Imagine waking up one day and facing the fact that more than half of your lifespan is over…. and all you had worked and sacrificed to achieve meant nothing.
Who you were… Evaporated.
What you were… No longer viable.
Achievements… Pointless.
Your physical body… Significantly altered.
Your mind… Unstable with mental trauma DLC’s installed.
Rehab… Never-ending.
New injuries popping up from previous physical trauma.
Significant weight gain.
Limited mobility and endurance.
A self-educated, free spirited, highly independent person transformed overnight into what I felt was a codependent house husband. It crushed my spirit for years.
My most valuable assets could no longer be trusted – my intelligence and my ability to improve performance while under heavy pressure. After the wreck, I developed severe anxiety. The pressure of leaving the house to run simple errands had been known to initiate anxiety attacks.
To shorten this entry I’ll skip to this -All I have done since the wreck could be filed under the category of “existing”.
Then yesterday happened. I went to my provider for half a day of testing and psychological evaluation. Memory tests of varied types. Visual identification flip charts. Listen and recite in the order requested… etc, etc…
Roughly four hours of stress-testing my mind without distractions. Although nervous, I was a mix of curiosity and excitement… But in the back of my mind I was fearful – what if I bombed? Although the tests are made to be indicators and do not have pass/fail associations, I would be devastated if I performed poorly.
About half way through, the psych paused and made a comment that broke me.
“I’m already seeing a pattern… As the tests increase in difficulty, so does your performance. I can tell you’re highly intelligent and extraordinarily self aware.”
All I could think was “Heyyyy… there I am .” In that moment, I finally decided to pick up the one word that was left on the highway that day so many years ago…
Hope.
It was such an emotionally overwhelming moment that it was all I could do to maintain my composure. I finally found a part of me I recognized. It was never lost, just buried under mountains of trauma. It needed time to work in the background sorting through everything.
Now that I have been reintroduced to my toolkit, my plan is to get back to working on the new version of me and how I can be a better human for myself as well as for those who choose to be around me.
Off The Rails 
As long as there is breath there is hope 💜💜💜 (I won’t say I told you so 😛).
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