Chapter 6 - One trivial decision

I remember sitting on the couch watching League Of Legends [a computer game] on my laptop and debating if I should just stay home or if I should go down to my spot, just up Boulder Creek past Eben G. Fine Park; It’s almost comical how vividly I can remember that moment, given how bad my memory can be. After a short, somewhat awkward, period of deliberation I said, “fuck it, I’m going down there,” and I loaded my backpack with some extra clothes, my camera bag filled with cans of beer, and my ultralight packable hammock, hopped on my bike and took off towards the creek.

Within minutes, I was on Boulder Creek path cruising up the two-lane bike path. To this day I can still remember the smell of the trees, the grass, and the creek and still distinctly remember that particular weight of the pedals on my fixed gear bicycle; perhaps because it was one of the last times I would remember having actual control over my body.

Given that it was late August and the students of CU Boulder had yet to return (Boulder is a town of about 100,000 people, 30,000 of which are students who leave during the summer) there were only a few people up at the park, and even fewer people as you continued up the creek and into the woods. My favorite spot was just past a small sandy area where larger groups of people/ families typically hung out. The spot was just past all of the commotion, but before the area where younger groups hung out, smoked, and drank.

To hang my hammock up I would climb up a small tree that laid against a large (oak) tree which was probably 2.5 – 3 ft in diameter, and I would sling the webbing for the hammock around the tree, hoping to catch it with my other hand as it came around the other side. Once I had attached that side to the tree as high as possible (about 15 feet up) I would clip one side of the hammock to that webbing and clip the other side to my belt loops so I didn’t lose it while climbing the other tree. I would then climb down and traverse my way up a set of three smaller trees to be able to loop the other side of the webbing around the medium-sized tree about 10 feet from the first.

This is where things would get sketchy. I would then have to climb above the level of the hammock, hang on to a smaller branch, and lower myself into the hammock below, which when no one was in it, wasn’t more than 6 inches wide. I had done this move dozens and dozens of times and had become quite comfortable, possibly overly comfortable, with the maneuver.

Once inside the hammock, everything felt quite stable and the thought of somehow accidentally ending up not being in the hammock quickly faded from my conscious thoughts. I always wanted to be social and hang around people, only to quickly realize that I don’t like people and these interactions make me uncomfortable. My hammock spot perfectly reflected this mentality. I was essentially positioned just in place to people watch large groups and have other people pass underneath my hammock, unaware I was even there. Every now and then, someone would look up and realize I was there and might make a comment in passing, just brief enough of an interaction to satisfy my ego, while not long enough for me to get significantly uncomfortable. Besides, I had noticed that the type people who looked up and noticed me were already more likely to be people I despised a little less (for example, one guy, impressed with my spot, climbed up to check it out, and as an offering for the intrusion handed me two tabs of acid, wished me a good day, and disappeared off into the woods - a very “Boulder” interaction/experience). The hammock was set up high enough to where, on multiple occasions, people would hang their hammock underneath me without ever realizing I was there; once, people double stacked their hammocks under me and didn’t notice I was there until they managed to climb into their hammocks and look up.

The temperature on that day was just on the borderline of T-shirt weather and sweater weather, where, as long as you are moving it felt like the world was specifically designed for you to wear T-shirts but as soon as you stood still for more than two minutes your body constantly received tiny little signals that something was off “are you cold? No, it’s fine, right? No, I think you might be cold...” Laying in my hammock, facing downstream, my gaze would go back and forth between the book I was reading (deep down things - Schumm) and the handful of people who had set up shop in that small sandy area. Honestly, I was mostly just watching the dogs run up and down the banks of the creek. After building a light sweat setting up and getting in the hammock, I had been reading for 10 or 15 minutes when I started to notice the breeze was perhaps a little too refreshing? I was starting to get cold, something I had prepared for (thinking back to my days of NOT being in the Boy Scouts, the motto “always be prepared” was burned into my memory). I reached into my backpack and grabbed my gray wool sweater, which in retrospect looks good and fits well, but was objectively a bit uncomfortable. I turned sideways in the hammock to let my feet hang down, making it easier to put on my sweater. I laced my arms through the sleeves, pulled the sweater up to my shoulders, and went to pull the sweater over my head and pop my head through the neck hole.

