Snapping the Fuckstick

If you’re recovering from a head injury, suffering a tweaked ankle usually doesn’t register as a major issue.

It’s about as far from the head as you can get—literally, and figuratively. It doesn’t hurt all that much, certainly not compared to the agony of traumatic brain injuries. Most of the time, all it does is make you limp a little, and feel a bit sheepish.

But in my case, this little tweaked ankle became the very centre of my existence. I sat on the couch in our rented apartment in London, rubbing it, staring at it with a mix of frustration and puzzled, confounded betrayal. Because this little overworked tendon in my ankle was the only thing standing between me, and full recovery from a head injury that I’d dealt with for nearly four years. An injury that came to define every aspect of my existence. I was so close to complete recovery, and now along came this little ankle fuck-up, threatening to ruin everything.

I’d better explain.

—

At the end of 2018, a speaker fell on my head.

I was trying to move an IKEA bookcase, and didn’t register that there was a home theater speaker perched precariously on top. It fell off, and all eight pounds of it hit me on the top of my head, corner first. I didn’t black out, but I was very confused for a while, and boy oh boy, there was a lot of blood.

Of course, I had a concussion. I’d had them before, in various situations, and the fun thing with concussions is that the more you have, the more you risk getting something called Post Concussion Syndrome (PCS). Most concussed people recover in a week or two. My symptoms stuck around. Not for three weeks, or four. Not for a few months.

I had PCS for almost four years.

Here’s how it was explained to me. My vestibular system—the part of my brain that controls motion, head position, and spatial orientation—had been damaged. My eyes and ears worked fine, but my brain couldn’t interpret the signals it was getting. Its conclusion? RED ALERT RED ALERT ACTION STATIONS. Time to batten down the hatches and tighten up all muscles around the head, neck and shoulders, to prepare for another hit.

My brain was in a perpetual state of panic and threat, and the result was pain. Endless, gnawing, agonising pain.

You’ll have to forgive me for reducing this to pathos. For years, my traps, neck and shoulders simply would not loosen. My panicked brain wouldn’t let me sleep, leaving me with crippling insomnia. Any attempt to challenge my balance—even something as innocuous as a long-ish walk—sent my system into overdrive. Panic attacks became frequent. My overworked, overstressed body contracted three colds in the space of two months, followed by a ripping sinus infection that left me dizzy and nauseous. In the middle of the summer, I was laid low by a stomach bug for four long weeks, a bug I couldn’t shake no matter how hard I tried.

Fragmented memories from this period: sitting in the bathroom, clutching my head, sobbing in waves that shook my whole body. Pacing the house at three in the morning, absolutely certain that I’d lost the ability to sleep for good, struck with terror so complete and total that it was like electricity coursing through my body. Trying to write, failing, forced out of my chair as bolts of horrid pain ripped through my neck and my upper back.

There were other factors, of course—a new dog that needed taking care of, a tough work situation, multiple doctors who not only couldn’t tell me what was wrong but didn’t appear to care much—but what it came down to was that my brain was very badly damaged, and wasn’t getting better.

—

To recover from PCS, you have to rebuild the fried connections in your brain. Like rehabbing a torn muscle, you have to gently challenge it to get it built up again, so it can deal with heavier stresses down the road. For my particular flavour of PCS, that meant training my eye-tracking and balance. Twice a day, I had to perform a series of exercises involving me following a moving point in various directions with my eyes, often while walking or squatting. There were other exercises, too—my favourite was marching back and forth while reading out loud a series of words printed in different, conflicting colours (think the word ‘black’, only printed in pink). You will never feel more stupid than marching up and down a corridor going "Red. Black. Pink. Fuck. Black. Gree—no, red. Blue. Arse. Shit. Grurple. Purple."

But mostly, it was following that moving point.

My concussion therapist said that most people used a fingertip, but she suggested something more formal: a popsicle stick, with an X drawn on it. Move the stick, follow the X. Back and forth, in and out, side to side, up and down.

