The notebook

...a dispatch from bewilderness

For a few years post-accident, I was still expecting me to walk down the stairs and walk up the stairs and keep doing what I’d been doing before. Which was freelance writing in order to pay the bills.

But some of anything I knew dropped out of anything I was trying to say as I was trying to say it. And some of anything I knew dropped out of anything I tried to do as I tried to do it.

I turned to myself to see if I had any answers. The answer was no. There were other problems, too. For example, I had a perceptual distortion known as “flat time,” which means I could not “decipher sequence or distinguish time and place.”

I was assigned three sessions with a neuropsychologist in case I suffered trauma along with my traumatic brain injury. I thought that was why it was called traumatic brain injury.

The boundaries between “able” and “disabled” are fluid, not fixed. Sometimes I’m able, sometimes I’m not. When I’m not able, I swing from the state of “all systems go” to the state of “all systems gone.”

You know the line about peace that surpasseth understanding? Any piece I had — of anything at all — surpasseth understanding, as did any peace.

Meanwhile, back in brain training, the leader gave me a notebook and called it my new best friend. My best friend was red. My second new best friend arrived when my first one was filled. Best friends had covers and told us stuff we used to know.

The notebooks said I had a whole brain training team. They said it was “professional, coordinated and always available.” I guess they meant except when it wasn’t, which was most of the time.

They said the brain training team could “help you deal with your brain and your doctors.” It said it could also “help you get ready to do something,” which is Very Important because “you can’t do anything until you get ready to do it.”

Meanwhile, the leader said things like if someone asked how your day was, you should say, “I have to get my notebook.” The idea was that if you could both find the notebook and find the right page in it, you could say how your day was.

It didn’t tell us other things, though, like if someone asks, “How long have you been feeling this way?,” they mean, “What the eff is the matter with you?”