I was 20 years old. Young, invincible. Or so I thought...
Trauma can be a catalyst for transformation
Trauma can be the impetus for rebirth, if you let it. I learned that the hard way, by blood and tears and sleepless nights.
Not a pretty lesson.
Not a gentle lesson.
But a lesson that has saved my life – more than once.
My story begins with a bump. An exploding one, to be precise. It’s the head-on collision of a car at 70 miles per hour.
I was 20 years old. Young, invincible. Or so I thought.
I remember the sound. The squeal of brakes, the smash of glass, the sudden thud of raw force as I was pitched against the seatbelt.
And then... nothing.
Blackness, silence.
A void where the world used to be.
I awoke three days later, in a hospital bed. Broken ribs. Punctured lung. Fractured pelvis.
But that was just what was outside. The visible scars. The worst of the damage, the deepest of the trauma, was inside.
In the screams that woke me up in the middle of the night, soaked in sweat and unable to breathe. In the memories that sprung up unannounced, making me shake and disoriented.
In this unremitting dread that something awful was about to happen. That any second, my world could fall apart all over again.
PTSD, the doctors said: post-traumatic stress disorder.
A clinical description for hell on Earth.
I couldn’t get behind the wheel, couldn’t ride in a car without having a panic attack. Couldn’t close my eyes without seeing wrecked metal and flying glass.
I was a dealer in a kind of prison. I was living in the moment, but only in the moment of my disaster.
I hit rock bottom. I dropped out of college. I lost my job. I turned my back on friends and family. I chugged back booze.
I was a shell of myself. A ghost, haunting my own life.
But something of that old me was still alive. A flame, tiny and defiant, that refused to be snuffed.
Call it survival reflex.
Call it the human spirit.
That thing that kicks in, that inner drive to keep going, to find a way through.
There was a book.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Matters with Matt to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.