Apparently, I had fallen off the bike on a downhill onto my head, and sustained two fractures in my skull, a severe bruise on my right hemisphere, and had pulled the nerves at the top of my spine. This meant nothing to me at the time. I had no idea what this really meant; I thought I would be fine in a couple of weeks and could be back horseback riding or on my bike, but those and all contact sports were forbidden for a year. I was not in classes until the spring, when I slowly reentered the school scene after trying to keep up with the help of tutors. I never was present at a full day of school the entire year though, and until the following December, I was still doing freshman year's math work. That spring I became really depressed because I could do what felt like nothing, never really saw my friends, and the like. The summer following ninth grade, I returned to the camp with my doctor's permission to be on the bike, and went on the next set of trips, a ten day canoe trip and a ten day bike trip to Ben and Jerry's. The whole trip it was painfully clear that I was not where I needed to be to be going on such a trip, but I endured it and made the best of it anyway. Sophomore year I was in all of my classes, back riding, and felt like I was back to myself. The doctors had told me that after a year I should be back mostly but that it could take many more years to completely heal. February that year I began to be able to see what had happened to me. I could see changes week to week, and I saw what it meant to be head injured. Before it had just felt like someone was pulling wool over my eyes and feeding me a story, but I saw how true it was.
Summer 2002 I went on the final bike trip offered by the camp, a twenty-two day trip to Nova Scotia. On our "shakedown" I fell for the first time since the injury, and I had a flashback, giving me insight into what had really happened two years back. It scared and delighted me. The whole trip was wonderful and terrible at the same time; wonderful because it was a great group and fun, but terrible because it was clear to me that I was the weakest link in the group and I was the reason that we couldn't go as far as we had wanted to. It hurt a lot and everyone in the group assured me that it wasn't the case but I knew in my heart it was. I pushed hard and finished the trip, and it was an experience that I would trade for nothing else in the world. It taught me many valuable lessons, and I made it.
Now I am 16 and a junior. It seems sometimes that all the bad things in my life have precipitated from the injury, and although that is true in part, I know that I superlatize sometimes. I am not back to where I could be and it tears at me every day. I see what I could have been and what I have been reduced to now and it hurts. I remember a lot how much it hurt when I would tell people about it and they would have pity written all over their faces. I hate to be pitied, and I don't want their pity, I want their understanding. I know, though, that they can never quite understand since they have never been through the situation. I have taken to writing in my journal and essay notebook practically religiously to blow off steam, write letters to no one in that way, and it helps. I know that I'm lucky to be alive, but every time my mother looks at me with tears in her eyes and tells me how happy she is that I'm still alive, it hurts deep inside because I just don't know how it was. I wish I could change how my life has fallen, but since I know I can't, I'll just have to make the best of this situation now, not live in the past like the fool I have been. Live in the now, and I think life can go on, wherever it may take me now.
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