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"plaintext": "It took nearly 30 years to be able to write my thoughts again after I was killed in an accident. Verbal communication was still shite. It is still shite. I don't know what switch was flipped in my head, that resulted in having words again, when I think. I’ve not had that since the wreck. And that is what it felt like. As if a switch was flipped."
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"plaintext": "A few years later, as I look back, it seems more gradual, but only since my brain was “switched back on”."
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"plaintext": "Disappointingly, I remain in a coma-vegetative state, and need meds to be alert at all. Dehydration, illness, stress, are all things enough to return me to mostly unconscious (you can't wake me, I'm not asleep) even with the medicine. Right now, it's a fat 60+ mg dose of Adderall, daily. I suppose I will be on it the rest of my life. Those same brainwaves were measured again, not long ago, by a third neurologist. I think she said she saw underlying beta waves. Or something like that. I don’t know what it means. I don't recall exactly what she said, mostly to herself, as if the EEG readings puzzled her and I gave her the clue she needed to understand the riddle I am now. I was not altogether there, at any rate, not as I am now, as it was some time ago. And yet, I’m still not altogether here, right this moment. Though it seems I'm more connected to the world. Finally. Just not completely. Not in the same way, say, as you might be. No. It’s unlikely I will enjoy full access to time, my surroundings, memory, concentration, and other cognitive functions, ever again. That person who was here, entirely present for 24 and one half years, is long gone. She died under an 18-wheeler in December of 1994. Who took her place, isn’t so isolated from human realities, not as she was for so many years. Not anymore."
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"plaintext": "Who I’m left with, wrote the following in June 2023, and tweaked it in 2024. I tweaked a few words again, in June 2025, or that's the date I found on the file. I tweaked all three pieces once more this year, in June 2026, and reversed some tweaks I made last year. This new person I became after all that brain damage, appears to be decisive."
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"plaintext": "Of note, I still have no AC, in freaking Texas, where summer is easily 9-months of the year with climate change."
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"plaintext": "I do hope you enjoy these, for what it’s worth."
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"plaintext": "________"
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"plaintext": "The Mother of All Prefaces. It is June in the year of our Lord, 2026. I’m certain there will be a Second Coming, any day now. He did say He wouldn’t come with a catastrophic global flood this time. But rather fire. Pity."
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"plaintext": "Well, I am roasting. I’ve not yet raptured—obviously—nor have I spontaneously combusted, though my boyfriend is doing his damnedest to bring about such an end upon me."
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"plaintext": "No. I’m still sort of here."
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"plaintext": "But I have gotten some extreme heat advisories. The second officially began at noon again the day following the first one, though I admit it was disappointing as far as Texas direct portals to Hell, are concerned. That was….recently. This month, I believe. It’s still June. I don’t know when it was, exactly. My sense of time is limited. It lasted all day, into the overnight, the worst of them. I remember that."
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"plaintext": "We are now under a “heat dome” of high pressure, which means it will not rain, nor cool down, on my street for the duration."
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"plaintext": "On that note, I am posting my third year anniversary of writing this piece, the first year my AC was out, and the first year my thoughts came to me as words once again, after nearly 30 years. "
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"plaintext": "Today, I’m at over 3 years with no AC. This writing was done spontaneously, in three parts, all written in June 2023, as posts to my Facebook account, which is now disabled, as I lay withered, and wet with sweat, still afflicted with cremation-worthy heat, lasting deep into the night."
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"plaintext": "I’d published Part 2 already on Bluesky, or maybe it was Part 3? I don’t recall. Bluesky is an app which isn’t conducive to thought longer than a little Gen Z short hand and acronyms (fmr bf, aio, 18f, aita), their code language (e.g., drag path, nice try diddy), and a few stylistic emojis to make their breakup messages to their girlfriends, boyfriends—or whomever, whatever they date—more “friendly” (😁💗💔💕✌🏻)"
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"plaintext": "If you know me at all, you know I’m both loquacious and particular about my grammar and spelling, which makes my “drag paths” all the more longer, and my frustration at living with traumatic brain injury these many years and the expressive aphasia, all the worse. I’m not so much a perfectionist, as I am a completionist. Call it what you will. Tuh-may-toe, toe-mah-toe. Whatever. Part 2, which I put on Bluesky already, or Part 3, had to do with….a thunderstorm, right? Ah well. Whatever it was, I’ll put it back out, so you have the benefit of all three parts at once. Ta!"
