Four Months

I was scrolling through photos on my phone, covering the last four months. And holy shit, what a fucking four months.

September still feels like another lifetime. Judas Priest. Alice Cooper. Loud. Electric. Alive. I found videos from that show and could practically feel the bass in my chest again. One of those nights where everything felt exactly right. I found pictures of my bikes, of course I did, and realized there was one thing I never bothered to get reimbursed for in the insurance claim: the new rear tire I’d put on Lilith about three weeks before the crash.

Three hundred bucks. Not the end of the world. Still irritating as hell.

And then the photos changed.

Hospital pictures.

Jesus.

My body has been through the fucking ringer. Seeing the early photos from the crash, the swelling, the damage, the slack, unfamiliar angles of my own body, it hit harder than I expected. I don’t remember the accident. I don’t remember the ER. I don’t remember the ICU.

But my body remembers.

And my mind remembers the feelings.

Pain.
Sadness.
Darkness.

The pictures shifted again, late November, around Thanksgiving, and that’s when I started to recognize myself again. Or at least the version of myself I remember. Except here’s the thing: That person died in the crash.

I’m different now.
I look different.
I move differently.
I think differently.

I am different.

And here’s the part that still pisses me off, the part I’m apparently not done being angry about yet: You know who didn’t have to change at all? The motherfucker who caused the accident. The motherfucker who stole three months of my life. The motherfucker who ended one of my rides. The motherfucker who walked away unchanged while I rebuilt myself piece by piece.

Yeah. I know. Still not healthy. Still worth saying.

If we’re living right, we’re always changing, just a little bit. A little wiser. A little more guarded. A little more experienced. Day to day, the changes are subtle. You don’t notice them until years pass and you realize you’re no longer who you used to be.

But trauma? Trauma doesn’t wait for time to do its work. Trauma rewires you overnight. You wake up different. And I don’t know yet what that means. I probably won’t for a while.

Today, I try to re-enter my life. After physical therapy, I go back to work. I’ve changed, but the people there haven’t seen me. They’ll be different too, just by proximity. My coworkers. My employees. My team.

Am I nervous? Yeah. I’m fucking nervous.

But I’ll do what I always do. I’ll stand up straight, hold my head high, walk in with a smile, and hope we can pick up somewhere close to where we left off.

And maybe, just maybe, hope they haven’t changed as much as I have.