make the concussion comprehensive and permanent ¹

I don’t have any plans for after May 22nd. Three more months, waiting around for my life to end. I’m excited. This part of my life has been crashing for a while now. My mental health gave out over a year ago. The rest of my body has followed.

Some bacterial infections, a dental scare, months of concussions. Never a few weeks without some body failure. Mid-December, the fog was lifting, concussion fading. I was ready to find what was left of me in the new year, and make anew what was gone. I was going to try writing fiction for thingchal. I would make it to my expiration date in May and flourish beyond.

Two colds and a flu later, I was crying on the metros home. In the depths of concussion, whenever I was improving, a new flare-up would come, or I would hit my head again. I was hopeless, I would always be slammed down (probably in the head). The fragility and inability of concussion felt inescapable. I’m not concussed now, but concussion is with me: the isolation, the body refusing life, the bitterness. I sat down to write this weeks ago, outlined it. I was going to write about the impossibility of recovery, the ever-looming threat of relapse, and feeling a stranger in what had once been my life. The next day, I tested positive for COVID.

I’m still writing that, but it isn’t what it was going to be. I’m writing between and through the fatigue, now. The COVID is better, but I’m not. porpentine writes: ²

When it was really bad, I wrote: “Build the shittiest thing possible. Build out of trash because all i have is trash. Trash materials, trash bodies, trash brain syndrome. Build in the gaps between storms of chronic pain. Build inside the storms. Move a single inch and call it a victory.

I’m not there; when it was really bad I willed myself to stillness. But it resonates.

I’m writing more now, two weeks later. Two weeks of constant fatigue, of headaches, of disturbed sleep. Post-COVID symptoms bear remarkable similarity to concussion. How long will this last? If previous COVIDs are anything to go by, it should be gone now, but it isn’t. I think it’s improving, but who knows? Maybe the next malady awaits. If not my body, something else will fail. I read this morning about another step towards trans elimination in the US. How much can the heart take? Craven tools in boardrooms make their decisions with concussive force.

There is no promised future; there is no promised death. May 22nd is but another day. So even though I may be broken, I’m writing this, between the storms. What else is there to do? Concussion is with us.

Afterword

This text isn’t saying much. It was written with the little effort I could spare. That isn’t the point.