That’s about point when shit hit the fan, I heard a large tear, as my stomach hurriedly made its way into my throat. Fuck, I was in freefall. They say time slows down when things like this happen, but I think it’s just our brain expanding the memory, because as soon as I realized I was falling my body had been folded in half from sliding through the hole in my hammock and my feet had exited and rotated my body 180° and the earth punched me in the back of my head. I went back and calculated that, as it turns out, I was in freefall for almost exactly 1 second and reached a speed of just over 21 mph. Even with my background in physics, the idea of me hitting the ground at 21 mph seems much less significant than getting hit in the back of the head by a planet moving 21 mph [they are functionally equivalent]. Perspective is a hell of a thing.

I had landed in a spot just next to a medium-size boulder, in a little ditch where a tree had been uprooted. I could feel small twigs and rocks sticking in the back of my head but couldn’t really assess the full extent of what had just happened. I saw a younger hippie guy walking by and tried to call out, but there was that familiar inability to breathe or make sounds. Honestly, thank God he didn’t hear me or see me (I don’t actually believe in God) because moments later a woman and her daughter popped into my field of view and she introduced herself to me as a nurse who is on vacation here with family. To this day I don’t remember her name but wish more than anything I could tell her thank you. She kept everyone away and wouldn’t let anyone move me, despite me stating numerous times how uncomfortable of a position I was in. The only reason I have any function below my neck, given my 0 years of medical experience, is because she prevented anyone from moving me and further damaging my neck.

She asked what she could do and what I wanted to do next. At this point she had been sitting with me for a few minutes, her daughter was holding my left hand, which I couldn’t feel at all. It became fairly clear that not only could I not move anything except for my right arm, I also couldn’t feel anything. The obvious answer was to call 911, the realization had already set in that I really fucked up this time. Oddly, there was very little panic, mostly because I had been diagnosed with severe panic disorder and the number of other anxiety related issues. My anxiety seems to work a bit like flying a small plane in a storm, in that the higher you go the more severe things get, but at a certain point you burst through the top of the clouds and things suddenly calm down, providing an odd moment of clarity. I remember the nurse asking me what I wanted to do more than once and just being shocked no one had called 911 already; I still had the awareness to turn on customer service mode and politely ask for someone to call the paramedics.

I’m not sure how much time passed before they arrived, that portion of my memory is definitely a little bit suspect. I remember detailed flashbacks in chronological order, but how much time passes between those moments is entirely unclear. Two minutes, five minutes, half an hour, have we been waiting for four hours? In reality, it was probably only about 15 minutes. I think the paramedics showed up expecting some sort of mountain rescue for a fallen climber. I remember the sticks, rocks, and roots sticking into my neck and the back of my head and wanting desperately to move. The nurse, to her credit, reassured me that it wasn’t causing any significant damage but moving me could be really dangerous. Her daughter sat, holding my now useless hand, trying to reassure me things would be ok.

Throughout all of this, the nurse and her daughter, as well as the paramedics, asked me a number of times who they should contact. At this point I guess I should explain that at that time my dad was living in France, my sister was living in Tokyo, and my mother had passed away a number of years before due to ovarian cancer. It almost made me giggle thinking about how to explain to them how to get a hold of my family. Honestly, I don’t remember who I told but they managed to send emails to my sister and dad telling them that I’ve had an accident and was in the hospital/going in for surgery. Probably not the email you want to receive at some ridiculous hour in the morning or having it be the thing you wake up to.

