It’s taken a long time for me to get here. Recognizing my limits and not pushing past them was a slow process.

I’ve come to realize three things:

1. 1. The next concussion will either disable me further or straight up kill me.
2. 2. I find option one a horrifying nightmare existence since life is hard enough already.
3. 3. I can’t change which one happens.

And there is a “next” concussion. I’m not lucky enough to avoid whacking my head hard enough to rattle my brain around for a ninth time.

I’m a pragmatist—not an optimist.

The realistic outcome of another head injury in my case is, simply put, bad all around.

Jokes about helmets and bubble wrap are all well and good the eight hundredth time around, but I need people to understand a hard truth about head trauma:

It doesn’t get better for some people.

It gets less frightening as you get used to your new normal, but that is exactly what it is. The new normal.

And it’s okay that it sucks. It’s okay that I have good days that sometimes trigger imposter syndrome, or bad days when I can’t sit up without more pain, but I can’t stop coming up with things to write.

It is okay that I need to lie down in the dark so I don’t hurt as much.

I did all the fulfilling things in life when I was a child and I lived in so many different places and saw so many different things that most kids don’t get to experience. And as soon as I got to the age where I was finally getting to “adult” and had job security, I got a TBI at work and now I’m restricted to laying in the dark in order to avoid constant cluster headaches.

While I’m angry that all of that school and stress that I went through (all that wasted and expensive effort) still happened, I’m also relieved. I know my limits now and I’ve found contentment with them. I can rest after so many years of stress built up over and over and over.

So, I think being constantly stressed and on the point of suicidal ideation every few years makes this traumatic brain injury feel like something that has upsides to. I may hurt all the time, but I feel a lot less unsure about who I am since the concussion happened.

I think we as a society are becoming more and more aware of trauma and its potential consequences by being more open to the idea that sharing it with others, and it is a good way to cope with it all. I think social media and forums like Reddit are helpful in informing people who need questions answered.

Answered questions make the present feel less frightening, because the more you know, the better prepared you are.

Because my brain has always catalogued quotes—I have a lot memorized and there are two quotes I think about a lot when I remind myself to be patient.

“Proper preparation prevents poor performance,” from Constable Benton Fraser (“Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I first came to Chicago on the trail of the killers of my father and, for reasons that don’t need exploring at this juncture, have remained attached as liaison for the Canadian consulate.”) in the 90s TV show Due South regarding knife throwing, and “what one man can do, another can do,” from Anthony Hopkins’s character in The Edge (regarding killing a Kodiak bear that’s hunting him and Alec Baldwin’s character).

After nearly a decade and hindsight regarding my symptoms, I can tell that I’m declining. I used to be able to drive and go see a movie. My short term memory was bad, but now I’m forgetting things mid-thought more and more frequently.

Realizing that my lifespan is much shorter because of repeated trauma to my brain isn’t as frightening a prospect as I once thought.

I’ve come to terms with it. Mostly because I’m tired.

It is exhausting to be in constant pain.