`I didn't even recognize my own face in the mirror. Nothing felt right. Dazed. Paralyzed by fear, my first instinct was to run but I had nowhere to hide...Voices echoed, ricocheting across the room. I wished they sounded familiar.'
At the age of 14, Lynsey Calderwood suffered a traumatic brain injury that left her physically unmarked but destroyed her memory. Thrust back into an apparently nonsensical world of which she had no recollection, Lynsey spiralled downwards into depression and eating disorders as she became socially ostracized.
This is the story, in her own words, of Lynsey's quest to discover her identity and, eventually, to come to terms with her disability. She faces devastating setbacks and her sense of loss, grief and rage is movingly recalled. Courage and perseverance, coupled with her engaging sense of humour, see her through; and her tale will be an inspiration to anyone who has faced similar obstacles.
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This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation.
Alice replied, rather shyly, āIāI hardly know, sir, just at present ā at
least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I
must have been changed several times since then.ā
Aliceās Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 5
I didnāt even recognize my own face in the mirror. Nothing felt right. Dazed. Paralyzed by fear, my first instinct was to run but I had nowhere to hide. Pain exploded like fireworks behind my eyeballs and there was a sizzling in my skull like a chain saw. I tried to speak but I had a knot in my throat and my tongue felt thick and woolly. I was terrified I was going to choke. Voices echoed, ricocheting across the room. I wished they sounded familiar.
I felt like an infant. Of course, I didnāt fully comprehend how this brain injury had changed me; I only sensed that my life would never be the same. I remember crying, feeling alone and being defenceless, but only for a day. I recall an anonymous nurse who held my hand in comfort while I begged so frantically for my memories. This part of me was dead, yet I was fighting to resuscitate it.
I remember feeling totally anonymous. I didnāt fully comprehend what had happened to me. I remember crying, feeling isolated. I was no longer the child my mother gave birth to. I did not feel like HER. I was HER reflection but I felt too ambiguous to be a real flesh and blood person. However, on the outside I still looked like their daughter. I still looked like a normal average teenager. There were no bruises or fractures, no bandages around my head and no magic wand to reveal my imperfections.
When they dressed me up in HER clothes and showed me HER photograph, I thought she looked just like me too. Thatās when I began to feel threatened. Her shadow was beginning to haunt me and my family was trying to reincarnate her through me. I felt belittled by this overwhelming, overbearing ghost and everything that held a candle to her. It was as if Iād stepped through a mirror and here I was: the evil twin.
Iād been cheated. Cheated of my childhood. It was HER. It was all HER fault. SHE was the one. I blamed HER for my lack of memories. I HATED HER.
My glassy stare penetrated the mirror as I glared defiantly at the girl who wasnāt me. I studied the intricate indents of her inanimate face: vacant blue eyes, red-ringed and swollen; pink-red lips, drawn together in a childish pout; even the little dash mark scar I had acquired as a child ā where I fell through the glass coffee table ā didnāt belong to me. The series of curves joined in the middle to form a nose wasnāt mine either.
I sniffed. The nose twitched and I jumped back like a startled rabbit. The me that wasnāt really me followed suit, so we began a game of copycat: I raised my eyebrows, so did she; I raised my hand, so did she. Going faster, I tried to trick her into making a mistake; finally, I lashed out, tried to punch her in the stomach.
AAAH
She blocked me. That hurt. I stared hard at her but I couldnāt break her gaze. Her eyes were wild and angry; she looked like she hated me almost as much as I hated her.
I didnāt want to be here. All I wanted to do was go home but, somehow, Iād stepped through the mirror and weād switched places. I was trapped in a land of reflections.
Fourteen years of stuff and nonsense, an autopsy of Lynseyās life. I wrestle with my mind because it feels like it is no longer attached to me. I feel like Iāve been shoehorned into an alien body. I shuffle through old papers and photos in random order like some private investigator. My memories have no structure. They are completely dislocated.
