Like a lot of people here I have good days and I have some really dark
days, since this is the very first post I have made on this forum I will
share a little about myself. At the age of 24 my life became a living
hell, on January 4th 2000 I was walk...
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Like a lot of people here I have good days and I have some really dark
days, since this is the very first post I have made on this forum I will
share a little about myself. At the age of 24 my life became a living
hell, on January 4th 2000 I was walking home due to my car blowing its
fly wheel, when this happened the engine revved rather high since
basically the car was dropped into neutral and my foot was on the
floor-this is kind of important information for better understanding of
me- so I parked the car at the side of a busy interstate and started to
walk home, was raining a bit and it was cold, long story short I was ten
miles from my home when some lady was doing about 104 km (or 65 mph
which ever you prefer) on a wet road that you shouldn't even be doing
60km (40 mph) on she lost control of her car and ran me over. Now do
keep in mind this was in the USA where this happened. She said I saw her
and tried to run out of the way, personally I don't even remember seeing
her coming just remember passing a factory I use to work at and then
waking up in more pain than I ever thought humanly possible. Come to
find out my left leg was shattered in 12 places, my right knee blown
totally out, had a broke left shoulder blade that the doctors missed, as
they said they had more life threaten injuries to deal with then a
little broken shoulder, bruised lung and kidney. I was in the hospital
for two and half weeks, I remember about four days if that. Then stuck
in bed for three months only able to get up and move around via wheel
chair and that was only for a few minutes if I was lucky. And I found
that I was truly once again dependent on my parents and my little
sister. I lost a lot of things in that accident that I still haven't
been able to get back and it's been 13 years now. I had to learn to walk
again which took me 8 months when the doctors said it would be at least
a year and half before I would be out of the wheel chair permanently. My
job fired me three days after my accident quoting that I could no longer
physically do my job. All of my so called friends just disappeared after
the accident. All I got out of the settlement was just a little over 14k
with over 250k in hospital bills all in my name. The lady that hit me
walked way scot free not even a speeding ticket. Heck I never even got a
card or anything from her to even say "oops sorry for turning you into a
hood ornament." My own mother stole a lot of my disability checks while
I was in so much pain I couldn't see straight, you see I went from two
and half weeks of a pain killer in the hospital to only a week's worth
of the medication when I got home. Because the doctors didn't want me to
get hooked on anything. So I had to rely on over the counter pain
killers and developed a much higher pain threshold. I went into a very
dark hole after that car accident and stayed there a long time as well,
when people say well once you hit bottom the only place to go is up,
they are wrong I set up an oil drill and started drilling even deeper.
After about a year and half after the accident I was up and walking
again on two crutches and had no choice but to re-educate myself because
I could no longer work in a factory like I use to. My mother cleared my
bank account out without me knowing it, I was still sore a lot and not
thinking straight and simply thought I had misplaced my check book, come
to find out my mother stole my check book wrote 5 checks that cleared my
account out of the last 900 dollars I had, I found this out when I wrote
a 900 dollar check to the tech school I was attending and the check
bounced though the roof. I was nearly thrown in jail over this later on
because in Georgia you do not write bad checks that's almost worse than
killing someone in that part of the country. After everything that had
happened to me I was still in a very very dark hole, I always joke that
my life at that time had become either a badly written soap opera or a
great number one country western song, all that was missing was for my
dog to bite me then die. The only reason that I did not kill myself
during those dark times was my sense of humour. I have a dark sense of
humour and it has saved me more times than I can count. For a while I
thought I was doing ok until one day I snapped. I was in my dad's car
and had gone to the movies, I had a really bad case of cabin fear that
day and just had to get out of the house even though I knew that there
was something wrong in my head on that day. Well on the way home I had a
break down and for the very first time I gave suicide a true thought,
the ONLY two things that stopped me was the thought of what my
girlfriend would think, you see I meet my now wife over the internet and
we had hit it off pretty good heck the very first time we were going to
talk was the day of my car accident, you see she was in Australia and I
was in the states so we had never actually met. On that day when I got
home that was when I realized that I was not handling things as well as
I thought I was, it was the first time I was truly scared of myself. So
I called the mental health centre in Georgia and the lady I got was
really helpful and pointed me in the right direction of getting some
professional help. Now for some reason there is a huge stigma of a guy
going to get help, I mean at an early age we are taught not to cry, not
to show emotions only girls do that. Mind you a good chunk of my child
hood is missing thanks to long term and short term memory problems. The
