On A Loss Of Identity Post-Injury

A lot of the topics within the broader conversation about quadriplegia are derived from the loss of your mobility and sensation. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. Those are the two massive stones that are suddenly dropped into your otherwise quiet, little ecosystem, and the ripples they create disturb and disrupt many, many different areas of your life. I’m pretty sure that everything I’ve ever written about regarding my injury stems from either the loss of my mobility or my sensation. That trend won’t stop now or in the foreseeable future. Those losses are just part and parcel to life with quadriplegia, and I don’t know how to talk about one without the other coming up at least peripherally.

But In thinking about the topics that I find interesting and want to write about, I’ve been trying to dig slightly deeper than just discussing the things I can or cannot do. That’s certainly a worthy and lengthy conversation to be had, and I’m planning to touch on the topic again at some point. But there’s enough of that stuff out there on the Internet – I’ve already made multiple contributions to it over the years – and I’d much rather try to shift the conversation towards areas that should receive a little more attention.

My SCI Caused Me To Lose My Grasp On Who I Was

One such area that’s somewhat personal to me is the loss of identity that I felt after I broke my neck. The only reason I distinguish myself from others when it comes to this topic is because I’m not sure it’s something that regularly occurs when somebody acquires a disability. It’s a topic that’s received such little attention from others in my situation that I’ve honestly thought I must be one of only a few that’s ever felt its impact. But statistically speaking, that’s a foolish position. I know others must have struggled with the uncertainty that suddenly arrives pounding at your door in the wake of a spinal cord injury (SCI). So I can’t be the only one. I’m just not that special.

Where exactly our identity comes from is a big, complex question, however. It might even receive a different answer from every person that you ask, and that’s not really helpful to our discussion. While I like to examine “big and complex” issues, sometimes a narrower scope is necessary, and our identity typically comes from many different sources. In order to have this conversation, I want to work from a finite list of sources for our identity that are fairly agreed-upon and universal. So, with that aim in mind, let’s focus on the more positive and universal sources of identity for most people. Sources that usually include: our roles/relationships to other people, our professional title/accomplishments, our personal interests/accomplishments and our values.

When I broke my neck as a 19-year-old kid, I hadn’t done much, and a lot of what I had done in my life up to that point was in service to achieving my independence and becoming a productive and successful adult. At the time of my injury, I wasn’t anywhere close to the finish line in that regard, and in many ways, I was still very much at a starting point. Ultimately, a lot of what I had done up to that point was meant to serve as the groundwork for who I’d eventually become later on in life as an adult. From boy to man. Or, at least, that was the intent until a spinal cord injury forced Plan B. But I’ve often found myself ill-prepared for what comes next in my life. Finding my identity post-injury is easily the most profound of those experiences, but it is just one of many examples.

While I was still a son/brother/grandson even after I broke my neck, I was also still a somewhat clueless and self-absorbed little prick, like many kids at that age. I wasn’t the worst, by any means. I certainly wasn’t embarrassed by any of my relationships with family, and I’ve always been a complete and total mama’s boy both before and after my injury. (Please feel free to email any and all comments on the matter to: fuckoff@eatshit.com) I was just ready to put everything at home in my rearview, head off to college and start pursuing a whole new life for myself. Not because anything at home was wrong or even difficult, but because the much touted “next chapter” in my life had finally arrived. And even a mostly cynical and pessimistic asshole like myself couldn’t help but feel fairly excited for it.

But even before my injury, it wasn’t like I took a lot of my identity from the relationships I had with the people in my family, or even the friends in my life. I didn’t really think about my family nor did I talk about them when I was out in the world on my own. For better or worse, I was still fairly naïve about the cruelty of the world and the fickle nature of relationships overall. Hell, I was still talking to my biological father back then. I had simply known the relationships with my family for my whole life, and none of them had been severed yet. I also knew that my social circle was about to widen considerably at college, and those people I called “friends” would soon receive a major overhaul. It really wasn’t until I broke my neck that life gave me a true and thorough lesson on losing people. I guess, at 19 years old, I was just trying to stake my own claim in the world. I wanted to create my own identity, not take one from others in my life.

