Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                

UNLIMITED

The Atlantic

I Know the Secret to the Quiet Mind. I Wish I’d Never Learned It.

<span>Of all the injuries</span> we suffered, mine is the worst. My brain injury has shaken my confidence in my own personality, my own existence.
Source: Marcus Schäfer / Trunk Archive

The worst things can happen on the most beautiful days. My family’s worst day was a perfect one in the summer of 2019. We picked my daughter up from camp and talked about where to go for lunch: the diner or the burger place. I don’t remember which we chose. What I do remember: being woken up, again and again, by doctors who insist on asking me the same questions—my name, where I am, what month it is—and telling me the same story, a story that I am sure is wrong.

“You were in a car accident,” they say. But this cannot be. We’re having lunch and then going on a hike. I had promised the think tank where I work that I’d call in to a 4 p.m. meeting.

“You are in Dartmouth-Hitchcock Hospital in New Hampshire.” Another ludicrous statement. I started the day in Vermont. Surely if I had crossed the river to New Hampshire I would know it.

“What’s your name?” they ask me, and I tell them and tell them and tell them.

“Where are you?” “New Hampshire,” I say, except for one time when I say “Vermont.” “New Hampshire,” they correct, and I want to say, “Really, we are so close to the border here, can’t

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Atlantic

The Atlantic22 min read
Best of How To: Make Small Talk
Listen and subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Pocket Casts This episode, from our fourth season, called How to Talk to People, features host Julie Beck in conversation with hairstylists and self-described socially anxious people abo
The Atlantic6 min read
Vivek Ramaswamy Is Uninvited From My Sleepover
I could have been a tech entrepreneur, but my parents let me go to sleepovers. I could have been a billionaire, but I used to watch Saturday-morning cartoons. I could have been Vivek Ramaswamy, if not for the ways I’ve been corrupted by the mediocrit
The Atlantic6 min read
The Most Important Breakthroughs of 2024
This is my third time honoring what I see as the year’s most important scientific and technological advances. In 2022, my theme was the principle of “twin ideas,” when similar inventions emerge around the same time. Just as Alexander Graham Bell and

Related Books & Audiobooks