Have you ever had your car broken into? Or your house? There’s this sense that this space is not entirely your own anymore.

Worse, have you ever been touched by someone you didn’t want touching you? Have you ever been raped?

Now imagine that, but it’s your brain.

Waking up from anesthesia with a brain injury is like having your brain invaded. Someone rifled through the glove compartment of my mind. Someone squeezed the ass of my cerebellum on a crowded train. Someone didn’t want to stop at heavy petting and now my amygdala is feeling used and dirty.

Lately I’ve been having these weird tremors in my spine and the backs of my thighs– they don’t hurt. They don’t really do anything. Just shake shake shake for about 60 seconds. Like being on a vibrating bed. A 5.0 on the Richter scale but only for a square foot of my body. And then it stops.

Sometimes my hands work like those claw machines in the foyers of shitty restaurants. When part of my job was to open incoming mail, it was a challenge to get letters out of envelopes and unfolded. It took a lot of focus to do. I could do it, but concentrating so hard on each and every one meant that after 25 or 50 letters I was so spent that I could barely walk. And every day was like this.

My vision goes blurry. Sometimes it doubles. I have migraines almost all the time. I suffer from terrible insomnia and only one pill treats it effectively, but the side effects are worsening to the point that it is absolutely not worth taking anymore. I am terrified of not sleeping, but I’m not really sleeping anymore anyway.

I am in pain all the time. I am dizzy all the time. There are so many things wrong that if I tried to explain all of the things that are wrong you would think I was making shit up. My life is, in many ways, hell.

When I tell you that this injury ruined my life, I am not lying. Could things be worse? Absolutely. I know that I am very, very lucky that my injury was not worse. I work in government social services. I have had many opportunities to interact with people whose brain injuries were far more devastating than my own.

I am still employed, although that was really fucking touch-and-go for awhile. I am still married, but my marriage is under some serious strain. The cats are fine. I am not currently bleeding from the eyeballs. I am getting along with my parents. I am loved. I have friends. Shit could be worse.

But I didn’t know humans could be this tired, this stressed, this close to falling apart for so long, and not just scream and scream and scream until they had no voice left.

I have learned how strong I am, yes, but no one should have to be this strong.

I know about the holocaust, I know about Cambodia and Russia under Stalin and the American slave trade and the fucking Crusades, and man’s inhumanity to man. I know about comfort women in Japan and Ed Gein’s human lampshades and what Ted Bundy did to those poor women in Florida and Colorado and Utah and Washington. I know about the clients I’ve served here in Oregon and the horrific abuse they suffered that brought them to the attention of the government services I worked for. I know I am very lucky to have the support I have.

But I also know that my brain chemistry was already fucked up enough before this injury happened to me, that I was already in physical pain before this happened to me, that I had already fought hard enough before this happened to me, and that I didn’t deserve what happened to me.

I am an optimist. I have always been an optimist, I think. It is really hard to keep being an optimist after all of this. I continue to take my medication– so much fucking medication these days. My husband, bless him, has so many suggestions for things I should try to do to feel better– walk around the block! Enjoy the weather in the back yard! Drink more water! Cardio! And I just want to lob things at his noggin. Sure, those things could help. But in the face of all this hopelessness, it just sounds so pointless.

Today I’m trying caffeine. I have a bunch of caffeinated tea and also some Mtn Dew I stocked up on because at least it’ll keep me from falling asleep on the job. Looks like it’s sunny outside so maybe I’ll go squint with disapproval at the backyard on my lunch in a few minutes. T will approve.