Daniel S. Transcript

I was in my sophomore year of college, during, like, during total COVID lockdown. And I was sitting in my friend’s room, and they left this, like, drawer open in their chest of drawers now sitting in front of the chest of drawers, and I they said, like, funny, and I laughed, and like, leaned back and hit my head on the corner of the drawer. And I knew what to do immediately, because I’d had so many more concussions already, I was just like, Okay, I’m gonna sit in my room in the dark alone. And I’m just gonna sit there. And I the one of the first things I remember feeling really viscerally was, “I’m so stupid.” Like, how could I let something this tiny, dominant, significant, mess of my life in this way. But that wasn’t really where it stopped. The concussion kind of triggered or exacerbated, or I’m not really sure, but it put into motion, this kind of mental health crisis where I kind of felt like I logic-ed my way out of the concussion. So I was doing all this, like, I would stretch for like six hours a day trying to like, heal myself, or like, undo the kinks I thought I had in my spine or all this stuff. And I kind of became obsessed with physics and using energy to power myself up and all this kind of illogical craziness that felt very logical at the time. And in the end, after a week of not eating and not sleeping, I went for a run. And I ran four miles, barefoot and shirtless, in the middle of October. And I was very lucky because the friend I had, who was actually the friend whose room I was in when I got the concussion, ended up calling 911 for me. And like saying, “Hey, my friend is in trouble, can you go find him?” And like the police found me. And they were, to their credit, they were very gentle. And they like, helped me into an ambulance and took me to the hospital and at the hospital, they gave me all these like antipsychotics to calm me down. And I– there’s more that could be said about that. I don’t really want to focus on that. Because what really matters is the recovery, and the recovery was so long and slow. Which I had a real trouble accepting.

I remember, when I left, I left school soon after this whole thing happened- I went back home to my parents house. And I remember telling people “Oh, I’ll be back in like a week.” It ended up being 11 months until I came back. But, coming back I was in pretty bad shape. I couldn’t really read, couldn’t really look at screens, I could not really walk without pain because of this crazy run I’d taken– you know, four miles on concrete, barefoot– but I slowly found a way through it. And that way was art, really. Like I’ve never been an artist before. Both my siblings are artists and they are amazing at it, and I was totally daunted by it. But, I remember I couldn’t do anything, and I couldn’t take my joy him take my mind off how the anxious and in pain I was, both physically and emotionally, except sit and like draw. And it wasn’t by any means, I wasn’t like creating lifelike portraits. You know, I was like doodling random lines, squiggly lines, jagged lines with dots in between them, and like metallic pens that I thought were really cool looking. I don’t know if you can really call it art, but to me it was important. And again, like I had so much trouble focusing I could only do it for, like, 15-20 minutes at a time before I have to take a break. But it was there for me. And then slowly I began to heal. And it was, like, so gradual. I couldn’t really put my finger on it. But it would go from, like, I’m sort of waking up at five in the morning with the shakes so anxious. I wake up at six in the morning and I’d be able to like, you know, sleeping for another hour means you don’t feel have to sit with your thoughts and feelings and anger about your condition for another hour. And that was really important to me.

Another really important thing that I felt changed me really deeply was I saw an osteopath. For those who don’t know, an osteopath is like, it’s like a chiropractor that actually has a medical degree. And so they, like, understand the connectivity of your body, and they basically put their hands on you, very gently, and they can assess what’s wrong and try to help you. And what they always told me when I would go lay on their table, it was a husband and wife couple who did it together, both osteopaths, they always told me, “Look, we’re not healing you. You’re healing yourself. We’re just helping to heal yourself.” And I didn’t really believe them at the time because I didn’t really believe that I could heal myself. But slowly, you know, the drawings turned– the abstract drawings– turned into pictures of real things, things that were important to me that I felt had meaning. And I would write little words under them, you know, I draw little cartoon moon and write ‘moon,’ little cartoon sun and write ‘sun.’ And that led to writing poetry.

Just like images and thoughts and experiences from my, my crazy psychotic experience that, like, I needed to get out on paper that were kind of draining me by having to repeat them to myself in my head. And that was really healing for me. It’s a practice that I’ve maintained even now that I’m, like, through it. And that’s the kind of remarkable thing that like that was, like, two and a half years ago now. And it took me a long time to get back to school, but the actual healing was, like, from the concussion was, like, as soon as I kind of accepted the rhythm that it was going to take and stop fighting it and being angry, it kind of picked up in its way. And I’m really grateful for that. And I’m like, you know, after six concussions, I’m living life, I have no residual symptoms, no nothing, and I, like, really have healed and recovery is possible.