I also didn’t have anything close to a professional title and/or accomplishment that I could proudly hang my hat on and build my identity around. While I had a job at the time of my injury, I didn’t take a great deal of pride from working as an entry-level greenhouse employee. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed the gig a lot. It was something new and interesting, and it kept me working outdoors and away from any and all public interaction, which was best for everyone at that time (“angry teenager” doesn’t really mix well with “customer service”). But I never had any major aspirations to end up working in a greenhouse long-term, and I was clearly never going to work at one after my injury occurred. I simply couldn’t.

I didn’t think in really big concepts or have any strong convictions at that point, either. I wasn’t a total dipshit, out there simply wandering the world, devoid of all thought. I just didn’t worry about stuff that I thought would come naturally later on in life. A good chunk of my morality was already baked in by that point, and a few rough ideas about bigger concepts were beginning to percolate in my mind. But I honestly spent most of my free time engaged in either school, sports or other pursuits, like weightlifting, listening to metal and watching horror movies. I actually spent most of my latter years in high school attending concerts, writing shitty songs with friends and just generally playing grab ass with the few like-minded individuals I could tolerate. I sort of viewed college as the birthplace for my enlightenment. It’s where I’d leave some of my earlier pursuits behind, gain exposure to new, engaging ideas and start forming and, ultimately, prioritizing my real-world aspirations.

But to complicate my identity issues even further, I had way too much of my identity wrapped up in my physicality at that time. I had been a multisport athlete for most of my youth. In my senior year alone, I played football, wrestling and track for my high school, in addition to playing baseball for my city in the summer. And that athleticism and physicality became something I couldn’t separate from how I viewed myself. I had to bust my ass to get physically stronger, and that literal strength eventually translated to figurative strength. These are also the activities that I had spent a lot of my free time doing while I was growing up. All the practices, camps and workouts required a great deal of commitment. And in the time that it takes to dive off a dock, that whole part of me was lost. I woke up in the hospital after my injury unable to overpower an anemic, seven-year-old vegan, and I didn’t know how to deal with that loss for quite some time.

The other major, major issue at the time of my SCI, and the greatest reason for my loss of identity, was the fact that I didn’t know what the future held for me anymore. I definitely didn’t lose interest in any of my hobbies or personal pursuits overnight (I can still remember lying in my hospital bed and listening to Fantômas’ DIRECTORS CUT), but I sure the fuck didn’t know how any of those interests would translate to life in a severely broken body. Having no control over your arms and legs immediately disqualifies you from a lot, whether in reality or simply by perception. And so, all at once, everything I thought I would do, and everything I thought I could be, suddenly felt impossible. Or, at the very least, it all now came into question. The only thing I really knew how to do after my SCI, when everyone finished their day, and left me alone to swim in the ocean of uncertainty inside my head, is identify all the stuff I’d never do again. That was surprisingly easy.

I’m sure none of this sounds terribly surprising to anyone. I don’t believe most 19-year-olds enjoy a firm grasp on who they are and what they believe. But the reason this all became so problematic for me at that time is because quadriplegia had unexpectedly tasked me with having to completely rebuild my life from the ground up – a monumental task, to be sure. And monumental tasks are always easier to undertake when you have access to your full complement of tools, and you confidently and competently understand where your strengths and weaknesses lie. Unfortunately, quadriplegia took the little I understood from me and replaced it with heaping piles of self-doubt and utter confusion. How would I ever be the able to rebuild my life in the aftermath of my SCI when I didn’t know what I was capable of anymore? And how would I start? Everything I once knew to be true now felt illusory, at best, and starting to rebuild my life with that for a foundation would be like building on quicksand.

I was still only 19-years old, however. I had to figure out what to do with the next 20 odd years of my life. And it turns out that a hospital is a really shitty place to try and recover from pretty much anything, whether it’s the ICU, step-down unit or rehab. They obviously saved my life more than once, and I’ll always be grateful for everything they did. But the hospital and its staff only let me live; they couldn’t teach me how to live. That was a problem only I could solve, and it required exposure to new experiences with quadriplegia, and then hours upon hours of self-exploration and understanding. And no hospital lists those things amongst their services. So, I just had to start living my life and then do the necessary follow-up work on my own.

