Deep-Deep Down
The Underwater Realm of Traumatic Brain Injury
I'm always searching
for ways to describe what
living with my brain injury
FEELS like.
Because if you don't know,
you can't KNOW.
And if you can't understand me,
how can we possibly connect
on anything
but a surface level?
The best way I can describe it is that I have been living underwater for the past twenty-four years.
Sometimes I'm deep-deep down. The world disappears, and I need it to.
Other times, I'm right up there. Almost at the surface. The light shimmers. Flashes. I'm so close. I strain. I stretch. I thrash and kick. My hand touches air. My nose breaks through the water, and then my mouth. My lungs heave in a few ragged breaths.
But that's all I get before I'm dragged back down by the anchor tied to my foot.
I grab the rope and haul that weighty iron up to my heart. It feels lighter up there somehow. But I can't hold it there forever so I have to let it drop. The rope twangs tight. It jerks me down.
I sink.
My head tilts up. The surface recedes.
I land. Sometimes more gracefully than others.
Sitting on the bottom with my arms hugging my knees, I remember how refreshing it was to breathe with lungs instead of these gills I gouged between my ribs with a knife. I give thanks for the gills. I give thanks for the knife. I diligently set to work unknotting the rope around my ankle.
Again.
(I do this a lot.)
While trapped underwater for so long, I eventually grew a mermaid tail.
Sometimes there are weeks or even months where my scaly body is powerful and strong. I rip through the water and burst through the surface in a glorious fountain.
SPLASH!
I have a dolphin's dive. (Occasionally a whale's.)
CRASH!
Back down in a gleeful tidal wave!
Just under the surface, I become sleek and deft again. My laughter is also a dolphin's. I otter-roll and zoom on my back, waving, blowing kisses, beckoning you with my smile to come play with me. You know which smile. The one you can’t resist because a dolphin lives inside you, too.
I zwing into the air, then dive back down, only to resurface half a mile away with a chuckle and a flash of my iridescent tail. You chase after me. You overtake me. You splash water into my face. I swear that I’ll get you for that, and I do.
That’s okay, you’ll have your revenge when I’m comatose after lunch, drooling on a rock in the sunbeams because I have to sleep more deeply than you do. And more often.
You also guard me while I’m out.
That’s okay, too, because I guard you just as hard. Found a big ole trident in some wreckage and made it my own.
I am your own, and so we play from sunrise until midnight and beyond. We dance the ripples. We swim the stars, and it’s like I was only gone for one day.
In this state, I am able to dwell above and below the surface with equal ease.
In this state, I can do anything!
The next day, I need to stay deep down. All that zwinging has vaporized my tail overnight.
It's been replaced by the rope and the anchor.
I’m very sad about the anchor. I’m sad about my tail.
You wonder where I've gone. From my place in the dark depths, I watch you peer over the side of your boat. And all of you over there…I see the silhouettes of your sleek bodies zipping here, zwooping there, breaking the surface to laugh in the light.
I ache to join you, and you have no idea I'm right below you.
The next month, I get to come play again. Pawned my voice so I could grow legs upon which to dance once more. I entertain you with feats of acrobatics on that tightrope I made by tossing the anchor over the shark pool. You have no idea how many times I bobbled, because my smile is oh-so brilliant and I never fell. We frolic in the jacuzzi until wee hours and collapse into a drooling, snoring puppy-pile by the fireplace.
At dawn, I gather up my pumpkin-self, stuff my glass slippers into my bag, and pick my way through all your slumber-strewn limbs. I blow you fond kisses that glow with my promise to return as soon as I can.
Unfortunately, I forgot that it's winter (you know how my memory is). The ocean has frozen overnight. I scurry across the ice, searching for a hole. How I long for my dad's old auger, but we haven't been ice-fishing in an age.
The clock ticks in my head. Louder. Louder. An insistent, booming click...
CLICK...
CLICK…
CLICK! Hurry up. Get out of here!
But there are no breaks in the ice so I can't retreat to the silence. Can't get back to my sea-cave where I've stored my cauldron, a-boil with the magic tonic that allows me to re-collect the re-fractured pieces of myself and glue them back together.
I'm cracking with every click of that clock.
Not the ice. That shit won’t budge.
The dawning sun hurts my ears. It's too loud. The waking voices burn my skin. They're too bright. The breeze hurts my eyes. It's too sharp, and the air is freezing up here. I shiver so hard I could jackhammer through ice.
If only.
All it does is make earthquakes on the bottom of the ocean floor.
Deep-deep down, those old seams jerk. The plates shift with an ugly, cracking THUD. Sonorous. Demoralizing.
My shoulders slump when I feel it.
Well, shit-damn-fuck.
I know what's happening down there. Burbling magma and seismic waves. Here they come….
The tsunami hits.
At least it'll break up the ice so I can get back home.
Once recovered (enough), I have to send out apology notes on my fanciest strips of coral-and-pearl-encrusted seaweed. "Sorry for the mess. I don't blame you if you ban me from any future awesome partays."
I go back to jacuzziing with the anemones near the hot vent that's still a-belch with its scorching bubbles from where my floor cracked open.
But hey, the watery denizens enjoy my dank, dark Underworld humor.
They're groovy like that.
Sometimes the icing-over happens when I'm snoozing underwater. Alas, there are things up there that I truly, desperately need. Things like air. Sunlight. Human-food. I haven't been completely claimed by Davy Jones yet, so I do still ache for the occasional pizza and the touch of another's hand. A fucking hug.
But my fists aren't strong enough to pound through ice today.
So I exhale and let myself sink.
I relish the ride...
Deep...deep...
Down.
Wanna come play? We’ve got cookies down here. If you dig seaweed.
Up Next - another underwater metaphor: THE COMA & THE SWIRLING SEA - When cognition is inaccessible
© 2020 Hartebeast
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Beautiful Alexx! It’s such a difficult thing trying to put those weird messy complex feelings and experiences we have into words, but I think you did a fantastic job of doing so by use of this metaphor. It says more than an ‘accurate’ description would because I didn’t just get a sense that I understand — I felt like I did. And that’s more important.
I hope the ice gets a bit weaker as you move forward.
And this is why I cherish you. While I hate that you experience this, I'm happy to bob at any depth with ya. I'll even keep jellies away.