With all the contact information out of the way it was time to get down to business. At some point I remember being wheeled through the hospital after having x-rays taken, with the surgeon standing over me giving me the rundown on the extent of the damage. I had sustained burst fractures to the C5 and C6 vertebrae and a Jefferson fracture of the C1 vertebra, though, I think the Jefferson fracture is just a burst fracture of the C1 vertebra. If you imagine the C1 vertebra as a ring of bone at the very top of the spine surrounding the spinal cord, I basically snapped that ring in the front and back. It may seem strange to say but I got lucky, I should probably be dead this point. Which, makes me all the more grateful for the anonymous nurse and her daughter who quite literally saved my life by doing nothing and making sure nobody else did anything. To whoever you are, wherever you are, thank you, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Snap back to reality, it’s decision time.

“You have two options: you can go in for surgery now or you can wait and allow the inflammation to possibly go down.”

All I could think was, how the fuck am I supposed to know the implications of either option? What a bad time to realize you are unprepared for a pop quiz. Though, my life of procrastination and inability to properly prepare for anything scholastic had trained me well… cheat off of the smartest kid in proximity (or perhaps a more politically correct twist might be, have the smartest kid in the room tutor you).

So, I turned to the surgeon and asked, “What would you do?”

“I’d go for the surgery.”

I guess the surgeon going for the surgery seems fairly obvious. But then again, to assume anything is actually obvious is a great way to fail the quiz. Also, thinking back, it’s a bit funny to have someone who just dropped 15 ft. onto their head, make such a critical decision, but I’m sure they had evaluated my competence at some point...

“OK, let’s do it then.”

Fade to black, falling into the rabbit hole (abyss)…

It wasn’t until 5 years later that the idea that I could have died during the surgery to repair my spine would even register. I think my natural sense of invincibility from my childhood (I was convinced I could step into the street because I could stop the oncoming truck or climb into the lion pen because they would play with me; I’m sure most parents of boys are familiar) was reinforced by my extensive medical/ accident history; leaving me to essentially never question my own mortality. Not even when my mom died in front of me, did I ever think about my own death. I definitely joked about not making it passed 30 years old on a regular basis, and despite only making it 18 days past my 30th birthday before breaking my neck, dying just didn’t occur to me when it came down to it.

Chapter 5 - Prom

I never really felt like I fit in anywhere or with any particular group of people. I floated around from group to group, every now and then finding a good friend who I would then spend the majority of my time with. Even so, I felt like an outsider, I felt like everyone else was so authentic and had their own personalities and here I was, just a fun dip stick without the powder. I felt like this my entire life, like I was just trying to figure out how people work, the majority of which I did through imitation. To this day I find it incredibly difficult not to pick up/mimic the habits of those around me, an ingrained skill I learned as a child to seem like an actual person. I had major confidence issues (I’m not sure why I feel as if I’ve conquered these or have the right to boast about them being in the past) and so when prom came about, the thought of asking someone to prom and forcing them to either reject me or go to prom with someone they didn’t want to was mortifying and I’m pretty sure I didn’t ask anyone. The whole neck brace thing didn’t exactly fill my teenage self with confidence either.

My friend Jeremy always had a way of making me feel like I was less weird or that I was actually tolerable as a person. We would hop in his silver Volvo S60 after school and just drive around for hours listening to music; I can still smell the “new car smell” air freshener spray that permeated the cabin. He had one of those old zipper cases that hold 64 CDs, filled with everything from electronic music to musical soundtracks; the soundtrack to Batboy the musical is still burned into my memory…

“In a cave many miles to the south

Lives a boy born with fangs in his mouth.

Sleeping until the fading light,

Flying through bloody dreams;

When he awakes the summer night is filled with screams.”

The adventures were always aimless, but I have so many good memories from them. It was Jeremy who eventually convinced me to go to prom in his group, with his girlfriend, and a few other people.

