Hit Over The Head
When at age 45, Carol hits her head on a shelf, she loses her mental agility and gains a surprising appreciation for purple.
When at age 45, Carol hits her head on a shelf, she loses her mental agility and gains a surprising appreciation for purple.
Carol hits her head on a shelf in 1991 California, and doctors assume her difficulties with talking, walking, and thinking stem from emotional problems. While waiting for the correct diagnoses–mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) and fibromyalgia–she loses her job, her friends, and her family.
Over the years, she draws a simple aster on whiteboards in doctor’s offices and clinics, as if say “I am. I exist. I am of this world.”
Finally understanding that she is sick and injured, Carol finds peace and a supportive community in Chatham County, North Carolina.
Hit Over the Head:
A Cautionary Tale
Carol’s completed memoir has the working title Hit Over The Head: A Cautionary Tale. The manuscript (77,300 words; with endnotes, 81,000) is represented by Tracy Crow Literary Agency (tracycrow.com).
Tracy can be reached at
tracycrowliteraryagency@gmail.com
Carol hits her head on a shelf in 1991 California, and doctors assume her difficulties with talking, walking, and thinking stem from emotional problems. While waiting for the correct diagnoses–mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) and fibromyalgia–she loses her job, her friends, and her family.
Over the years, she draws a simple aster on whiteboards in doctor’s offices and clinics, as if say “I am. I exist. I am of this world.”
Finally understanding that she is sick and injured, Carol finds peace and a supportive community in Chatham County, North Carolina.
Hit Over the Head:
A Cautionary Tale
Carol’s completed memoir has the working title Hit Over The Head: A Cautionary Tale. The manuscript (77,300 words; with endnotes, 81,000) is represented by Tracy Crow Literary Agency (tracycrow.com).
Tracy can be reached at
tracycrowliteraryagency@gmail.com
Carol hits her head on a shelf in 1991 California, and doctors assume her difficulties with talking, walking, and thinking stem from emotional problems. While waiting for the correct diagnoses–mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) and fibromyalgia–she loses her job, her friends, and her family.
Over the years, she draws a simple aster on whiteboards in doctor’s offices and clinics, as if say “I am. I exist. I am of this world.”
Finally understanding that she is sick and injured, Carol finds peace and a supportive community in Chatham County, North Carolina.
Hit Over the Head:
A Cautionary Tale
Carol’s completed memoir has the working title Hit Over The Head: A Cautionary Tale. The manuscript (77,300 words; with endnotes, 81,000) is represented by Tracy Crow Literary Agency (tracycrow.com).
Tracy can be reached at tracycrowliteraryagency@gmail.com
Excerpts
The exhaustion I felt, and still feel on occasion, is hard to explain. I wasn’t sleepy. I napped little during the day. What I did was nothing. I looked out the window at the stillness, watching an occasional bird go by and the even less occasional car. I watched the breeze play with the leaves of privet lining the side of the yard and the shadows move across the terraces: I was in a perfect state of mindfulness, of being in the moment. Nothing distracted me. I made no observations. I had no thoughts that I remember. I sat and watched, and if I saw something I let it pass. That was the most I could do after the exertion of the morning.
Sometimes I would become so quiet that I would stop breathing. Literally. I would be looking out the window or perhaps resting from the view, and feel my chest tighten in that unmistakable way chests do when lungs are running out of oxygen. I understood slowly that I was not breathing and needed to take a breath. I would do so and then exhale, and oh so consciously pull more air into my lungs and push the air out, again and again until I felt the autonomic nervous system take hold. Then, I would monitor my breathing until I felt confident my breathing would not quit on me.
Tired, but content, I looked out the window.
I don’t know when I first found solace at the sea’s edge. Perhaps early in life. I’ve been told that I learned to swim before I could walk. Probably an exaggeration.
But I have always gone to the sea, whether in actuality or remembrance, for peace, solace, or strength, depending on my needs at the time. I attended college in Portland, Oregon, eighty miles from the sea. For the years before I had a car and drove to the coast regularly, I took to walking around the college. Long walks on tree-lined streets in nearby neighborhoods, mostly at night and usually in the rain. It always rained in Oregon, a fine drizzle really, which dampened but seldom drenched. Sometimes I saw the landscape only in shades of grey. Not necessarily fifty, but distinctive variations, nonetheless.
On my nocturnal wanderings, I enjoyed the quiet and would often talk to the trees. (Yes, I was one of those folks.) Soon the trees spoke back to me, not words of wisdom, but an acknowledgment, an acceptance, of my existence: that we were alive and shared a life force present in all living beings, animals and plants, sentient or not.
I have met others with mild head injuries, and always the story is the same. Disbelief of the injury by everyone involved; being thought crazy by others; believing they might be right; exhaustion; insurance companies looking for excuses.
We share this profound sense of being misunderstood with others who have invisible disabilities, such as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, lupus, and Lyme disease. Without braces or bandages, canes, or wheelchairs, even those closest to us don’t see that we are injured, or that we are sick. That it isn’t just a matter of building up stamina or getting over “it”. That our defects are real and substantial. We are not goldbricking or inconsiderate. We aren’t selfish or lazy.
At the same time, we with invisible disabilities too often despair over not being able to do more for ourselves, more for others. We fight resentment of being viewed so wrongly, and some are swallowed up in bitterness. We are as sick of ourselves as others seem to be. We recognize that a proven way out of self-absorption is by helping others, but we just don’t seem to have the ability to do so in any meaningful way. That inability too often prevents us from recognizing what aid and comfort we can and do provide. It seems so pitifully little in comparison to what we used to do, what we want to do. And, what others expect us to do.