What this head injury feels like, when it's bad (and I say it this way because it isn't a constant; I have good days and bad days and mixed bag days):

It's like bouncing, except "bouncing" sounds like fun, and this is not a fun sensation. It's more like sinking down to the bottom of a murky pond, groggily, and then, with some difficulty, surfacing again into awareness...like not having the strength to swim anymore and just sinking, surfacing, repeatedly. It's so tiring.

Noises hurt. OK, I'm on the autism spectrum, and having sensory issues is an integral part of Asperger's...but now, it's worse. Sharp, sudden sounds feel sharper, more jarring, hard and abrupt and painfully startling. Such sounds are several times harder to endure than they used to be. They are almost physically painful.

Things get blurry, bleary feeling, nonsensical, they don't add up like they should. People talk and it makes no sense, or if their verbal sounds do make sense, I have significant difficulty holding onto what they said. They tell me that they had told me things previously, and I have absolutely no recollection of ever hearing it. Even when I hear and comprehend, it's much harder to follow a conversation or remember what was said. My short term memory and speech decoding appears to have been impacted.

Reality feels less real and less continuous. It's the only way I can describe it. There are times when blank spots appear in the present or near past. Time isn't fluid, it doesn't always flow, it skips sometimes. And I have no idea what happens in those blank spots.

There's a horrible sense of helplessness, despair, a sense of being useless, panic at not feeling better, embarrassment, that goes along with it. Of needing, desperately, to rest, to sleep, to lay down anywhere at all. An awareness that my mind is not working correctly, and there's nothing at all I can do about it, except to rest and to hope that eventually, it will get better. The exhaustion is debilitating. And guilt! I feel so guilty about still feeling like shit, as though there were anything at all I could do about it! I feel so bad for not being able to walk right, for slurring or not making enough sense when I talk, for needing to sleep so much, for not being able to get much of anything done, for being barely able to drive 25 miles every morning and afternoon, and nothing besides that. My goal, every school day, is to rest enough to be able to drive back responsibly.

And speaking of being tired, of needing to sleep....good night.