I remember getting dressed that day and trying to put on a tie only to realize that there was no way a tie was going to fit under the neck brace that I had on. I already felt weird enough not having a tux, but given that I had broken my neck and all subsequent accidents, I just didn’t care enough to get one. I figured I’d go without a tie, but a family friend [the mother of the first person I slept with] offered a bolo tie, which I figured was better than nothing, I may have (definitely) misjudged that decision. The combination of that suit, bolo tie, glasses, and neck brace felt oddly reminiscent of an 8th grade science project I had cobbled together from shit around the house the night before it was due because I had done fuck all preparation.

To be honest, thinking back, I’m not sure what my motivation for going was. I looked like shit, felt like shit, and was going alone. Maybe it was one of those things where when you look at a car crash and you simultaneously slow down and start to steer toward it because you’re looking in that direction. Or, more likely, I was having one of those delusions where I thought someone would fall in love with me at the dance. I think I was secretly hoping for a “(s)he’s all that” moment where somebody sees past my glasses and neck brace and I turn out to be a supermodel, which, spoiler alert, much to my chagrin, did not happen [neither the recognition nor turning into a supermodel].

Despite all of the circumstances that framed what could have been a disaster of an experience, I remember having a pretty good time, or at minimum, I only remember the good parts. Part of the reason I had a good time is just that those types of events are not very important to me; but the real reason it was a positive experience was because I was surrounded by a bunch of other weirdo friends, who can make any experience a good one. It’s like getting injured and being in significant pain and one of your friends hits you with the perfect joke that just makes you want to stab them, not fatally, but a healthy little stab… “how dare you make me laugh when I am in this much pain!?” I’ve taken skateboards and full beer cans to the face but I remember bleeding with a smile because of my dumb ass friends. Going to jail sucks… going to jail with a friend!? … still sucks, but at least you’ll get a few more giggles out of it.

Looking back, my favorite people in the world were and are the weirdest people; by being unique, they offer the most interesting stories/ experiences/ perspectives. The more “normal” a person is, the more carbon copies of their personalities you can find. I have a lot of weirdness in my brain, but very little gets out, and that’s boring; don’t be like me, let your weirdness out, the world needs more of it.

Chapter 4 - Car Accident

After breaking my neck, I didn’t just quit baseball, I continued to attend the practices and games and hung out with my teammates. As far as I knew, I would be playing with them again next year, my senior year. Little did I know, this accident and not playing baseball this season ended up having a dramatic effect on the course my life would take. Anyway, on this particular day, I think it was the first day of the conference tournament. Our team did well during the regular season and we were ranked first and therefore got to play the eighth-place team from JFK high school. We were out at their field playing an away game, I had driven separately from the team so that I could leave early to go to a doctor’s/psychiatrist appointment (don’t remember which). Just like the year before that, we were losing, and things weren’t exactly looking like they were going to turn around. At some point I recognized that my moral support was providing fuck all tangible support to the team and I decided I could leave. At this point, I should mention that I’m pretty sure I’d taken one of the painkillers for my neck, but in no way felt slowed or impaired. I hopped in my dad’s 2002 Subaru WRX, in that world rally blue that is just burned into my memory from years of watching rally and countless hours spent washing the car… I loved that car.

In any case, I took off heading down Highway 40 towards the Washington University medical campus. Throughout the drive I found my consciousness being dragged down, out of the world around me, and into the realm of sleep. I would snap back to consciousness, only having lost a few seconds, but going 70 miles an hour down the highway, it is definitely not ideal to lose a few seconds (at 70 mph, you traverse just over 102 feet each second). Instead of stopping, I figured I could push through, like I’d done a number of times previously. Now, you can probably guess what happened next… My brain shut off for just the right amount time, at just the right place on the highway, and I woke up to the road gently sweeping right as I continued straight. I’m not sure if I woke up just before or as a result of hitting the highway median, but I was sure as fuck awake now. The left side of the car leapt into the air, climbing the highway median as I was ricocheted back towards the center of the road. The car came slamming down destroying the suspension components on the left-hand side of the car (wheels, brakes, wishbones, suspension… all obliterated). Given that I was going about 70 miles an hour, the car continued to slide across the highway for a while and as I rotated around, I distinctly remember seeing the car that was driving behind me slowing down and the driver, wide eyed, just watching the disaster unfold before them. It must’ve been a hell of a show for them… honestly, it was objectively entertaining on my end - minus the horror that is wrecking your dad’s car due to unadulterated stupidity. I ended up sliding all the way to the far-right side of the highway where my car came to a stop just after the on ramp from Kings Highway. I’m pretty sure it was the driver who was behind me who stopped and called 911.

