...holding back words and tears

...And I want to lash out again. I want to punch garbage cans. I am angry.
....
....and I am scared.
encephalomalacia

is the word running through my head.

and others...

that did not surprise me.

But I suppose I had hoped.

I had hoped that maybe it really was nothing going on with my head

I had hoped that maybe it was just a transference thing that made such a mess of me. Simply that and they were right, it was just me making a big deal out of nothing. 

But then, if nothing had showed and eeg told, then myself I would have loathed

more than I already did. 

So I have the evidence I was hiding from and even trying to hide. Hoping that hiding would make it disappear. Fake it until you make it.

The shaking in my hand. I asked about it then hid it. and allowed it to be brushed off...

I seemed better than I was because I had been through this before

and I did not want to face myself the reality of my injuries. 

My head knew what to do, how to access, and how to stay awake. My body knew how not loose consciousness this time, or at least wake up quick. And my body knew how to not be throwing up sick this time. 

...
"count backwards from 100, by sevens" asks the sports medicine doctor I saw because I could get into him sooner than a neurologist. I try and I can but it is slow and painful. My brain is rerouting and I can feel it.  It is not coming easily and naturally. I am using a different pathway. He says I did good, but I was an elementary school teacher then and those kinds of activities were daily and a particular strong suit of mine. Not a good indicator of injury for me. I made it seem easy for someone with brain injury, though it was not as easy as it had been a couple of weeks prior, before the blow to my head. 

He asks me to repeat some words. They are gone. Completely black in my head. I relax and try to utilize the tricks I have learned. I may have drawn one out without a hint. I don't remember now, but the others for sure, were gone and in that moment it kind of scares me how black and blank my mind is. I felt certain they were gone forever. But he gives a hint and magically the second word appears, but I am not sure how. This is not how my brain usually works. The last word, he gives another hint,  and there it is magically appearing from the black blank void that is happening inside of me. It is there and I can say it but I am did not picture it first, the way I usually do. He says I am doing well. Labels it a concussion. But I know I did not do well. I know he is deceived by my ability, my ability that appears stronger than it is because I have experience with this. I have been here before. It is a strange feeling and the black blank void scares me.

PTSD?

Muscle memory?

I don't know. 

But scary.

because I know the long haul
and I know
I am injured.

I know, even though I don't yet because I had not faced it or learned about it, but still I know the damage and the troubles a TBI can cause... because I have lived it. In ignorance and denial, not just by me alone but by family and those who had power and authority over me.  

...Sports medicine guy; he is the second doctor to downplay and dismiss, to avoid ordering an MRI. An MRI that would have shown what was happening and why. An MRI that would have kept me from returning to soon to the job that fired me... for attendance, memory and anxiety. 

Here and now my feelings are raw again and I feel vulnerable and anxious as I will be waiting months again to get into the "right" people who can help me understand

what is going on with my head...
...
"I am just trying to figure out what is going on with my head and I know I need to stand up for myself but I am not sure what that looks like yet," I tell the facility director that latter will yell at me for asking to be kept in house, to utilize a different neuropsychologist there at the facility I trust and is supposed to have the specialist I need for my mTBI that was maybe not so m.