My brain hurts

Something unexpected happened to me in April. I had a mild traumatic brain injury. It just hit me that I should share this, because since then my perspective on life has shifted, and I have had a lot of side effects that come and go and still affect me on a daily basis. I’ve found that many people don’t take it seriously when you tell them you have had a concussion, which is a mild traumatic brain injury. And before this happened to me, I too, did not take it seriously; that you could injure your brain so easily as I did, playing on a playground. A carefree day with people I love, turned into months of depression, headaches, inability to focus, the absolute necessity to take a nap if I do more than one thing in a day. I started playing tennis and the headaches got worse. The use of my brain to watch a ball land on my side of the court, when to swing, and again and again, in the full sun, on the most humid of days, that’s one thing that did me in. Simultaneously being reunited with a sport I loved once, while being severely impacted by my head injury months prior, and trying to do three farmers markets a week, also using my brain in every conversation and interaction. Let alone the heat and humidity and inability to ever drink enough water or eat all meals at appropriate times, it all spells out catastrophe as I type it, yet in the moment, I didn’t put it all together. Maybe my brain has done some more healing since then.