While I can’t possibly touch upon all of the experiences that were responsible for helping rebuild my identity and recovering from my injury, there is one that I’d like to highlight. It didn’t occur until roughly two years after my injury, and it had a rather innocuous start. I simply went into an appointment with my physical medicine doctor, who is essentially responsible for managing all of my quadriplegia-related bullshit, and I came out with a job offer: speaking publicly about my injury. It turned out that her department was doing some community outreach by trying to prevent SCIs and traumatic brain injuries from occurring amongst high school-aged children. She felt like I might be a good fit, and I really wasn’t in a position to turn down job offers at that point. So I accepted, and it completely changed my life.

I didn’t really know how I was going to present my story to a bunch of 15-year-olds when I first took the job. I always knew early on that I was never going to bullshit the audience. The best deterrent is often the cold, hard truth, and my aim was to clearly deter. While I knew the truth behind how my whole injury went down, presenting that narrative in a coherent, compelling and professional manner wasn’t something I had a lot of formal preparation for. I had taken public speaking in high school, and I was neither bothered by crowds nor speaking publicly on the topic. So, I knew I could handle the environment. I just didn’t know whether I could do the work well.

Thankfully, in preparation for the gig, they sent me to watch a presentation from another quadriplegic currently working with the program. After hearing his presentation, I knew then that I’d be able do the job just fine. So I took some time to figure out exactly how I was going to lay out and present the complete demolition of my life, and after a couple of weeks, I made my first presentation. But every presentation I make is comprised of two parts: 1) the story of my injury; and 2) a Q&A session. Of those two pieces, recounting the events of my injury proved to be much easier than taking questions from the audience. And nothing could really prepare me for handling their questions until I found myself actually sitting there, handling their question.

One of the reasons why answering their questions was slightly difficult is because I never went to therapy after my injury. I was probably too immature to allow myself to really open up with a therapist at that time. You know, “real men don’t do therapy” or whatnot. I’ll blame it on The Cure. They taught me that “boys don’t cry.” But there’s something inherently therapeutic about sitting in front of a room of strangers, answering questions about the worst day of your life and the biggest fuck up you’ll likely ever make. It can certainly be intimidating, and it can even be uncomfortable at times. But owning your shit out loud and in person can also be extremely empowering if viewed through the proper lens.

It took a while for me to wrap my head around just how goddamn blunt a room of teenagers can be. But once I did, I quickly began enjoying our brief yet candid interactions. They were still probing my greatest source of shame, guilt and insecurity, but unleashing my thoughts on those things in equally blunt terms proved to be the absolute greatest gift to my recovery. Every presentation from then on became a very proud and very public “fuck you” to my injury, and each question they asked about some new change to my life became another testament to my resiliency. The whole presentation then became a public listing of all the hardships and bullshit I’d somehow found a way to overcome. And viewing my presentation that way made me set aside any further reservations I had about the questions they might ask. I actually started to welcome the challenge.

Ultimately, every time I received a new question, it sent me on a mission to discover its appropriate answer inside myself. I became an emotional archaeologist, excavating the truth from within my very own viscera. And every answer that I retrieved became its own little piece in the strange mosaic of who I had become post-injury. Who, for better or worse, my injury had made me. Speaking publicly about my injury and all of its accompanying issues took me from a place of utter cluelessness to one of deep understanding about where I stand on a number of incredibly complex issues in life. And knowing where I stand on those issues led me to knowing who I am as a person. While I don’t define myself solely by my injury, there’s no doubt that my disability has helped define who I am today. It has taught, and continues to teach, hard lessons on the realities of life. But I have learned from each lesson, and I’ve almost always emerged as a stronger man, a bolder man and a better man as a result.

– King Cripple

On Why I Love Horror… (And Metal, Too)

As someone that’s padded down the left-hand path for most of my life – at least in terms of my artistic pursuits – a frequent question I receive is: Why consume such content? I’ve had to answer this question many, many times in my life, and it’s easy to see why most people don’t understand my tastes in music or cinema. The average person simply isn’t built to appreciate records that are intentionally abrasive or movies that revel in violence and gore. And in a world where you can download more music in a day than you could ever listen to in a lifetime, or stream content from any and every genre imaginable directly to a device in the palm of your hand, it does take a certain type of person to actively seek out and consume content specifically made to agitate and perturb.

