Broken Mind: a Brain Injury recovery story

The Beginning

The whole world fits into a room that has a small patch of paint chipped away from the wall. You've been staring at the flaw for as long as you can remember. You think the mark used to be shaped like a toppled birthday cake, but now you can make out Britain in the outline.

You've been staring at it for hours. Maybe two. Maybe ten. You wouldn't know the difference, anyway. Time doesn't exist, for you. You've found a fold in time's fabric, and there you remain, blanketed in peace.

With your flaw on the wall.

You hear a distant clinking of cutlery as a woman takes away your barely-touched tray of food. But you forget her almost as soon as you notice her. She says something to you, but with your attention on the flaked spot, you don't understand or remember. The flaw has all your concentration. The lethargic idea that it now resembles a grenade is your last thought before your eyes close again. All you see is blackness. And you remember nothing.

When your eyes open, the world has changed. It has a bathroom. The world is a much larger room now. It has no chipped paint on its walls. But there's a big window that shows many more shapes for you to watch in the scrapyard over the road. A little bit of world outside of this room.

It's the colour of dirt and rust. You recognise many of the shapes as car bodies—their forms solemn and twisted.

You look away. You stare at nothing.

Sometimes other people come into the world. They appear at the doorway, interrupting your blank reveries. They smile at you. They say things you don't remember. They wash you in warm swathes of water. They dress you in softness. They bring food to you, and help you eat it.

Flashes of intrigue—you like it when the people appear.

Except for one.

One of them, you associate with pain. She comes to make you hurt. She doesn't leave until you're crying. She appears every day. Always when you're alone.

She's the only thing you fear.

Your dread is new. You're thinking ahead. You're recognising this moment has a future. There isn't just Now.

You don't like it. It doesn't feel safe.

In that future moment, alone, you find solace in your bathroom. The shower's confines are safe. The bar you hold, fixed to the wall, is secure. The hot water is soothing, stroking your back before running through the holes in your chair. Pulling on the bar, you raise yourself on unsteady legs and drag a soapy washcloth across your thigh.

You are startled into stillness by the thunk of the door as it's opened. You see one of those women who sometimes appear. This one's here to wash you.

But then she doesn't. She looks at you with surprise. Then contemplation. Then she leaves.

Your heart is thumping, and you look down to see that you've hastily tried to cover yourself with your hands and your washcloth.

You're confused. Why did your hands do that? And why do you feel embarrassed? That's never happened before. At least, you don't think it has.

She must have noticed your spontaneous shame, because she leaves you to finish your shower yourself. She leaves you to wonder what just went wrong.

Your fleeting thoughts, fine gossamer threads, stop floating away into nothingness, next. Some of them find other threads, other thoughts. Then those threads begin to form a net of questions that can't hold onto answers.

Why are you here?

Why do you feel distress?

Why didn't you, before?