Thankfully, I had crashed on the highway, probably within 500 yards of the hospital, so it didn’t take long for the ambulance to arrive. When the paramedics got there and began checking me out, the first question was obviously, “where did the neck brace come from? Did you already have this with you?” At which point I had to explain that I had broken my neck a few weeks previous, also doing stupid things. As they continued to check me out, they notice my broken thumb. Oh, I guess it would be good to explain that before breaking my neck I was playing catcher for my friend Matt, who had an arm like a fucking cannon but basically saw the world like he was underwater, and I would call for a pitch, he would not his head in acknowledgment, and then throw whatever pitch he felt like because I probably just looked like a squiggly amoeba at the other end of the gym [the world is a sadder place without him, fuck]. Well, I caught an unexpected curveball on my thumb rather than in the pocket of the glove and it snapped my thumb in two places [I’ve broken my fingers countless times so this didn’t seem like much of an incident]. However, the paramedics noticed the thumb brace, which honestly looked like one of those old-school rollerblading wrist guards, and began inquiring about that, at which point I had to explain it was also due to an unrelated incident. They giggled a little bit. Next, they came across the scratches on my back and began to ask if it was from the shattered glass during the accident. Now I have to explain the fact that it is from shattered glass and an accident, just a different one because I’m an ass hole. At this point the paramedics are legitimately fighting back laughter but when they see that I’m totally fine (from this accident at least) they began to have a good laugh about it. This is the scene that my mother and sister arrived to; me, sitting dejected in the back of an ambulance with the paramedics laughing and the car destroyed.

Chapter 3 - Glass Window

A while after the accident I was with my best friend Jeremy, and we were with a few other people at our friend Julian’s apartment. My memory in general is pretty bad but I think this was the first time I had been there. I only mention this because I typically have very good memory of the physical spaces where I’ve been. I can remember the layout from a hotel we stayed at in Asilomar California once back when I was probably no older than 12. In conjunction with this, I typically had very good spatial awareness. Well, as it turns out, if you’re in a bunch of painkillers for the muscles in your neck, then you smoke weed, all while your head is locked in one position from the neck brace you’re wearing, all that spatial awareness and memory of space goes right out the window… Speaking of that, at some point while we were hanging out I stood up, most likely because I felt like, maybe, if I didn’t move or change positions, people would detect how uncomfortable I was, as if that makes sense. In my awkward swaying about I failed to notice the vase on the ground behind me. It wasn’t long before I had tripped backwards over the vase, with my legs taking those last quick desperate steps trying to get back under my center of gravity, all with the grace of a penguin running backwards. Try as they might, my legs were not able to save me, but instead propelled me backwards straight through the front window of his apartment. Luckily for me the blinds or the screen or just dumb luck saved me from falling all the way out of the window. I was too fucked up to really process what was going on. I was aware that I just fell and I just broken a window, but the concept of personal responsibility had either not developed or was entirely not present at that moment. Thinking back, I don’t think I ever took responsibility with his parents or paid for the window. I’m definitely not proud of who I was. In the end, I walked away from the incident with a few scratches on my back and my ego knocked down another few pegs.

