It is April 23rd, 2023.
You wake up in your basement being tapped by your partner and stared at by two other friends, one is laughing before being silenced by the friend next to him. You don’t understand what just happened and you don’t make an attempt to understand. All you know is your head hurts, the lights are on a dial too bright, and you want to throw up.
***
You have become abnormal,
a mutation of what you were before. Everything is in slow motion, only to you. Your eyes decided to defy you, they don’t like you anymore. Your body is disassembled, laying right in front of you like the school outfits your mom would pick while she was still fond of you.
They’re disorganized patterns, you’re disorganized. Maybe you’ve been lucid dreaming? That would make it all better right? If you could just wake up and everything could go back to the beginning of April.
Someone places a circular object against your crown. It’s soothing so you allow it to stay, deciding you had a choice in the matter. You are disoriented, or so they say. You don’t even know what that word means. Your vocabulary shoots back to one of a fourth grader. You feel like a fourth grader. Everything is too much, too overwhelming to relearn the steps of being human, too loud to be able to listen, and you are smothered in uncomfortable silence. You want to tell someone, tell them that you are still a part of society.
Other than grunts the only thing your voice can utter is “ow.”
***
You were supposed to be smart and strong. You were born in America to achieve such a goal. You’re only here to be smart and strong. What is wrong with you? Get a fucking grip. Your mother didn’t raise you to be like this.
Blurred faces scoff at you, you are no longer smart, or strong, or someone of importance. You struggle to walk, the walls hug each side of your arms. In reality you bounce from one wall to another, you are a hockey puck. “No don’t walk like that you’re going to hit-”
Wow, you can’t even listen to instructions.
What kind of Asian are you? Is this the kind of Asian your mom wanted you to be?
Your friends, dad, and partner get increasingly worried for you.Your head has an elephant perched on top as a punishment for being companionable. Why are you so sensitive? You’re not supposed to be sensitive. “You’re not hurt, and you’re not in trouble.”
Figure it out.
You refuse to go to the nurse’s office for the first three days until your partner drags you there. Your eyes are funny, you walk like you’re in a mirror maze, you’re a laughing stock to yourself; you’re a clown.
You are perfectly fine.
They hold you there, all alone, for three hours, taking away electronics and any form of communication. You have your notebook and pencil though. You write a ten page short story draft.
Finally you’re good for something.
***
“I believe you have a concussion.” A nurse tells you. You are so incredibly fucked. “You’re wrong, that’s not true,” is what you wanted to say back in protest. It’s not true it couldn’t be. That would mean you were the one at fault, that would mean you made a deprementiral mistake. They are lying, dishonest, unreliable with their accusations.They just misdiagnosed you. You feel like you have just been cursed with terminal failure.
At six pm you are released back into society for dinner, against set in discomfort you oblige to the superiors at the nurse’s office.
***
The school calls your dad, your dad calls the doctor, your doctor calls other doctors. You go to the hospital for an MRI making sure you don’t have internal brain bleeding. You could have an internal brain bleed. Doesn’t that mean death? Most likely. It’s okay, you don’t understand anything that is being told to you, it’s all white noise, it’s all unimportant. Even grabbing your father’s hand is too difficult of a task. You can’t even remember some of your friend’s names. How stupid are you? You are compared to a goldfish for your memory; a joke that used to be laughable seems more like an insult now.
***
You had impeccable memory before, right? You do remember what you were like before, right? You do understand what’s going on, right?
Your words are slurred, maybe you’re just drunk, hopefully you’re just drunk. You walk like a lost penguin, waddling to your next destination, only you don’t know where that is and you need to be mindlessly led like your dog is on walks. Maybe you are just one of those children with a leash backpack being tugged on by their impatient parents, urging them to go faster. Your brain doesn’t know how to process anymore, your eyes don’t know how to function, everything is too loud and bright, and your balance is all off. You used to be a gymnast, why can’t you balance? You used to be good at seeing the borders of the road lines to guide your dad in the winter, why can’t you see? You used to love to play music and watch headlights of oncoming traffic, what is wrong with you?
You have been diagnosed with a level two concussion. You are being sent to concussion therapy where they will restart your five senses then rewire you to be what is considered “normal” again; then, supposedly, you will be tested for long term brain damage.
***
You haven’t spoken your mother’s language since the incident. Do you still remember it? Did this shift your brain into only being American in an Asian’s body? You are truly pathetic. Nobody would have thought you to be the one in the chair of dishonor. You used to be such a great child, what happened? Your mother hasn’t spoken to you since you last visited her in March although she will write your dad texts about you being disrespectful for not reaching out. It’s not your fault, well it is. It wasn’t your fault that you didn’t reach out, blue-light makes you throw up; it is however your fault that you’ve forgotten your mother’s language.
It’s your fault that you consider it her language and not your own. Maybe all you are is a white-washed Asian girl who can only watch her childhood comfort show and nothing else. Maybe she hasn’t reached out to you because she doesn’t want to be met with your lazy brain personality instead of her perfect honors student daughter. Maybe your concussion was just a big fuck you to your mother and daughter’s relationship.
Your doctor visits have longer time in between them, and your first concussion therapist has released you from her therapeutic exercises. Now you are onto the next phase of relearning at the children’s therapy center. There you will expand your vocab, relearn how to take notes, and be taught how to recall numbers in an unorganized order.
***
Nothing has happened since,
you still struggle with the conception of time, place, and memory. Meanwhile the world had forgotten you. Your 4.0 average forgot you, your weekend friends forgot you, even your mom forgot about you. You are a shell of a person; time keeps moving on without you. Is it unfair, sure, but what would life be if it was fair? You stay in a place of disorientation. You stay in the doctor’s office, in the basement-movie-room where you had been concussed, you stay still. This is your way of coping, staying still while the boa constrictor that was wrapped around your head tightens its tail, becoming your newly idiotic crown.
This is your way of protesting the concussion.
***
All that was said before to you has been forgotten. Your life is a mystery, especially to you. Don’t question it, don’t try faking that you remember because you don’t. You are only a failure disguised as the victor. You mustn’t try to remember, it will only make the headaches stronger. You can observe every detail of the world, just know if not encapsulated in a picture or in the notes app you will forget.
Everything is slower now, calmer, you get to observe more. You’ve been granted the privilege to notice the sound cars make when you turn on a curve, and you now will notice the different colors of light: doctor office light which was a white, interrogating light, versus a warm, teacup light, that would be found in the guest bathrooms or in the writing building at your school.
Maybe your concussion is only protecting you, an excuse for your burnout, an excuse for not being a good enough Asian. Maybe it’s your turn to apologize to your mother for not meeting her expectations in a timely manner. Maybe it’s your time to be at fault, it’s time for you to slow down and be more observant. Maybe that’s your concussion’s way of apologizing to you, letting you notice small details. Maybe it’s your turn to forgive.