Excerpt: “On Being ‘Sick in the Head’”

Haley Hamilton’s essay collection, I Can Explain: Essays, Apologies, and Clarifications, seeks to remind readers that not being able to make peace—or even negotiate a ceasefire—with our own pasts, quirks, and neuroses doesn’t mean we’re losing . . . it means we’re alive. The following excerpt is from an essay in the collection that explores the relationship between tragedy and comedy.

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My favorite part of stand up comedy is the space that hovers between a punch line and a laugh. It’s where all the processing takes place for the audience and the performer. You can read the comic’s face in the silence that hangs between the end of the joke and whether or not the crowd gets it, which, let’s be honest, doesn’t always happen: Sometimes it—the joke or the crowd—just isn’t that good.

But a good punchline lands just like its namesake. There’s a pause and then a cheer that starts, silently, in the performer’s chest and ripples out into the crowd. Whether it’s with your words or with your body, the space between the hit and the cheer is something you inhabit. Especially when things go wrong.

It was towards the end of the second half of the second scrimmage and I was blocking, holding my position within five feet of the pack to allow our blockers to hold the other team’s jammer back as long as possible. In roller derby, the pack is defined as the group of skaters of the most members of both teams within five feet of one another. As long as there are no more than five feet between you and the next skater, you’re considered fair game.

I never saw it coming. I was watching the pack make its way to the first turn of the track, jockeying for our blockers’ best positions in my mind, when I went over backwards. I’d been so focused on watching the play going on ahead of me I’d forgotten I was technically still in play.

When my head hit the ground it was almost an afterthought. Had I been caught slightly more on guard I might have kept it from happening at all, but the second I heard the crack of my helmet snapping against the smooth-poured concrete we skated on I knew something was wrong. A space of before and after had opened up.

When I sat down in the front seat of my ride home’s car and shut the door I felt almost encased in silence. It had been noisy inside the old commercial garage we practiced in but not loud; not like I’d just walked outside an EDM show for some air, which was how I felt. I’d been craving a lack of sound without knowing it.

“It feels really good in here,” I said to my friend.

She looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“It’s quiet.”

Now she looked concerned. “I think you might have really hit your head.”

A sad, small smile plucked up the corners of my lips. I could tell it was sad by the way it felt.

“Yeah,” I said. “I think so, too.”

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