I Lost My Mind And Got To Know Myself

I lived a split life for a long time. Some things happened that put my life on an unplanned path. Then, in the blink of an eye, my path started to clear, and I realized I might not be who I wanted to be. Better late than never, right?

I suppose it started the day a neurologist told me I couldn't be me anymore. I had recently suffered a traumatic brain injury due to a violent attack while working as an officer. The ambush was quick. The first punch was, as they say, a sucker punch. The following hits continued to knock me out of my senses. I was about to be beaten to death if I didn't create distance.

The final blow landed at the base of my skull and knocked me nearly unconscious. I was confused, barely able to think, and couldn't recognize my fellow officers as some tried to help me while others worked to contain the threat.

My awareness was scattered somewhere in my head, and the next thing I knew, I was being taken off an ambulance. I'd been there enough to recognize my surroundings. Yet, I wasn't how I wound up in the ambulance.

Concussion number five may well have done me in, professionally speaking. The effects of the concussion, or what's called Post Concussion Syndrome, took time to set in, but when they did, I was different.

It was a month later when the first doctor gave me his opinion. He told me to retire, take disability, and call it a day.

"You can't risk any more hits to the head," said Dr. Nikolai.

More hits to the head would elevate the risk of serious complications.

What the hell was I supposed to do? I'd been in uniform since I was a kid. I was 21 when I swore into the Sheriff's Department, and at 22, I started running a security team. I grew up fighting the bad guys. A hit to the head is an inherent risk of the job.

Immediately, it hit me like a smack in the face. I didn't know how to be anything else. I didn't know how to be different. I always chose my path, because it had been chosen for me before, and I promised never again.

When you do something long enough, it becomes a part of who you are. Now, I would risk the loss of my faculties if I took another heavy hit to the head. It was an unacceptable suggestion but one that I should have accepted.

Time is supposed to change us. The more we live and learn about ourselves and the world, the more we evolve. We have to hope that it is all for the best. But, in the case of changes from a traumatic event, we should watch what we do more carefully.

When who am I becomes a daily question, it's time to accept life as you knew it might be gone. For a while, you're in much murkier waters than most. At least that's how it felt.

While forced out of work for a time, habits began forming. I realized I struggled to be comfortable with people. The trust level was gone. Now, everybody was potentially a threat. I now perceived everybody, particularly ones that looked like my assailant, as a prospective threat.

How did I think I could get back on the horse? On edge, constant pain from the migraines, growing self-doubt, and a burgeoning chemical abuse issue, and I thought I'd jump right into the same environment without problems. Who was I, Superman?

I needed to try to be the unstoppable me. I failed miserably. Slowly, I began to question who I now was compared to the old me. Could I do the things I had before, and be the man that survived hundreds of violent encounters with only a couple of losses? Or would I run from the danger I'd always run towards?

Having only been two things in my life, I now saw the end to both. One was inevitable. While you never really stop being a parent, there comes a time when children no longer need you the way they once did.

Ultimately, I had grown up being a parent. Having a child at 19, I was an adult but not necessarily grown up. I still had tons of growing and maturing before being a "grown-up." During that time when most people were finding themselves, I found myself facing single parenthood. Instead of any natural progression into different parts of life, I was now playing roles, doing what I had to.

My son was grown and needed me less, and the role of sheriff's deputy didn't fit me so well. If not a "Parent" or "Deputy," who was I? What was I?

I realized how much of my identity was from what I was on the outside and less about who I was on the inside.

What was I meant to be?

Finding Myself

Severe post-concussion syndrome can feel like you're lost inside yourself. It's like losing your mind, and then having to find it again.

There comes a time when soul searching and reflecting are required exercises. I pushed my way back into my career despite upper management trying to push me out for what they called "my own good." Rather than being pushed out the back door like some dirty little secret, I promised to leave through the front door.

I still don't think they believed me, even though that was what I ultimately would do.

I looked at who I was before I got hurt. In some ways, I was better before the attack. However, it opened my eyes. What I saw afterward were things I didn't like.

After developing a deep mistrust of people over the years, I didn't have the stomach for shadiness, corruption, and dirty little games. I no longer had the stomach for lying, keeping secrets, and skullduggery within the rank and file. I did some of it myself when it seemed like the right thing to do. Now, internally, I refused to be a part of the secret world the others thrived within.

Trust became hard for me. I no longer trusted the very people I should have depended on. The ensuing investigation into my attack by management didn't match up with the confession by the person that screwed up. I shouldn't have been there alone. Someone had intel that my attacker announced his intentions ahead of time. I never heard that until after I made it back.

I struggled with the rights and wrongs of it all. Working in an environment such as a county correctional facility, I'd learned the blacks and whites of things. I'd always known something else. There is always a grey area when dealing with human beings.

After years of being a good little soldier, the mission no longer made sense. Leadership changed, and not for the better. One foot was out the door, without knowing what I would do or who I would become. My identity intertwined with the badge and the gun.

After slowly reflecting on why I was there and how the idea of officer and Sergeant Morton came to be, I slowly slipped away from being as concerned with the laws and the public as I once was. It was no longer a career. It was a job.

When my superiors looked at me one day and lied to me like I wouldn't know any better, I recognized that the newer regime no longer held any respect for people who had sacrificed and suffered for the department. They never would.

Shocked and beside myself with terror, I finally found out who I was, and I was not the guy to continue down a dirt-laden path.

I'd told my bosses, at the height of my misery from post-concussion syndrome, if the place ever got to me and I couldn't see myself doing the job anymore, they'd come into work and find my badge, my I.D., and my resignation.

Looking me in the face and lying to me pushed me to my end. I admitted that despite that part of my life forming my identity, it was time to find a new identity. It was time to find a new life.

Six months, some trial and error, and some considerable sacrifices later, and I found a part of me I didn't know existed. I can work with my hands. I like trying to figure out puzzles. I was happy for the first time in a decade and didn't start my days wondering, "What fresh hell will today bring?"

Sometimes, we allow ourselves to become so wrapped up in what we are it becomes who we are. That part of my life that I left, I stopped feeling like one of the good guys at a certain point. I'd lost respect for the role.

It reminds me of a quote from a scene in a Batman movie. I'd done it long enough and taken a hard enough approach that I was one of the bad guys. We couldn't be the good guys anymore because the system was being turned robotic.

I'm glad I found a new life. I'm happy with the progress, and I've made strides to learn the things I never took the time to about the world and myself. Most of all, I found myself again, and I don't hate it when I wake up. It is a newer, more evolved version of myself, but that's okay.

In hindsight, that should have been my first hint to leave that life. There's nothing healthy when you hate it that you wake up. Every day you wake up is a chance to do better, to achieve your dreams, and to experience this life. My identity was one rooted in anger, mistrust, and cynicism. Now, I'm a person that believes in the possible, if you are willing to look for it.