Strange things happen when your head blows up! Without your knowledge, your brain acts different. You become a dream person, act peculiar, and use the wrong words.
The doctor asks you to do something. “Stick out your tongue.”
I stare at him.
“Touch your nose.”
I stick out my tongue.
“Close your eyes.”
I touch my nose.
This is weird. I go for a brain scan.
“Do you need help?” the nurse asks when I try to climb off the scanner bed.
“No, I’m fine,” I say, clambering off the bed and sinking to the floor. A wheelchair appears.
Then I’m in a hospital. Staring around. I have no thoughts.
My mum, dad and brother arrive. They sent for them because I might not make it through the night. My brother said he would bring my parents in the morning until Julie told them I might not make it until morning.
Dad looks sad. Mum looks hopeful. I’m crying as I write. The eruption of a vein affected emotions in my brain. Then they leave. My brain doesn’t even wonder why they’ve gone. Were they there? I sleep.
A woman appears at the end of my bed, asking what I want to eat.
I’m back to staring.
“You can have minced meat?”
I nod.
“Chips?”
More nodding.
“Sweetcorn?”
“Oh, yes,” I mumble.
When my lunch appears. I receive a plate of sweetcorn.
“What’s that?” Margaret asks. It’s not really Margaret, it’s Julie, my partner. Why am I calling her Margaret?
“It’s what she asked for,” the woman says, checking her list.
“She’s had a brain haemorrhage,” Julie (Margaret) says. “She doesn’t know how to communicate,” she whispers to the woman. Then Julie goes to buy me a sandwich from the canteen.
I’d no idea how long I stayed in the hospital. Lots of people visited. I learned how to eat. How to get out of bed, to dress, to use the toilet. Physical activities, because my brain couldn’t think. Will it ever think again? Will I remember how to play music, paint pictures, write words? The things I used to do.
After a few years of numb brain, I joined an art group and painted. I took lots of courses helping my skills return. I could still play the flute, as usual not very well, but could still read music. Fourteen years after the bleeding in my brain, I learned to play the ukulele.
My lost and muddled words continued to wander around my head. I read books, trying to learn the words and connect them into sentences. Wanting to understand their meaning. And slowly, my memories returned. I jotted them in a notebook.
Julie suggested I wrote the story of what had happened to me, as inspiration to others. I’d written lots of essays in the past, and stories at primary school, which my teachers praised. But I’d never considered writing a memoir.
I studied the books other authors had written and wrote. The words appeared, a story formed, and I completed a novel, not the memoir Julie suggested, but a story of fiction based on my memories. Then I wrote another story, and another.
Alysia began writing in 2019, to fill time during the Covid lockdown. She enjoys writing contemporary sapphic romance, suspense, and dystopian adventure, under the pseudonym Alysia D Evans. She is a visual artist, musician, and electronic engineer, she worked in the engineering field for several years, before training to be a teacher of technology and design. She spent two years training teachers in Botswana. Providing the opportunity to tour the country and create vivid memories. Her career in education continued in the UK, where she taught students with learning disabilities. She lives with her wife, and a sleepy, brown dog, in a rural mining village, in South Wales, enjoying the world of creativity full-time. When the weather permits, the view from the garden inspires her to paint and write. When not obsessed with producing images, sounds and words, she enjoys reading, travelling, and watching TV dramas and sports.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alysiad.evans
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