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"plaintext": "_______"
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"plaintext": "Ramble: Part I"
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"plaintext": "Short Preface. You must know two things to read this and understand. Three, actually. First, this was a quick Facebook post from the summer of 2023. Second, my air conditioning was out….in the south….in freaking Texas, for going on two years this March, in the year 2025. Third, my father had asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up after he’d read my very first poem, a haiku. After giving some thought to the question, and being at the tender age of seven, or perhaps six, I informed him I wanted to become a mermaid. And if that didn’t work out, I thought I’d probably be a veterinarian. I also told him I had no intention of marrying until I had my career sorted."
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"plaintext": "It seems I was right. That is exactly what I did. That last bit, anyway. At the rather ripe age of 53, I bumped into the man for whom I’d waited so many years. Nearly 50 of them, and almost the whole of my life up to that point. At any rate, this was written after I’d made my future plans, but a few months before I bumped into the man I affectionately call….well, anyway. "
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"plaintext": "Here is my “check-in” on Facebook, a short note I wrote in the form of a quick post directed towards my friends as to my status, on that heavy, airless and oppressively hot evening in June 2023."
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"plaintext": "I’ve arrived for my daily misery report. The dogs are once again splayed all about, bellies up and paws adangle as they lie on their backs, deeply breathing in sleep, which hovers like thick fog in the room. The air is of the same temperature and humidity as warm pea soup. Only Tennyson stirs each time I gently push his hot little body away from mine. I cannot stand him so close. "
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"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "Sleep has all but abandoned me. I’m sure it will come loudly stumbling in through the door, around 2 am, when I’ve just gotten comfortable enough to write my ponderings. It will seize the moment, as I will not expect it, then murder my ambitions, and suffocate me with an etheric, Laudunumsome drowsiness, until I am no more of the waking world."
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"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "If only I could find that cool place again, away from the furnace each room has become. I perhaps could slip out a window, run barefoot through wet fields, towards the nearest pond, where I’d pause for breath, then slip fully underwater, to converse freely with the lily pad roots and wild celery leaves, encumbered only by shadows of weeping willows whose long branches and foliage reach down into the water, hoping to evade the full moonlight."
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"plaintext": "Please don’t be surprised. I did tell you, darling, as a small child, I wanted to grow to a mermaid."
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"plaintext": "More Ramblings: Part II"
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"plaintext": "Preface. I came across another quick post of mine from Facebook. I happened to find my old NYU poetry professor’s profile. Though it appears he’s abandoned it, I did find a few bits of his writing. I shared one of his posts (not included here) on my profile, and attached the below, my own writing, as well. I went off into a memory, naturally followed by some of my characteristic mischief:"
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"plaintext": "So lovely. I suspect this was written by the resident poet at NYU, Mark Rudman, who was my Poetry I and II professor when I attended as an undergraduate."
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"plaintext": "I can still see the shock and even anger of another writing professor named Fiona (fee•YOOOHHHN•ah). She was Irish. Small, elfish, and naturally fair. I remember she sat in a creaky little chair in front of a ubiquitous desk, in a dark and humble office she likely shared with the entire department of undergraduate writing professors."
},
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"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "I sat facing her, in an old, less creaky wooden chair, as she hovered thoughtfully over my future, a file full of marks and notes she cradled in her lap, when she carefully pulled her tiny hands out from under it. Then began she, her dissertation as to my merits as a scholar of creative writing."
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"plaintext": "I exclaimed, thinking to myself—Isn’t it obvious?!—“Fiona, I will learn doctoring! Silly girl! I cannot be a writer!”"
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"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "The expression on her face betrayed her innermost thoughts. It was as though her senses were unexpectedly assailed by a sudden wave of fecking feculent odor drudged up from the most malodorous, befouled, swampy bowels imaginable. "
},
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"plaintext": "Poor woman. She had made considerable efforts during the preceding semester to train another layer of poets to, oh what’s the word?…..ferment? No. That’s almost a moldy connotation. To age, to mature, to follow in behind the former generation, I suppose, and start the long journey, one hopes it’s long anyway, to slowly ripen, discover our finer selves, as writers, of course, and eventually become……vintage."
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"plaintext": "Maybe Fiona was right."
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"plaintext": "Yesterday, I was that mermaid, sitting on the floor of the glassy pond, talking to the lily pad roots and wild celery leaves."