You cannot believe—even I couldn’t believe—the depth of hatred I would come to have for this little tool. I did not think it was possible to hold bitter, seething enmity for a piece of wood, but it was. It was almost laughably easy to overdo the exercises, and put my system into overload. More pain, more lost sleep. I had to psyche myself up to get my training done, every single day.

A particular exercise called pencil pushups—a simple thing, really, moving the popsicle stick in towards the bridge of my nose, then out again, following it with my eyes—left me in agony. I would rather drop and give you fifty pushups right now, right this second, than ever have to do another pencil pushup again. At my best, I could manage five. Five.

I called my little wooden companion the Fuckstick. And I swore to myself that when I was better, when I had finally, finally brought my brain back to pre-concussion levels, I would destroy it. Snap it in half, burn it, piss on the ashes.

Ridiculous, right? No. The unfathomable loathing I had for this damn thing was deeper and blacker than I would ever have thought possible. When I did manage to sleep, I would drift off to pleasant fantasies of utterly obliterating the Fuckstick from existence.

In and out. Side to side. Back and forth. Round and round we go.

—

A little over a year and a half after my bump on the head, Covid shut down the world.

I won’t dwell on what it was like, because you know what it was like. But I’d made some progress in my own recovery, and in April of 2020, I decided to start running. I wanted to be fit, and made the not unreasonable assumption that it would benefit my recovery—and crucially, that I had made enough progress to handle it.

There is a great program called Couch to 5K, created by the UK’s National Health Service. It’s brilliant. It’s a completely free app which asks you to do three runs a week, gradually increasing in intensity. At the start, you’ll run for sixty seconds, walk for ninety, repeat. This gradually increases, removing all walks around week four. It continues until you’re running for half an hour nonstop—five kilometres, or three and a half miles to those of you in America, Liberia and Myanmar who still haven’t figured out the metric system. Along the way, you’re coached by your choice of cheerful UK radio DJ. I chose the elegant Jo Whiley, bought some running shoes, and set to it.

Big mistake.

Running is all about balance. It’s a controlled forward fall, after all. While I was quite comfortable completing the runs themselves, egged on by Whiley, the pain afterwards was absolutely brutal. Among the worst I’d felt. My system simply couldn’t cope with a bobbing head, rapid leg motion, and pumping arms. This wasn’t a matter of fitness—walk for sixty seconds and run for ninety is really not a huge level of challenge, even at the start. It wasn’t my shoes—they were (and are) Hoka One One Cliftons, considered by the running community to be excellent shoes. But my brain wouldn’t have it. Running slower didn’t help. Fixing my form with a trainer didn’t help.

After a week and a half—four runs—I shut it down. Demoralised, disheartened, I went back to my goddamn pencil pushups. In and out. Side to side. Back and forth.

And in the depths of this—it really did feel like being deep underwater—I swore to myself that I’d finish what I started. When I could run five kilometres without stopping, and without side effects, I would consider myself a hundred per cent cured. And I would destroy the fucking Fuckstick.

—

Two very long years later, in 2022, I was ready to try again.

I had continued with my balance exercises, and I’d seen significant progress. Pencil pushups no longer caused me to hyperventilate in terror. Crucially, I’d also done a hell of a lot of work in actual therapy—sitting with a counselor and unpacking the trauma of the injury. I really can’t state how much of a difference this made. I won’t get into the nitty gritty details, but I will say this: everybody needs therapy. Everybody.

The more observant of you will no doubt be asking: why exactly did I need to run 5K to be ‘cured’? Why this obsession with such an arbitrary point? And you’re correct, of course. For all intents and purposes, I was cured. My day-to-day life had returned to what it was pre-concussion. But running 5K felt like unfinished business. Moreover, I’d been fighting this fight for too long. I didn’t want it to fizzle out; I wanted to make if official. I wanted to beat my concussion. No: I wanted to vanquish it. I wanted to stand over its bloody corpse. Fuck you, head injury. It’s over. I win.

