Waking Up

Since the accident, large areas of my body haven’t had feeling.

Most of my chin? Numb. Left cheek? Numb. Entire inner thigh on my left leg, the inside of my left knee, most of my left foot? Numb.

Yeah, this would be the easy place to drop a Gen X joke about my emotions. “Large chunks of my soul—numb.” Cute. Efficient. Probably accurate in places.

But this isn’t about jokes.

This is about what it feels like when your body shuts parts of itself off in order to survive.

There were so many broken things inside me that everything had to slow way the fuck down. Healing felt microscopic. Like progress was happening at a level I couldn’t perceive. I’m coming up on four months since that night. Four months since some careless driver decided, “I’d like to go over there,” and permanently altered my trajectory.

Four fucking months.

And in that time, I just accepted the numbness. I assumed this was my new normal. One more thing to add to the mental list of what the accident took.

But now? Things are waking up.

My left foot is still mostly numb, but my toes have started tingling. My chin still feels like I just left the dentist, but sensation is creeping back in. My left cheek has feeling again. My knee is stubborn, but as the Morel-Lavallée lesion heals, feeling is returning to my inner thigh.

And here’s the strange part: With sensation comes pain.

Nerves firing again don’t feel gentle. They spark. They ache. They stab in unpredictable flashes. But when it happens, I find myself smiling. Because pain means signal. Signal means connection. Connection means I’m still here.

This accident stripped a lot from me. It embedded fear of headlights and darkness in my nervous system. It twisted my lip into something I’m still learning to look at. It made me weak when I used to be strong.

But it also did something else.

It reminded me that living isn’t comfortable. It isn’t polished. It isn’t safe. It’s messy and painful and inconvenient and sometimes terrifying.

And I fucking like being alive.

Yes, I’m still dealing with trauma responses. I’ll work through them. Yes, my face may need surgery. Or maybe this is just the new version of me. Yes, I’m weaker than I was. I’m also getting stronger every week. Yes, random pains shoot through me throughout the day.

But pain is a privilege the dead don’t get. And goddamnit, I’m alive.