Chapter 2 - Hospital

I remember gliding out of the back door to the gym by the coach’s office, the gimmick of being in a c-collar strapped to a backboard began to wear off and the reality of my situation started to set in. It was like the door to the building had one of those air curtains at the car wash, but instead of stripping all the water off it stripped away the novelty of the situation and left me exposed. I didn’t think anything was seriously wrong, but I did understand that the trip to the hospital by ambulance, x-rays, and everything else would be tedious and expensive. I figured I’d be out of the collar and back at baseball the next day, as did pretty much everyone else, I think. The paramedics carried me out of the door, set me down on the gurney, and rolled me out to the ambulance. I remember the experience being surprisingly smooth, it felt like I was just floating. Once inside, I remember staring out that tiny little window trying to guess where we were based on the little things that would flash by. A particular statue, the street sign, even just a familiar set of trees. My dad worked in the medical labs attached to the hospital and I had worked there for the two previous summers, so I had made this drive countless times and could generally recognize where we were. I guess that was the only thing I felt like I had a sense of control over because the urge, no, the absolute necessity to figure out where we were at all times was all-consuming. To the point where I have no recollection of what the paramedic looked like, if we made small talk, or anything about our interaction… I know there were two of them, but that is more likely a logical deduction rather than an actual memory.

I remember my mom meeting us at the hospital after I’d been checked in, and taken for x-rays, and we were just waiting for the doctor to come back with the results. I had to explain what happened, but I’m sure none of it was really a surprise to her. I used to joke that my parents had a three-ring binder for my medical history, while they just had an empty manila folder for my sister (who by all accounts, was basically the perfect child, never got hurt, never got in trouble, smart, worked hard, never drank, never tried drugs, etc. basically my polar opposite). However, thinking back, this really wasn’t a joke, my parents really did have a 3-inch-thick three ring binder packed with hospital bills, notes and bills from doctor visits or visits to the orthopedists, etc. As always, she made me feel okay about the situation. She definitely allowed me to feel the guilt/ stupidity from what I had done but just enough to learn, not enough to damage.

The doctor walked in, accompanied by five or six residents who were following the doctor for rounds. He explained he had to do a few tests to check sensation and function and asked if it would be alright if the students were allowed to watch, which I agreed to without really understanding what was about to happen. After a few checks of my extremities/reflexes, I was then asked to turn on my side pull down my pants, and I soon found myself frantically trying to decide where to look as the doctor’s finger was all the way in my ass hole. I had obviously consented and he definitely explained what was going to happen, but I was certainly not prepared to have a finger in my ass, much less with a full audience of on lookers. Thankfully it was all over quickly but, as usual, I still didn’t know where to look. Not because of what just happened, but just because eye contact with people felt like holding a heavy weight at the end of your outstretched arm; with effort, it was possible, but it definitely began wearing on you quickly and was generally unpleasant.

I think everyone was expecting that I would be totally fine, there were no external signs that there was anything wrong. Which is why it was so surprising to hear the doctor said that I had a tiny chip missing from the C6 vertebrae accompanied by a tiny hairline fracture. Nothing serious, but definitely a little bit surprising and something that would mean I’d have to wear the neck brace for a number of weeks while it healed. As with most things the first five minutes the prospect of wearing a neck brace seemed interesting, maybe this would get people to engage with me? Will I get more attention now? But again, the reality quickly set in as to just how annoying wearing that neck brace would be.

As a side note, as someone with mildly obsessive tendencies, I spent an inordinate amount of time as a child avoiding stepping on cracks to avoid breaking my mother’s back. Well, obviously I misunderstood the fine print somewhere because I sit here, having broken my back… twice… thumbing through life’s manual wondering “where the fuck was this clause!?”

