Traumatic Writing Injuries

ID: A semi-realistic sketch of a pink brain with a red mark on it in a blotch, representing a TBI. End ID. Image by M.

CW: suicidal thoughts

I can’t write as well as I used to and I am devastated by this.

That’s the simplest and most precise way to start this.

I received a traumatic brain injury a little more than a year ago now and before then I was always known as a writer. Lord knows my unnamed high school ao3 account knows it. I did exceptionally well on my AP Lit exam and was praised starting in Kindergarten for my writing skills. It is something I have always excelled at, and something I have always enjoyed. I am proud of those skills and I am proud to have worked hard to have honed them and mastered them.

I don’t write as well as I used to and I don’t think people get it.

I think people read my writing and think I still write well and perhaps I do, but I know the difference. I can tell and see and feel the difference in my writing, see the gaps where they used to be none. I don’t connect and synthesize ideas like I used to and it is devastating to me. I feel like I lost a part of myself.

I have debilitating migraines, nausea, dizziness and I think it’s the loss to my writing that hits me that hardest, that I consider the most devastating. As a verbalflux person with expensive speech who uses writing as a main method of communication, not having access to it feels like something has been stolen from me, like something has been ripped out violently and left me bloody and gasping. I can’t breathe without it, left trembling. And yet I have to live on. I have to complete my education, which in large part includes writing and I have to think about my future which in large part includes writing. I always wanted to write a book and I don’t know if that’s possible now.

I make simple mistakes I never used to.

This is just another thing disability has stolen from me, that TBI has stolen from me, that the world has stolen from me and sometimes I get so tired and frustrated from it all I just want to die. That’s how much I miss writing.

And you might think this is some pretty good writing for someone who says they can’t write. But it’s not about the end product, it’s about the process and I’m telling you the process is different. I can feel the difference, the walls and the blocks and it’s horrifying to feel those things. I sit there, staring at the page struggling to start in a way I never have before and my eyes and head start to burn early in a way like never before and I have to practice repetition like this in a way like never before and I have to delete sentences in a way like never before and…

I’m exhausted.

But I can’t give up writing because writing is my words.

So I’ll just write slower now, maybe not as well and that will have to be my voice and that voice will have to be just as good, just as worth it, just as worthy. It will be my voice and deserving of its place on this earth for being just that.

I wonder though, if people will understand me less and I’ll think about the fact that I have never felt understood and I will watch that sea grow a little bit bigger, a little bit wider, and I will grieve.

Originally published on substack 2/11/2026. link.