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"plaintext": "Perhaps today, I’ll be a writer."
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"plaintext": "I have no other commitments at present, despite what you were told by the tree frogs. They lie."
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"plaintext": "[end]"
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"plaintext": "Ramble, or rather, Rumble: Part III"
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"plaintext": " I was nearly asleep, lying in my bed, listening to the soft rain talk to the plants and beg the windows for entry. My cell phone had fallen onto my face again, though I still held it firmly in one hand. "
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"plaintext": "It slowly…..what was I going to….write?………I don’t………(sigh)………remem…….(sleep)………"
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"plaintext": "Suddenly, a loud crackle of lightning boomed and shrieked simultaneously, ripping through the house as though the roof had been torn off and flung aside."
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"plaintext": "I imagine lights came on all over the neighborhood, weary people issuing forth from their slumber to check for damage, thinking to themselves or softly mumbling, “That one sounded really close,” yet only seeing the impenetrable dark, before they shut the blinds or door again, and padded softly back to their beds, turning off the lights as they went. "
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"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "At my house, I snapped awake and startled. At that moment, everything went black."
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"plaintext": "The amber glow that softly washed the floor in my bedroom doorway, withdrew back to the bulb. I had left only the one alight, over the kitchen sink, before retreating to bed, where I could lie under the brisk ceiling fan in a futile attempt to not be covered in sweat and damp air. The fan had begun to slow when it stopped whispering above me."
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"$type": "blog.pckt.block.text",
"plaintext": "For a few moments only the screen of my phone glowed bright in the darkness."
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"plaintext": "I heard nothing but rain. Everything in the house had shut down. Though it lasted only a moment."
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"plaintext": "The dogs in my bed woke at once, and looked about, thinking something terrible had just occurred. A little embarrassed they’d missed it, they tried to find their feet for an appropriate response. Whatever had startled them, whatever caused Tennyson to nearly roll off the side of the bed, was gone. However, some of them thought it worthy of a few perfunctory barks, to warn me danger was afoot. "
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"plaintext": "Then, with some small uncertainty, they circled a few paces atop the bedsheet I’d thrown off due to the heat, curled their little, warm bodies into soft, fur-laden balls, and tried to find their places again in dreams of vast, bright fields full of strange smells, waiting to be found………"
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"plaintext": "Copyright ©️ 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026 W. M. Young"
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"description": "It took nearly 30 years to be able to write my thoughts again after I was killed in an accident. Verbal communication was still shite. It is still shite. I don't know what switch was flipped in my head, that resulted in having words again, when I think. I’ve not had that since the wreck. And that is what it felt like. As if a switch was flipped. A few years later, as I look back, it seems more gradual, but only since my brain was “switched back on”. Disappointingly, I remain in a coma-vegetative...",
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"textContent": "It took nearly 30 years to be able to write my thoughts again after I was killed in an accident. Verbal communication was still shite. It is still shite. I don't know what switch was flipped in my head, that resulted in having words again, when I think. I’ve not had that since the wreck. And that is what it felt like. As if a switch was flipped.\nA few years later, as I look back, it seems more gradual, but only since my brain was “switched back on”.\nDisappointingly, I remain in a coma-vegetative state, and need meds to be alert at all. Dehydration, illness, stress, are all things enough to return me to mostly unconscious (you can't wake me, I'm not asleep) even with the medicine. Right now, it's a fat 60+ mg dose of Adderall, daily. I suppose I will be on it the rest of my life. Those same brainwaves were measured again, not long ago, by a third neurologist. I think she said she saw underlying beta waves. Or something like that. I don’t know what it means. I don't recall exactly what she said, mostly to herself, as if the EEG readings puzzled her and I gave her the clue she needed to understand the riddle I am now. I was not altogether there, at any rate, not as I am now, as it was some time ago. And yet, I’m still not altogether here, right this moment. Though it seems I'm more connected to the world. Finally. Just not completely. Not in the same way, say, as you might be. No. It’s unlikely I will enjoy full access to time, my surroundings, memory, concentration, and other cognitive functions, ever again. That person who was here, entirely present for 24 and one half years, is long gone. She died under an 18-wheeler in December of 1994. Who took her place, isn’t so isolated from human realities, not as she was for so many years. Not anymore.