So why do I do it?

Musings HQ – (AKA, Where Shit Gets Done)

The primary reason I watch horror is essentially the same reason why I listen to abrasive music: good art should affect its audience. While that’s clearly not meant to imply that works in other genres are not affective, I find that horror and metal often create not only an affective experience, but a very visceral one at that. Well-crafted riffs or “scares” are truly powerful things; neither one requiring any sort of analysis to be properly felt. They’re able to tap into our more primordial instincts, completely bypass the brain and cause the body simply to react in the moment. I’ve literally watched other metal fans punch through walls and headbutt slabs of concrete all in response to the strange alchemy that can only emanate from the almightiest of riffs. (Various drugs and alcohol may have also been slightly involved. Maybe.) And while I’ve thankfully never had such an experience, a quick online search will render countless stories of people passing out or even suffering a heart attack strictly due to the intense visuals they’re witnessing on-screen. (See: Here)

That intensity and tension is also something that I actively seek out and just personally enjoy. One of the most common arguments that horror fans make for the genre is comparing it to riding a roller coaster. Both horror movies and roller coasters are meant to elicit fear from their participants by offering a scary and thrilling experience in an otherwise safe and controlled environment. I genuinely enjoy the way my body reacts to the tension of faint scratches coming from behind a closed, closet door or the soft growl emanating from beneath a child’s bed. These carefully crafted scenes are basically no different than an adult version of the Jack-in-the-Box – another thrilling yet safe experience – where every crank builds tension and leads you closer to an unexpected jolt. The only time I typically experience this kind of tension outside of the theater – since my doctors aren’t really cool with me on roller coasters – is when I’m waiting for some medical results. And that’s not nearly as much fun as reveling in someone else’s nightmare as it slowly unfolds within a well-made horror movie or creep-tastic novel.

But horror and metal are also genres that are more than nimble enough to effectively operate on multiple levels. These are genres that can often deliver a very clear and direct twisting of the guts, while also conveying a certain intellect and depth through their subtext or lyrics – something critics of both genres frequently fail to recognize or acknowledge. But the choice for how far down the rabbit hole one wants to travel is then left entirely to the audience, not an overly preachy writer/director or lyricist. Ultimately, each member of the audience can choose for themselves whether to enjoy just the superficial response that each provide, or they can take a closer look and choose to examine what often lies beneath each.

George A. Romero's Day Of The Dead (1985)

Take George A. Romero’s career, for example. Romero was always a filmmaker that had something to say, but could usually only get financing for horror movies. And zombie movies, in particular. So he took that mandate and built a career (and legacy) on using zombies as a means to tackle bigger, more relevant issues within society. Whether he was addressing issues like, classism (NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD), consumerism (DAWN OF THE DEAD) or militarism (DAY OF THE DEAD), horror movies became the vehicle for his commentary on society. And he is by no means alone. From older filmmakers, like David Cronenberg (THE FLY, DEAD RINGERS), to contemporaries, like Jordan Peele (GET OUT, US), horror movies often have something to say beneath all their fake blood and prosthetics. The audience just has to make the effort to look for it.

Furthermore, by horror and metal trusting and empowering their audiences to seek out the answers to their questions for themselves, I think more people are willing to accept that challenge and engage in whatever is their chosen medium. I know I am. I like that I might have to read interviews with writers/directors to learn about what exactly they were trying to accomplish with a particular scene or movie overall, or I actually have to take the time and look up lyrics to a song rather than simply follow along while I listen. These things require effort, like many of the best and most rewarding things in life, and I believe they’re often worth whatever time and effort it takes for you to dig in and discover their respective secrets.