I wanted to snap that Fuckstick. And I wanted to make an event of it.

My overall levels of pain were at the lowest they’d been for years. So in June, I laced up, opened the Couch to 5K app on my phone, and gave it another shot. No Jo Whiley this time. No more 90s hip-hop, which was my go-to. This was a goddamn war, and I wanted war music. I opted for power metal—big, stupid, bombastic and ridiculous, like I was riding forth on my charger to fuck up Sauron.

No Mobb Deep. No Nas. No Onyx. I wanted bands with names like Battlebeast and Nightwish, Epica and Amorphis. And for a coach, I wanted someone who would perk me up when I was struggling; say hello to Reece Parkinson, of BBC Radio 1Xtra. Just the right amount of cheerful and cajoling, a coach who manages the difficult trick of being encouraging without getting on your nerves.

My course was the most easy-going, gentle track I could find: the Spirit Trail, a gently meandering path running alongside the North Vancouver seawall. The weather was perfect: not too hot, a slight breeze, not a cloud in the sky. But still, I don’t mind saying that I was quietly shitting myself ahead of my first run. Every what-if I’d ever had was collectively buzzing around my brain like a swarm of exasperating bees. Sure, I was mostly pain free…but what if I was wrong? What if the pain was just lying in wait? What would it mean if I regressed?

Only one way to find out.

The first run went fine. No pain, during or after. The second one was the same. And gradually, I began to make progress. Week two. Week three. I ran for three minutes. Then five. Then eight. And I began to think: am I going to actually do this?

Remember: at this point, I’d lived with a head injury for over three years. I had become so used to it that even the idea of being cured felt strange. Was I actually going to put it behind me? After all this time? It didn’t feel real.

Of course, it was hard. It’s running. Running sucks. You don’t need me to tell you that, and I won’t bore you with the drudgery of the runs. But the power metal really did help—every moment, even the boring ones, felt drenched in legend. An epic quest that only I could complete. Well, me, and my cheeky, chirpy radio DJ sidekick, who occasionally popped into my earbuds to tell me I was doing great and that he was really proud of me.

Week five. Six. Seven.

For the final two weeks, I was going to be in London. My sister was having her first kid, and I wanted to be around to be a good big brother. I had only a vague idea of what that would entail—cooking meals, doing pharmacy runs, boiling water, standing around and mumbling encouraging remarks—but I wanted to be there. And it meant that I would beat my concussion while surrounded by my family. That felt good. It felt right.

The three runs of week eight took place in Hyde Park, and alongside the Thames. I was running for twenty-eight minutes now. I felt strong and capable, the runs coming easy now. There was a light growing inside my chest, one that stuck around even after the runs were done. This was going to happen. I was really going to do it. Every pencil pushup, every agonising moment with the Fuckstick, every tortuous session with my long-suffering therapist…it all came down to this.

I might have to hold off burning the Fuckstick until I got back to Vancouver—I didn’t want to set a fire in my parents’ garden, and didn’t feel like having the cops arrest me for starting one in a public park—but snap it? Oh yes. Oh yes indeed.

Fuck you. It’s over. I win.

I completed the final run of week eight alongside the imposing edifice of Battersea Power Station. The way Couch to 5K works is that every run in the final week is thirty minutes long—that means that you run the 5k in the very first run of week nine. That’s what I would be doing in two days’ time. I didn’t know which route I’d take, didn’t even want to dare think about it, even at this late stage. But I would. I even knew the exact playlist of songs I’d run to. London was bright and sunny and I had a new baby nephew and I was going to kick Sauron’s ass.

But you already know what happened next.

—

The night before my 5k attempt, my left ankle began to hurt.

Not the regular gentle ache of a long run; this was a sharp pain, running along the front of the foot up the ankle. And it wouldn’t go away, no matter how hard I stretched it and worked it.

