About Me.
Isolated. Self-protective. Very sensitive to criticism. Overthink just about everything. I am guessing that rings a proverbial bell or two in you. Welcome to living with a brain injury.
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More than a decade into this clusterfu*k that has ruined my life as I believed I knew it, much more than my new normal mental capacity could understand or aka "be self-aware of." - Not even knowing myself half of the time, if not most of it, does mean that spiritually I really do not trust a soul. Familiar sounds, feelings, places, experiences and faces are now my sole triggers to peace. No two head injuries are the same is the adage tossed around by specialists or therapists to patients. I believe they speak of the physical scans/results/their understanding by way of Study. Because, unless the Medical Professional suffered a noteworthy brain injury themselves, I do not believe their contributions to be more than best-intended conjecture.
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Putting your trust in me, frankly speaking, is nuts. Or is it? We don't share a shoe size or a taste in music. I have a Severe Traumatic Brain Injury (Diffuse Axonal) and in my personal belief, I am a morally sound dude without a dishonourable bone in my body. So I started this website/blog and Podcast in the hope that this will support and inspire you to believe in yourself again. Your family and friends, Care Support, might also find My Life Brain Injury to be a welcome resource. Information Desks, Booklets, Webpages, Forums, Articles, and all the things to explore regarding Brian Injury are for me anyway, mostly callous. We have brain damage and we remain individuals deserving of equal treatment given to anyone. Our characters and our intelligence are still unique to us, with our complexities now just a little bit more complex. Arbitrary by design, and it is maybe more difficult now to understand and/or express ourselves, but we love all the same. Opening up, I know it does not look or work the same these days and so I will now spell out some of the good, the bad and even some of the ugliest about me so that perhaps you might trust yourself to listen and not only hear. Digest my words instead of only glossing over.
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My Origin Story, unfiltered.
12+ years later and here I am. Not saying that to you as much as to myself. Awakened, present. Finally here, albeit figuratively battered & bruised. Ready and so genuinely willing to be completely honest and loud about it. No more do I present to the world around me an unbreakable spirit backed by maybe a perceivably almost superhuman confidence. My Life Brain Injury is the realest Me - unedited.
January 7, 2014. The day of my high-speed Superbike crash dictated who and what I would be until the day I die. Four months and a week in my coma, a year and a half of being in a post-vegetative state and involved in every therapy under the sun i,e Physio, Speech and Occupational Therapy. In a wheelchair because my brain needed to be taught how to communicate to my limbs. A brachial plexus nerve mangled left arm which went from not moving whatsoever to coming back to life - sort of. 47% of my brain's frontal lobe is dead/non-functional, and 94% of human beings globally die because of suffering from my brain injury type while the exceptionally few that survive can stay right there in their post-vegetative states. Sounding like an ungrateful piece of steaming dung, right? Yeah, I get it. Nevertheless, during the following decade I would find myself in an unrelenting mental state of hating God for not giving me a break and just letting me be no different than my peers before me. Let me freakin die. Telling you about what I am now is not only a work in perpetual, constant progress concerning my self-awareness, but it’s an accurate explanation that escapes me. In Lehmann’s terms, “I couldn’t tell you who I am today. Not fully.”. What I am has never altered and in my spirit, Markus is the exact before and after my STBI. The Me from my first birthday is the exact soul typing these words. My soul is invincible and unaltered. Thinking before I speak is a power or social advantage I never possessed, and man has it f*cked me big time much more than it's served me well, though as I share this with you, I find myself pausing to breathe to “prepare” for writing the next sentence. Maybe not the most interesting and colourful detail to read about, but I will now hit you up with where I come from in mind, body and spirit.