councillor that I finally chose really helped me out, I went on
medication for about 6 to 8 months before I pulled myself off it,
basically while I was on medication you could have beat me, and robbed
me and I would have just shrugged my shoulders and said oh well. The
medication gave me the middle ground that I needed before I was on it my
moods would swing super high or super low and there were never days of
just middle ground. But I got tired of not feeling. There is no shame in
taking medication to give you that middle ground that we all need. I
have found out that though this accident there are good things and bad
things, the good things are that A: I got to fly out and meet my
girlfriend for the very first time thanks to what little settlement
money I had left after my lawyer and family took off me, mind you I did
fly out on 9-11 my plane was one of the last ones to leave the states at
the time. I now hold two higher degree's of education a BS in computer
networking a Masters of Information systems and I am now going after an
MBA with a concentration in marketing, which none of this would have
been possible without being run over as I would not have had the time
nor the money to go and meet my future wife, we are now going on 5
years, and I made to much money to get any kind of student loan. I have
good days and bad days still, if I hear an engine revving it will make
my hair stand on end and I will have to fight myself so that I do not
curl into a ball, wet myself and suck my thumb! I still have days that
for no reason I am really nervous or highly anxious. But on those days I
know what will trigger me and I even warn my wife that I am "flighty"
it's the best way I can describe it to her. So when I am in a "flighty"
mood I try to avoid my triggers, which basically is anything that can
make me laugh or cry. I try and keep myself on some kind of middle
ground, doesn't always work but at least I know its coming. Some times
that half the battle simply knowing that you are going to tail spin,
because just maybe you can control how fast you spin, you may not be
able to stop it but you can slow it down and control the size of crater
you leave behind. I mean even writing this makes me feel a bit depressed
but some things that do help is to look back and see the good that has
come into your life, even though it might be a small thing that small
thing is all that takes to help lift you up a little. The one thing I
will remember to my dying day is how a simple smile, I know corny,
pulled me up a little. I was laying in the hospital bed, in more pain
than I thought I could stand, as the pain killers were not doing a dang
thing to ease the pain off as they had worn off and the doctors only had
me on a small amount of pain medication every four hours, the pain
medication would last in my system for maybe a half hour if I was lucky
then I had three and half hours of pure hell to endure. But one of the
twenty doctors that had put me back together came in with a bunch of
orderlies to show them what a great job they had done. I was at the
lowest point in my life, when I looked up at her and saw her smile down
at me it's hard to explain but that one smile was like, yeah I know you
are hurting but someone still cares. I am still fighting the depression
and the anxiety and get very jumpy when having to try and go out and
find a job, kind of waiting for the other boot to fall kind of thing,
it's a little dumb I know but it's the way my brain works and it's just
wondering what horrible thing will happen next. For the most part I am
fighting those feelings and looking for a job, I mean 13 years without a
job really sucks. Thankfully my wife is standing beside me though I
cannot show her everything that is going on as she cannot handle it and
will break down beside me. After all she says I am her rock and no one
wants to know their rock is on faulty ground. But she does support me
and tells me not to say that I am being stupid as some of it I can't
control. Never let yourself feel that you are alone, you can find people
that will sit back and listen and the beautiful thing about getting
professional help is you do not have to worry about them "judging you"!
I mean they are perfect strangers and so what if they do judge you, you
only have to see them when you need to and it's not like you will be
running into them every day of your life. The best advice I can give is
learn about yourself, find what your triggers are because even when we
have a "good day" we know that monster is in us waiting to drag us down,
so on the days you feel yourself sliding try and avoid your triggers, or
find a trigger that you know might help slow your slide a bit, if that
is painting, reading a book, losing yourself in a video game for an hour
or so, than do that. But whatever you do, don't just sit there doing
nothing it's up to each of us to fight that demon, but remember we can't
do it alone sometimes so even if it's just talking on this forum get on
the forum and talk you will find someone that understands and won't tell
you "well it could be worse" because we all know we do NOT want to think
about how it could be worse!! And if anyone has any idea how to get
yourself motivated please let me know as that is one of the greatest
things I am still fighting with is how to get myself motivated to simply
go back out into the world. Because I know I am using my education as a
barrier or a buffer, some days it gives me an "excuse" not to go out and
fill out a job application kind of thing. Hell fire I am still having
days where I can't even get myself out the front door without fighting
myself. But I still keep moving forward or at least I am trying to.
A Bouquet for Pearls - share your appreciation for other members