It was clear that I wouldn’t be running the next day. Maybe not the day after that. And no matter what I did, the pain just got worse. Somehow—through poor warmups, or through simple bad luck—I had injured myself. On the cusp of beating this thing, I had to shut it down. Again.

It’s hard for me to write about this, mostly because it feels pathetic. Why was I chasing after such a pointless goal? What did it matter if I ran for two minutes more? Hadn’t I already beaten this thing? Hadn’t I put in the work? I could snap the Fuckstick right now, and have done with it.

All of that was correct, and none of it helped. I felt robbed. As if the Fuckstick, sensing its end, had unleashed one final play to stay in the fight. And it was a good play, because the doubts came roaring back. What if my running form was irretrievably fucked? What if I rehabbed, fought my way back…and got injured again? Winter was coming, and winters in BC can be miserable. Was I going to be able to do this in the pouring, freezing rain? What if I slipped, and hurt myself even worse?

What if I banged my head again?

The front of my foot felt like someone had pinned the muscle in place, and every movement sent a rolling wave of pain up to my knee. A physio told me I’d badly strained my ligaments, and that it would take a few weeks to heal. He gave me some exercises to do, but said that it was mostly time. I nodded, and said nothing. I didn’t have words.

—

Back in Vancouver, it took a good four weeks before I was ready to go again.

I wasn’t so stupid as to jump right back into week eight. The last thing I wanted was another injury. No, I would have to take a step back, all the way to week four. I wasn’t going to do all the runs again, but I would have to do a few easier ones to start. The fitness, fortunately, wasn’t an issue. I added several exercises to my warmup routine, focusing on ankles and hamstrings. I spent more time stretching after my runs.

Right as I started, the air quality in Vancouver plummeted. Multiple fires in various locations gave us a weekend with the worst air quality in the world—worse than Delhi, worse than Dubai. Running was out of the question—hell, going outside was out of the question. I had to laugh—it was hard not to picture the Fuckstick engineering this, reaching out into the wider world and stopping me running altogether.

I was, fortunately, aware of how self-absorbed this thought was—not to mention selfish. Against horrific fires, my runs weren’t even worth mentioning.

The air slowly cleared. My runs slowly began to get longer. My ankle complained every so often…but it always settled down. I hit week eight—by this time, I wasn’t thinking of much else. The 5k had taken on an outsize importance in my head, dogging my thoughts. The Fuckstick sat in the pen mug on my desk, dumb and insensate. Mocking me. But I could sense its fear, even as I carefully monitored my body for signs of rebellion.

I completed a twenty-eight minute run on the first of October, with a plan to do one more before the big push. I had, miraculously, managed to rehab my fucked ankle. All the same, I found myself tense and anxious after the run, waiting for the familiar tightness, the twinge. It didn’t come. Good old Reece Parkinson was getting more excited, reminding me that I was this close, marveling at how far I’d come.

The night before my second twenty-eight-minute run, I decided I was going for the full thirty. I was done waiting. It was time to go big.

Tomorrow, the Fuckstick dies.

—

There was no-one in the house when I laced up my running shoes at around four PM on October 4th. My wife was out with the dog, and it was just me. I had a drink from the tap, looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. Three and a half years. Three and a half years of pain, frustration, fear. Panic attacks and uncertainty. Three and a half years of a broken mind. Three and a half years underwater.

I use a running belt, which holds my phone and my earbud case. Today, it held another piece of cargo. The Fuckstick itself, tucked at the small of my back. I reached behind me and touched it through the fabric, not looking away from my reflection.

“This ends now,” I snarled at myself. In the mirror, my eyes were cold.

I knew how ridiculous this all was—how overblown and dramatic I’d made this ultimately small thing. I didn’t give a fuck. This was my story. My war. If I wanted to act like I was vanquishing a dragon at the end of the world, then I would. Nobody was going to stop me.

I locked the back door, and began my warm-up walk.