The whole filmmaking process, regardless of genre, is also something that I find absolutely fascinating, and I particularly enjoy the creativity and inventiveness that horror movies must employ. It’s horror movies that identify new and interesting ways to create tension or depict certain otherworldly elements. While it’s true that every great movie must start with a great script, the journey from script to screen is arguably the most significant for many horror movies. Whereas what makes other genres affective can often be found right on the page, horror movies require a certain inventiveness to convert a script’s written words, or even some thorough storyboards, into scary and compelling visuals. I mean, most people can imagine on their own what a small-town diner looks like, but what about the cruel afterlife? (See: TRIANGLE, ANGEL HEART)? Or astral projection? (See: INSIDIOUS; DONNIE DARKO.) Horror movie directors must figure out ways to depict, and keep re-depicting these things for every new era and generation of moviegoers.

Consider the haunted house movie, for a moment. There is perhaps no greater staple of the horror genre than the haunted house movie, and there are a lot of different supernatural phenomena that can occur within the walls of any such residence. These can be strange noises, flying objects and apparitions, among many other spooky occurrences. But how a horror movie then depicts those different events will often vary wildly given a director’s visual style, and the techniques and trends of the time. There are also small variances to haunted house movies that stem from their country of origin. How the Spanish (See: THE DEVILS BACKBONE; THE ORPHANAGE), Japanese (See: PULSE, HOUSE) and Americans (See: THE ENTITY, THE CHANGELING [1980]) tell a ghost story is entirely unique to their country and cultural beliefs. Observing and noting these subtleties is as interesting to me as the movies themselves.

Then, of course, there’s the simple fact that even objectively “bad” horror movies often contain certain elements that, despite often lacking in technical merits, still prove to be wildly entertaining. Movies like HACK-O-LANTERN, CHRISTMAS EVIL and EVILSPEAK are all objectively terrible, yet I still happily and proudly count them amongst my favorite movies for reasons that have nothing to do with the craft of filmmaking. Even absolute classics of the genre are not without their scars and warts. For example, John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN – a classic in the eyes of both fans and critics alike – features noticeable palm trees in its supposed suburb of Chicago, and a sizable plume of cigarette smoke from its director sitting out of frame, among its other lovable blemishes. And even though I’ve seen HALLOWEEN dozens of times over the years, I still wait to catch a glimpse of these same, stupid gaffes every time.

But there are also plenty of other blemishes to behold in horror movies that were often put there intentionally. Weirdly drawn characters, strange performances, outlandish plot points and goofy kills are typically just as common in these movies as the menacing specter or murderous psycho that’s wreaking all the havoc on-screen. And for fans of the genre, these things, and typically the stories behind them, offer us something to enjoy, even when a movie’s narrative is a little sluggish or downright trite. But every movie, regardless of genre, is a labor of love that takes a tremendous amount of work to see through to completion, and I have immense respect for anyone that is able somehow make one.

Behold! The Vest Of Doom

While my love for horror involves how all of these disparate elements come together and interact with each other, the community is a huge part of its appeal, too. I like people with passion for their interests, and both the horror and metal communities are rich with contributions from such members. I like to read a number of horror and metal blogs and listen to the podcasts that are entirely fan made. I also attend my local horror convention every year, and nobody ever throws me some sly sideeye or makes an issue of my disability. To most of them, I’m just another lunatic wandering the asylum. There’s also a lot of overlap between the horror and metal communities, and I often have conversations with horror artists and vendors that effortlessly drift between the two vastly different mediums. I even see other folks walking around at the convention in their battle jackets and band shirts, and I feel at ease with them. They are my people. I speak their language, and I am happy to be a part of their tribe.

If beauty, even for the horrific, still resides in the eye of the beholder, then it’s for all these reasons and more that I truly and thoroughly love the horror genre. Typically, I watch a horror movie every night, but there are a couple nights during the week, my favorite nights, when I can watch multiple in a row. I try to read new issues of RUE MORGUE upon their release, and consume horror novels as quickly as I can get my computer to turn their digital pages. Because horror, like metal, once again, isn’t just a casual pastime that I pick up and put down whenever the mood strikes. No, for me, both genres are so much more than that. They’re certainly a source of escapism and distraction, to be sure. But both genres are also a source of identity, a source of pride, and at this point, to look at my room, my expenditures and even my wardrobe, is to realize that both genres have also become a way of life.

So, yeah, I’ll spend my remaining days traveling the left-hand path, clutching invisible oranges, throwing the horns to every creature that I pass and searching for anything and everything that goes bump in the night.

– King Cripple