The Universe Has Jokes

Life, in all of its comedic glory, loves to circle a point. It never just hands you a lesson; it smacks you with it, laughs, and then loops back around for the encore.

Take my teeth, for example.

The accident didn’t just break a crown on one of my front teeth. Oh no. It also knocked the other top front tooth crooked so it now hangs slightly outward and to the left, like it’s trying to flee my mouth and start a new life elsewhere. My teeth are a goddamned mess. They look like those fake plastic Halloween teeth kids wear to pretend they’re toothless hicks from the deep South… except mine are real. Authentic. Custom-made by asphalt.

And that’s before we even get to the missing chunk of lip. Have I mentioned that? A little piece of me just… gone. My face is a patchwork quilt stitched by a blind raccoon, and honestly, if I didn’t laugh I’d cry, so I choose the laugh. Mostly.

But here’s the part that matters: I’m on the upswing. I can feel it. There’s energy in me again. Life is flickering back on in the corners. Today I’m spending the day alone at my house for the first time since the crash. There will absolutely be challenges, but independence doesn’t return all at once. It comes back in hard-won inches. Today is one of those inches.

I can feel myself getting close to the point where I can start rebuilding muscle in my upper body, core, and legs. And that puts me one step closer to mounting Aurora again. Yes, it sounds filthy when I say it like that. No, I’m not changing it.

Now, I know I keep talking about the accident. I never meant for this blog to become an injury journal. But it’s all I’ve been living since the evening of October 27. This recovery. This body. This rebuilding. That’s it. That has been my entire universe.

Which brings me back to the teeth.

You’re probably wondering why the hell I brought them up. I’m not telling you yet. Not because I’m being mysterious, but because the story doesn’t start there.

When I “became conscious” again… well, that’s not the right word. I was evidently conscious in the ER and ICU, talking, responding, existing. I just don’t remember any of it. Let’s blame the TBI. It’s probably the truth, and frankly I plan on using the TBI as a catch-all excuse going forward. Call it coping. Or dark humor. Or honesty with flair.

My first real thoughts happened in the rehab facility. That’s where I started reclaiming my brain. And as I’ve written here so many times before, I rose this time with the universe breathing down my neck about my writing. It wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t gentle. It was a cosmic “get your shit together, Sjostrand.”

So as my mind and body have healed here at my friend’s house, I dove headfirst into my writing. I’ve cranked out pages and pages. I’ve declared to the universe, loudly, repeatedly, maybe even rudely, that I want to take this seriously. That I want to build a body of work that withstands time itself. That I am done fucking around.

And the universe, having a very specific sense of humor, responded by giving me toothless-hick teeth and a fucked-up mouth.

You can’t tell me that isn’t funny.

In the mythology of my life, this is how it works. I ask the universe for a legacy. The universe hands me crooked teeth, a missing lip, and a story I never would’ve written if things had gone differently.

Maybe the joke isn’t on me. Maybe the joke is me. Either way, I’m writing it down.