\nWho I’m left with, wrote the following in June 2023, and tweaked it in 2024. I tweaked a few words again, in June 2025, or that's the date I found on the file. I tweaked all three pieces once more this year, in June 2026, and reversed some tweaks I made last year. This new person I became after all that brain damage, appears to be decisive.\nOf note, I still have no AC, in freaking Texas, where summer is easily 9-months of the year with climate change.\nI do hope you enjoy these, for what it’s worth.\n________\nThe Mother of All Prefaces. It is June in the year of our Lord, 2026. I’m certain there will be a Second Coming, any day now. He did say He wouldn’t come with a catastrophic global flood this time. But rather fire. Pity.\nWell, I am roasting. I’ve not yet raptured—obviously—nor have I spontaneously combusted, though my boyfriend is doing his damnedest to bring about such an end upon me.\nNo. I’m still sort of here.\nBut I have gotten some extreme heat advisories. The second officially began at noon again the day following the first one, though I admit it was disappointing as far as Texas direct portals to Hell, are concerned. That was….recently. This month, I believe. It’s still June. I don’t know when it was, exactly. My sense of time is limited. It lasted all day, into the overnight, the worst of them. I remember that.\nWe are now under a “heat dome” of high pressure, which means it will not rain, nor cool down, on my street for the duration.\nOn that note, I am posting my third year anniversary of writing this piece, the first year my AC was out, and the first year my thoughts came to me as words once again, after nearly 30 years. \nToday, I’m at over 3 years with no AC. This writing was done spontaneously, in three parts, all written in June 2023, as posts to my Facebook account, which is now disabled, as I lay withered, and wet with sweat, still afflicted with cremation-worthy heat, lasting deep into the night.\nI’d published Part 2 already on Bluesky, or maybe it was Part 3? I don’t recall. Bluesky is an app which isn’t conducive to thought longer than a little Gen Z short hand and acronyms (fmr bf, aio, 18f, aita), their code language (e.g., drag path, nice try diddy), and a few stylistic emojis to make their breakup messages to their girlfriends, boyfriends—or whomever, whatever they date—more “friendly” (😁💗💔💕✌🏻)\nIf you know me at all, you know I’m both loquacious and particular about my grammar and spelling, which makes my “drag paths” all the more longer, and my frustration at living with traumatic brain injury these many years and the expressive aphasia, all the worse. I’m not so much a perfectionist, as I am a completionist. Call it what you will. Tuh-may-toe, toe-mah-toe. Whatever. Part 2, which I put on Bluesky already, or Part 3, had to do with….a thunderstorm, right? Ah well. Whatever it was, I’ll put it back out, so you have the benefit of all three parts at once. Ta!\n_______\nRamble: Part I\nShort Preface. You must know two things to read this and understand. Three, actually. First, this was a quick Facebook post from the summer of 2023. Second, my air conditioning was out….in the south….in freaking Texas, for going on two years this March, in the year 2025. Third, my father had asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up after he’d read my very first poem, a haiku. After giving some thought to the question, and being at the tender age of seven, or perhaps six, I informed him I wanted to become a mermaid. And if that didn’t work out, I thought I’d probably be a veterinarian. I also told him I had no intention of marrying until I had my career sorted.\nIt seems I was right. That is exactly what I did. That last bit, anyway. At the rather ripe age of 53, I bumped into the man for whom I’d waited so many years. Nearly 50 of them, and almost the whole of my life up to that point. At any rate, this was written after I’d made my future plans, but a few months before I bumped into the man I affectionately call….well, anyway. \nHere is my “check-in” on Facebook, a short note I wrote in the form of a quick post directed towards my friends as to my status, on that heavy, airless and oppressively hot evening in June 2023.\n[begin]\nI’ve arrived for my daily misery report. The dogs are once again splayed all about, bellies up and paws adangle as they lie on their backs, deeply breathing in sleep, which hovers like thick fog in the room. The air is of the same temperature and humidity as warm pea soup. Only Tennyson stirs each time I gently push his hot little body away from mine. I cannot stand him so close. \nSleep has all but abandoned me. I’m sure it will come loudly stumbling in through the door, around 2 am, when I’ve just gotten comfortable enough to write my ponderings. It will seize the moment, as I will not expect it, then murder my ambitions, and suffocate me with an etheric, Laudunumsome drowsiness, until I am no more of the waking world.