The Word I Didn’t Know I Needed
She said I was pretty. Just like that. And it hit harder than it should have because I didn’t realize how long it had been since anyone had seen me that way, or how long I’d stopped seeing myself at all.
The Part I Can’t Remember Still Won’t Let Me Go
I don’t remember the accident. That’s the part that still eats at me. The details are gone, but the questions aren’t, and every new inference feels like reopening a wound that never fully closed.
I Think I’m Afraid of the Dark Now
I don’t remember the accident, but my body does. And when the sun goes down and the headlights start moving faster than trust can keep up, the dark doesn’t feel neutral anymore.
The Silent Moments
People have opinions about my recovery. Strong ones. They form them from moments, snapshots, not from the hours spent in silence at two in the morning, staring at medical records, trying to understand what my body remembers even when my mind does not. This isn’t recklessness. It’s reckoning. And what you’re seeing is only a fraction of a much deeper transformation.
The Gift I Didn’t Ask For
Everyone tells me it must be a blessing that I don’t remember the accident. That it’s a gift not to carry those images, those moments, that trauma. But they’re wrong. What they don’t understand is that my brain didn’t just erase the crash, it erased an entire day, the ER, the ICU, the moments that defined the months that followed. And I’m left carrying rage, grief, and pain without context. That kind of absence isn’t mercy. It feels like theft.