You Don’t Get to Be More Afraid of My Recovery Than I Am

Over the last two months, I have fought every minute of every goddamn day to get better. I fought to get function back in my foot. In my hand. In my fingers. In my face. In my brain.

Do you have any idea how much resolve that takes? How much raw fucking tenacity it takes to claw your way back, inch by inch, after a devastating accident, especially when it was caused by someone else?

A lot. Every single day.

On October 27, 2025, my life was violently altered by the negligence of a stranger.

I was riding about 40 miles an hour when a car made an illegal U-turn directly into my path. I hit it face-first. I went over the handlebars and absorbed the impact with my face and upper body.

Here’s what that bought me:

• Multiple facial fractures

• A broken voice box

• A collapsed lung and bruising in both lungs

• A small brain bleed

• An injured artery feeding my brain

• My heart knocked into dangerous rhythms

• A broken wrist

• A shattered foot that required surgery and pins

I was intubated. Treated as a critical trauma. Transferred to a Level 1 trauma center.

These are injuries that kill people outright.

Every minute since has been a fight, and I have fought.

Yesterday, two months after that night, I rode my bike.

Was it perfect? No.

Was there stiffness? Yes.

Was there hesitation? Probably.

But I fucking did it. Because when life knocks you down, you get the fuck back up.

What I did not expect, what genuinely blindsided me, was finding myself in a position where I had to defend that decision. To family. To friends. To people who say they love me.

I haven’t heard much rage directed at the person who caused this. I haven’t heard much anger toward the driver who gambled with my life.

But me getting back up? That’s what seems to upset people. And that makes absolutely no fucking sense.

I didn’t put myself in the hospital. Someone driving a Subaru did.

I didn’t total my bike. Someone driving a Subaru did.

I didn’t “take a risk.” I survived one.

The only thing I’ve done since that night is claw my way back, inch by inch, through recovery. I’ve had the courage, every single day, to put one foot in front of the other against brutal headwinds.

And yet here I am, having to justify protecting my mind and my spirit. We don’t do this to other accident victims. When a farmer finally climbs back into a combine, we don’t clutch our pearls and say, “It’s too soon.” When someone gets in a car accident, we don’t shame them for driving to their doctor’s appointments. When an athlete returns after injury, we put them on a pedestal and praise their courage.

But when a biker gets plowed into by a car, and scraps their way back through recovery, gritting their teeth while strangers stare at their damaged face, that’s when people decide it’s reckless?

Bullshit.

I didn’t plan on getting hit that night. I don’t remember it, but I guarantee you I did everything I could to avoid it.

The person who hit me had an inebriated passenger. The cops didn’t push it further, but I’d bet my next paycheck the driver had been drinking too. They hit the accelerator and thought, “I think I can make it.”

They weren’t gambling with their life. They were gambling with mine.

So where’s the rage for that?

People should be looking at me with admiration for the strength it took to recover at this pace. Instead, they cast judgment, for getting up, for moving forward, for refusing to surrender.

I’d much rather see that anger placed where it belongs: on the person who bears one hundred percent of the blame.

Not on the survivor who refused to stay down.