—

It would make a better story, wouldn’t it, if things went wrong on the final run?

If my ankle began to hurt, if a thunderclap headache struck me down, if a sudden lightning storm forced me to abandon ship.

But I had done the work. I had put in the hard miles. And in the end, those thousands of steps were very, very powerful. The running wasn’t easy—I don’t think running ever gets easy—but my form was dialed in. Quick cadence, light feet, arms tucked, tall posture. Calm, controlled breathing. The sidewalk rolled underneath me as the most epic of power metal rung in my ears.

All the same, it was only at the twenty minute mark that I realised I was going to do it. That there was nothing—not a single thing—that could stop me. A meteor could come crashing out of the sky, and I would just dodge through the debris. A volcano could erupt, and I would swerve around it. The entire Cascadia fault line could undergo a full margin rupture and rock the Pacific Northwest with a 9.0 quake, and I'd just jump my way across the chunks of cracked and shaking earth.

My goddamn foot could tear right off my leg, and I would hop the last ten minutes. The other foot could go, and I would crawl. At that moment, I understood what it meant to be completely and totally unstoppable. In the words of Thanos, I was inevitable. The feeling was too big to process. Too complex.

There is a particular track from the band Nightwish called The Greatest Show on Earth. It is twenty-four minutes long, and rises to a climax midway through with a gigantic explosion. I had fiddled with my playlist—and you would not believe how much fiddling and faddling it took—so that my thirty minute, five kilometre run would end right at that point. As Reece Parkinson shouted with glee that I had one minute! One minute to go!, this is what I heard:

I was exhausted. Of course I was exhausted. But as the timer ticked down, I began to run faster. Then to sprint. Arms pumping. Sweat flying.

My run was scheduled to finish on the seawall, between the water and a gently-sloping park. As the final notes of the song played, I vaulted onto the grass, giving it everything I had. Time slowed, preserved in amber, the end tantalisingly close, Reece stretching it out, until—

As Nightwish detonated in a huge explosion, and Reece came into my ears to tell me I’d run 5K, I collapsed onto all fours. A roar ripped its way out of my chest—that’s truly what it felt like, an animal clawing at my ribcage—causing everyone in the park to look at me like I’d gone mad. I didn’t care. I rolled onto my back, letting out another animal howl, pounding my chest.

Fuck you. It’s over. I WON.

Usually, any run is followed by a warm down walk, but not that day. I crawled over to a nearby tree, slumped against the trunk. Chest rising and falling, staring out at the water.

There were no tears. I thought they’d come—I could feel them starting to gather, pricking at the edges of my eyes. My breath had turned ragged, fluttery. But the tears didn’t fall. The overwhelming knowledge that I was going to win no matter what had been replaced with a blankness so vast, so wide, that I couldn’t even begin to process it. It was like looking out at the Grand Canyon for the first time. You didn't think that much empty space could exist.

Slowly, almost without realising I was doing it, my hand went behind my back, fingers snagging the Fuckstick.

It was time.

I pulled it out. Held it by either end. This piece of wood that had come to symbolise everything wrong with me. That had tortured me for years. It wouldn’t take much to snap it; a single, clean jerk, and it would be done. The moment I had fantasised about was here.

I gave it a little bit of pressure, and—

Stopped.

You probably think I’m making this up. That I contrived this turn of events, to make for a more satisfying story. But all I can tell you is that I didn’t. Until that moment, on my honour, I planned to snap the thing in two. That was all I was thinking about.

I held the Fuckstick for a long time. Five minutes went by. Ten. Just me and this piece of wood. I stared at it, felt its familiar grain under the pads of my fingers, took in the crooked X I’d drawn with Sharpie, three years ago. Sharpie make good pens; that X was as clear and black as the day I drew it.

I turned it this way and that. As the Nightwish song in my ears finally wound down to nothing, I stood. Tucked the Fuckstick in my pocket.

Then I went home.

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