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.
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| 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