Chapter 1 - First Break

I guess I should start with the fact that this was not the first time I broke my neck. When I was 17 and a junior in high school in St. Louis Missouri, we were running baseball drills in the second-floor wrestling practice room. Both the walls and the floor were tiled with that awful 2-inch-thick vinyl padding, which gives you just enough confidence to be a real dumb ass but not enough padding to save you from yourself. Falling directly in line with that, my friend Dan R. and I had drifted away from the baseball drills we were supposed to be doing and were doing that half ass wrestling where nobody really goes full out. At some point I found myself in a body lock with his arms around my hips lifting me up. That should’ve been it, that should’ve been game over, his win… But no, I had to try to get out of it and try to rotate. Problem was, I didn’t know what he was doing and he didn’t know what I was doing and I quickly ended up upside down with him dropping me back down to the ground. BANG! I landed on the back of my head with the rest of my body coming straight down, slamming my chin into my chest and folding me in half. The world went silent for a moment, followed by a loud ringing noise, which slowly faded to reveal the sound of my own labored breathing; thinking back, the sound was oddly similar to the sound in movies and TV they use right after a bomb goes off and the character can’t hear. I laid there, not knowing what to do, or even if I was actually hurt. I’d been hit in the head a fair number of times in my life, I was a fairly injury prone child, but I had always remained conscious. This time felt different, I felt like I might’ve lost a step, I couldn’t quite breathe, and the back of my neck felt like I had been in a car accident (something I have experienced as both passenger and driver an odd number of times).

So, there I was, laying on those gross gray mats, with my teammates standing around trying to figure out what we were going to do. We couldn’t just go to the coach and say, “hey we were just fucking around and maaayyybe just broke Kenji’s neck???” Given that you had to take your shoes off to enter the wrestling room, and just outside of the room was the staircase down to the main gym floor, we thought, maybe we can drag my body down the stairs, stage the scene, and tell the coach someone was throwing me my shoe and I fell down the stairs? Over the course of freaking out and debating what to do, my hearing had come back, I was able to breathe again, and I seem to be able to move okay. I decided to gingerly walk down to the coach’s office and own up to what happened, but to try to leave Dan out of the story somehow. Well, after telling him what happened, being a responsible adult, coach Craig Sucher recognized the fact that I could have a spinal cord injury and brought me to the small nurse’s office, just off of the main gym. After hearing what happened and how I came down, the nurse called the paramedics; better safe than sorry.

The paramedics arrived and put my neck in a C collar as they examined me and asked me questions. They basically thought there was no chance I broke my neck; I would only be speculating as to how they came to that conclusion but I assume it was the fact that I had no obvious neurologic symptoms. But, just to be safe, they put me on the backboard, up on to the stretcher and out to the ambulance as groups of kids leaving school and heading into the parking lot watched on in curiosity.

Disclaimer

This is not going to be an inspirational story, and I should warn you that I am a terrible advocate for the community. I’m more of a discount Stephen Hawking, if he traded intelligence for function; not as smart, not as crippled [see: evidence of first statement].

It’s hard for me to write a lot of this without sounding like I am complaining. I promise I am generally happy, but these struggles are inseparable from my experiences. Also, you should know that the majority of the time that I am talking shit about other people, it is typically because I see something in them that I recognize and dislike about myself. That said, sometimes people are just awful and it has nothing to do with me also being awful. That said, there are obviously lots of amazing people out there and I will do my best to highlight them; some by name and some by category, neither more or less important than the other.

I can only tell you what happened to me and how I dealt with it. Along the way, I hope some part of my story is relatable to you or that you find some utility in what I found helpful. If nothing else, I hope it at least entertains you. But, if you are looking at getting insight on how to engage with the handicap community or be a good role model, I’ll have to point you towards some of the truly amazing people out there who are actually doing things to help people in the handicap community and inspire them like Quinn Brett (@quinndalina), Eric Hjelnes (Craig Hospital), Shawn Fluke (@livetoroll), Jo-Marie Lawrence (@jomarie_lawrence), and so many more. Originally, I began writing this just to work through some of the more difficult memories from the hospital and try to parse out where the blank spots in my memory were. After some incredible encouragement and support from a few friends, I ended up writing far more than I ever expected, and now, here we are.

These are simply the ramblings, thoughts, and experiences of a highly isolated individual. I don’t speak for the handicap community, not even if I claim to at some point.