\nIf only I could find that cool place again, away from the furnace each room has become. I perhaps could slip out a window, run barefoot through wet fields, towards the nearest pond, where I’d pause for breath, then slip fully underwater, to converse freely with the lily pad roots and wild celery leaves, encumbered only by shadows of weeping willows whose long branches and foliage reach down into the water, hoping to evade the full moonlight.\nPlease don’t be surprised. I did tell you, darling, as a small child, I wanted to grow to a mermaid.\n[end]\n_________\nMore Ramblings: Part II\nPreface. I came across another quick post of mine from Facebook. I happened to find my old NYU poetry professor’s profile. Though it appears he’s abandoned it, I did find a few bits of his writing. I shared one of his posts (not included here) on my profile, and attached the below, my own writing, as well. I went off into a memory, naturally followed by some of my characteristic mischief:\n[begin]\nSo lovely. I suspect this was written by the resident poet at NYU, Mark Rudman, who was my Poetry I and II professor when I attended as an undergraduate.\nI can still see the shock and even anger of another writing professor named Fiona (fee•YOOOHHHN•ah). She was Irish. Small, elfish, and naturally fair. I remember she sat in a creaky little chair in front of a ubiquitous desk, in a dark and humble office she likely shared with the entire department of undergraduate writing professors.\nI sat facing her, in an old, less creaky wooden chair, as she hovered thoughtfully over my future, a file full of marks and notes she cradled in her lap, when she carefully pulled her tiny hands out from under it. Then began she, her dissertation as to my merits as a scholar of creative writing.\nI exclaimed, thinking to myself—Isn’t it obvious?!—“Fiona, I will learn doctoring! Silly girl! I cannot be a writer!”\nThe expression on her face betrayed her innermost thoughts. It was as though her senses were unexpectedly assailed by a sudden wave of fecking feculent odor drudged up from the most malodorous, befouled, swampy bowels imaginable. \nPoor woman. She had made considerable efforts during the preceding semester to train another layer of poets to, oh what’s the word?…..ferment? No. That’s almost a moldy connotation. To age, to mature, to follow in behind the former generation, I suppose, and start the long journey, one hopes it’s long anyway, to slowly ripen, discover our finer selves, as writers, of course, and eventually become……vintage.\nMaybe Fiona was right.\nYesterday, I was that mermaid, sitting on the floor of the glassy pond, talking to the lily pad roots and wild celery leaves.\nPerhaps today, I’ll be a writer.\nI have no other commitments at present, despite what you were told by the tree frogs. They lie.\n[end]\n________\nRamble, or rather, Rumble: Part III\n[begin]\n I was nearly asleep, lying in my bed, listening to the soft rain talk to the plants and beg the windows for entry. My cell phone had fallen onto my face again, though I still held it firmly in one hand. \nIt slowly…..what was I going to….write?………I don’t………(sigh)………remem…….(sleep)………\nSuddenly, a loud crackle of lightning boomed and shrieked simultaneously, ripping through the house as though the roof had been torn off and flung aside.\nI imagine lights came on all over the neighborhood, weary people issuing forth from their slumber to check for damage, thinking to themselves or softly mumbling, “That one sounded really close,” yet only seeing the impenetrable dark, before they shut the blinds or door again, and padded softly back to their beds, turning off the lights as they went. \nAt my house, I snapped awake and startled. At that moment, everything went black.\nThe amber glow that softly washed the floor in my bedroom doorway, withdrew back to the bulb. I had left only the one alight, over the kitchen sink, before retreating to bed, where I could lie under the brisk ceiling fan in a futile attempt to not be covered in sweat and damp air. The fan had begun to slow when it stopped whispering above me.\nFor a few moments only the screen of my phone glowed bright in the darkness.\nI heard nothing but rain. Everything in the house had shut down. Though it lasted only a moment.\nThe dogs in my bed woke at once, and looked about, thinking something terrible had just occurred. A little embarrassed they’d missed it, they tried to find their feet for an appropriate response. Whatever had startled them, whatever caused Tennyson to nearly roll off the side of the bed, was gone. However, some of them thought it worthy of a few perfunctory barks, to warn me danger was afoot. \nSomewhere. \nThen, with some small uncertainty, they circled a few paces atop the bedsheet I’d thrown off due to the heat, curled their little, warm bodies into soft, fur-laden balls, and tried to find their places again in dreams of vast, bright fields full of strange smells, waiting to be found………\n[end]\nCopyright ©️ 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026 W. M. Young\nAll rights strictly reserved.",
"title": "Well. Here We Are.",
"updatedAt": "2026-06-27T10:37:05+00:00"
}