Non-Traumatic Brain Injury (?)

from Brain Damaged News

I can only recall so many things at any one time. Sort of like only so much can fit in a box. The things I saw in my life, the things I knew, don’t fit in the box.

A repurposed object is something that acquires amnesia and forgets what it did before. A “repurposed” human reconfigures any shards she can find of anything she ever knew, like she always just missed a step or a train or a decade.

Meanwhile, “neurological events” that feel like brain tsunamis make me feel like I am both drowning and tearing apart. Words shuffle, scuffle, blow apart, so a crazy mix of clips from my first and second life land in my current brain.  They were repurposed, too.  I lost what I loved, learned, earned, shared, and cared most about.  I lost who I thought I was.

At the beginning, I couldn’t remember the accident. Weeks later, I notice the Acura logo from the compacted car engraved on my chest just below my collarbone. I either…

Painting and collage by Judith Hannah Weiss

never noticed it before or never thought it strange to see the logo of a crushed car branded on my chest. By then, swelling in the skull had increased, which meant I was better in the first weeks and months than I might ever be again.

I must rebuild cells and tissue, rebuild connections between cells, rebuild memory, thoughts, imagination, rebuild the basics of language, the basics of movement, and the basics of balance so I don’t fly down steps or slam into walls.

At the time of the accident, the aftermath of most head injuries was, “You bumped your head. No big deal.” The impact on brains and lives had as yet made little impact on doctors. First, we just had a bump on the head. Then we just had headaches. Then we just had a “TBI.” I didn’t know what a TBI was. Neither did just about anyone else. Traumatic brain injury. As opposed to what, the non-traumatic kind?