Iām actually breaking into a sweat, fighting my lazy, sedentary brain. One of the few things I have learned is that I lack hindsight. I have no understanding of past events. Iām trying to organize all HER junk. I keep looking at the photographs and then the days melt together and then I forget and do it all over again.
I keep looking at the photographs and then the days melt together and then I forget and do it all over again.
I look at the pin-ups on the walls, the soft toys and the bedcovers I did not choose. I feel bitter when other people try to impose HER memories on me. I want to put it into words but there are no words to express clearly how I feel.
I have to remember the name of her sister when she comes back into the room.
But I never could remember. I wore my new identity like a child playing ādress upā. Later, when I learned and explored my limitations, I could only ache for what I should have been. I was completely afraid of life, other children, myself. I couldnāt understand just how much I had changed, how much my whole world (especially my body) didnāt belong to me: I donāt even know my own face. I donāt even know my own body.
Maybe if I lose some fat, Iāll find myself within the flesh. I wonder what I really look like? Being the second Lynsey means I already feel like Iām second best.
I want to be invisible.
I want to disintegrate into a pile of dust.
I just want to disappear.
They say I look like my father. Her father. The father is lean with a thick crop of startling raven black hair. He looks younger than his forty years. The mother is short and plump, she has a kind face and soft pink cheeks. The sister is a cute button nosed ten-year-old with flaxen blonde hair and a peaches and cream complexion.
They are all strangers.
Most children go through a phase of gradual disenchantment whereas I had adolescence thrust upon me. My life seems so short and my memories so infantile that I feel like I know nothing whatsoever. As far as Iām concerned I was born in November 1992 (the day of my accident) and whatever happened in the world before that is a mystery.
āI wonder if Iāve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if Iām not the same, the next question is, who in the world am I?ā
Aliceās Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 2
Sometimes at night I would retreat to my room, look at my school photographs and read poems I had written. But instead of feeling closer to my past, I felt encumbered by the details of someone elseās life.
āIām sure Iām not Ada,ā she said, āfor her hair goes in such long ringlets, and mine doesnāt go in ringlets at all; and Iām sure I canāt be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh! she knows such a very little! Besides, sheās she, and Iām I.ā
Aliceās Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 2
I keep a stash of memories on the tip of my tongue, in case I am in strange company that requires me to talk about my childhood and I donāt want to explain myself: my invisible friends were called Christopher and Treebarcha; I had an eye operation when I was seven; children at school used to call me āBarbara Taylor Bradfordā on account of the pages of stories I used to write.
One of my favourite āmemoriesā is a story told to me by my younger sister, Nikki. She says that when we were younger I was the well-behaved child and she was the naughty one. She never misses an opportunity to tell me about the time when I poured a bowl of cornflakes over my own head. She had been annoying me, and I wanted to get her back. I was believed and Nikki was sent to her room but I think, in retrospect, I would have preferred her punishment to feeling my motherās fingers raking through my hair as she washed out all the soggy cornflakes.
My life was complicated: at fourteen years old I became public property. Everyone thought they were entitled to know who I was because of my disability. I hated this most of all. No one has the right to divulge my life history without my consent. But I didnāt really have a choice. I was like some curious glass artefact. Everyone was afraid to handle me in case I broke; they didnāt even know what was wrong with me. Iād look at myself in the mirror, and wonder who I was staring at.
It canāt possibly be me. I wish I would just wake up...and pretend that nothing ever happened...and that all of this, was just a nightmare...
But I couldnāt seem to wake up.
The inside of my skull vibrated like jelly. Words came to me slowly and fuzzily. I kept forgetting the names of things, and I constantly described objects that I had forgotten the nam...
Table of contents
Cover
Half Title
Of Related Interest
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Dedication
Foreword
Chapter 1 How I Felt in the Beginning
Chapter 2 The Behavioural Unit
Chapter 3 Diagnosis
Chapter 4 The Mental Hospital, Rebellion + Bullying
