Right Now is Just Right

expressive aphasia be damned

The trouble with starting a newsletter is that my brain injury took my words away.

I won’t go into detail about the how of my brain injury, it’s already been covered with astonishing care by Haley Nahman, for the now bygone, but forever loved, ManRepeller.

The snapshot of a then-current truth, in black and white.

And though that blow to my head was certainly the catalyst of everything, it wasn’t until much later in recovery that the real work revealed itself: Discovering my singularity anew. What was me and only me.

Not quite being able to conjure a connection to whom I was before, and having yet to have found the way-to-be that would fit my new, fragile existence; my post-traumatic life became a frantic search for an identity I could get comfortable in (both the impetus and plot line of my first movie post-injury, not coincidentally).

A still of me and my co-star, Josh Agran, thinking about our identities in Main Blessings

There were the limiting conditions of my disability to consider: debilitating fatigue, confusion, hyper-sensitivity to light and sound, an unsteady sense of gravity, the emotional development of a teenager, and on and on. Then there were the rooms of my past identities that had been seemingly closed to me....(Keep reading and subscribe for free over on substack)