I’m reading concussion stories, and my colleague Elaine Morin pointed out Lauren Groff’s excellent story in the New Yorker, The Midnight Zone. It’s full of truth and suspense and fractured thoughts and a fractured head and it took me, inevitably, to the reading of an interview with Groff, which was (sadly, for my purposes) more about motherhood than concussions, although both topics are writerly obsessions of mine, the former being a thirty-year obsession and the latter much newer.

(I read that last sentence three times, by the way, and it is technically grammatically correct. It is representative of the tangential way my mind works these days, and I’m keeping it as is. Welcome to the inside of my head.)

In the interview, Groff makes a great point about setting. The setting of the story is confined to a small cabin. Danger lurks outside, but also liberation. Asked about this, she says, “it’s psychologically easier to live if you believe you have an exit plan. It’s easier to run ten miles if you tell yourself that you can walk when you get to eight; it’s easier to work for four hours without a break if you keep the door to your office open; it’s easier to live with how we’re killing the planet if you believe the completely insane notion that humans will colonize Mars.”

She’s so right. And I love the way she extends the situation of the story to the much larger world. But back to concussions. Three years (plus) into this brain injury, I am still keeping the door open. It’s easier to live that way. It’s behind me, back there somewhere, even as I stare down the very real possibility that this is as good as it gets for me. Concussion and confinement go together. Concussed people avoid light and sound and people and life. I wonder if Groff made that connection? Do you ever wish you could talk to a writer and ask these questions, go deeper into something you find fascinating in their work?

Suffice it to say, I am now a Groff fan. Maybe one day I will get to talk to her about how she knows so much about brain injuries. Until then, I’ll keep reading concussion stories.