive help. If I were more screwed up, they could do something. If I were less screwed-up, they could do something. But I wasn’t, so they couldn’t.