A Simple Life Courtesy of Brain Injury

Like everyone says about themselves: before my brain injury, I was above average. I was super smart, athletic, type A, and highly motivated. This also meant that I put a lot of pressure on myself. There was absolutely no reason I shouldn’t be a captain of industry, spiritual advisor to the Dalai Lama, and the first president to be elected unanimously.

Of course, those things weren’t happening, and as I eased into my mid-twenties I began a gradual descent into despair. I was living a life deferred. I was telling myself that somehow between now and forty this would all happen. I was telling myself everybody would be so shocked when all this happened, even though I knew it would happen all along.

Except, that it wasn’t happening, and deep down I knew it never would. I was going to be one of those guys from that Bruce Springsteen song reliving the glory days of my youth. And then something wonderful happened.

I sustained a severe brain injury.

In one fell swoop, about as fell as swoops can get, all those hopes and dreams were off the table. It took a gravel hauling semi-truck to knock my dreams away. I almost died, but lucky for me, I tend to live.

Like most people who have suffered an accident like this, I eventually became depressed. I didn’t want to live half a life. I didn’t want to be in a world with only half the possibilities (and they were the lower half of the range). I raged, I strove, and I willed it otherwise. I made a remarkable recovery, but the best I would ever be is “a very high functioning person with a brain injury.”

My ideas and thoughts, achievements, and surmounted peaks, would always have the brain injury qualifier; i.e., that was great… for a guy with a brain injury. I had attained some degree of agency but without authority. Any argument I made was always suspect. Was I sure? How do you know? The most positive response I could get from any of my assertions was, “Well, I don’t know about that….”

So, I wadded up all my ambition and tossed it away. I radically accepted that I was just me, same as everyone else. I wasn’t better, smarter, or faster; nor did I have to be. When I truly accepted that, a most wonderful thing happened. This huge onerous weight that I didn’t even realize I was carrying, was gone.

That was the day I found that I had become a new person. I wasn’t trying to be who I would have been if I hadn’t had a brain injury. I may not be better, I certainly wasn’t worse, but I was most definitely different.

I no longer live a life complicated by ambition. If I want a feeling of accomplishment, I tie my shoes! There was a time when that simple act felt impossible, but that time has passed. I have done things, hard things. I don't need to prove anything to the world— competition is for other folks. Those poor people who never had brain injuries—they have to continue doing hard things.

I am simply me. I can care and feel, love and be loved, and be immensely happy all the while. I am happy in the here and now.

The hero awakens.

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Mike Strand has been a survivor since 1989. Since 1999 he has written a column in the Brain Injury Alliance of Minnesota's quarterly magazine. He has three books of essays on brain injury available from Lash Publishing. His essays have appeared in numerous publications in print and online. Mike is married, retired, and "trending" toward sixty years of age.