Chapter One
The Beginning of the End
When I first began to write my testimony, I hated everything about myself. I hated what I had physically and mentally become. After years of studying the Word, the only part of my life that I still hate is the reason this happened to me. I’ve spent almost three decades trying to figure out why and I’ve gotten nowhere. All I can remember is that horrific night.
Darkness filled the sky on a desolate highway, and I am reminded of that darkness every morning when I wake up weak and ill. Every time I have to swallow the pills and inject the medications that keep me “alive” and “replace” what was taken from me. It never has, and I can’t imagine how it ever could. I will never be the same. This is the biggest chapter in my life, and I wish I could shred every single page.
I remember the freedom I felt when I drove off in my sixteenth birthday present. It was the beginning of a bright new future I worked so hard to achieve. I earned a scholarship to Harvard and was going to become a scientist, possibly a neurologist. I wanted to take away the pain that was engulfed in anyone with a disability. I was consumed by a strong sympathy for the disabled students in my class. But I had no idea that months later, I would be one of them. My sympathy quickly turned to empathy.
In every daily struggle, I’m trying to love this new me, but I haven’t figured out how. I really don’t want to accept this. I just want to go back…July 26, 1993. That date is imprinted in my brain: the lights, the tree, and the darkness. The only memory of that night is standing by my car asking my boyfriend to drive me home. I don’t remember why but he said no, and that I do remember. I got off work, had dinner with my boyfriend’s family, took a nap, drove home…where did it all go wrong? What if I had left a minute later…a minute earlier? A tough reality to face. I will never know in this lifetime.
It was a warm night. Stars filled the sky. I remember driving, singing, and envisioning my future. Life was good, and then it happened. Flashing bright lights and nowhere to turn. A head-on collision and a broken soul. I was left in a pool of blood with no one around but the man who stole my life. As I lay in a coma, choking on blood from a shattered jaw, he decided to steal more than my life. My CD’s, birthday money, the new watch on my wrist, even the new shoes on my feet. Then he left. He just left me there to die.
I was planted in a shallow grave beneath my car after it flipped several times. My seatbelt broke loose from the impact, and I was ejected through the driver’s side window, shattering my jaw. I obviously do not remember the sound of my car rolling. I don’t remember how it felt to break a window with my jaw. I don’t even remember falling out of the window when my seatbelt broke loose. I don’t remember sliding into a shallow ditch while my car fell on top of me. I don’t even remember screaming out of shock as the paramedics lifted me into the care flight. It was past midnight, and my mom was driving toward the accident in search for me. She arrived just in time to hear every scream. She had told me that she ran to the helicopter, but the paramedics wouldn’t let her in. I can’t imagine the fear my parents must have felt as they drove for thirty minutes from the accident to St. Mary’s Hospital.
I was flown to our most advanced hospital in Grand Junction, CO, where I remained in a coma for two months. I don’t know anything that took place during that time. But I’ve heard the stories. My mom told me how strong I was, even in a coma. I fought the entire time, and I never gave up.
I’ve lost sight of the day I opened my eyes, as I was severely drugged and weak from the side effects of being left beaten to death by a drunken driver. I could barely see or hear. Who are those nice…? Why can’t I open my…? Why can’t I feel my…? Wondering where my family was, even though my mind had erased each and every noun.
I didn’t react because I didn’t know how. I couldn’t open my mouth to scream, and my mind was blank. I needed answers, but I had no idea how to ask. I wreaked my brain trying to comprehend what was happening to me. I was exhausted, but I had slept for so long I couldn’t sleep anymore. By the end of every confusing day, while my mom was in the other bed in Hilltop Rehab Center, I would stay awake all night and play with the stuffed animals visitors brought me. I was a child again.
My mom would turn on the TV, but I couldn’t contemplate one word coming through the speakers. I had no words to say, and no one spoke a language I could understand.
I had many visitors, but out of all the people who came to my room every day, there was only one I remembered. He was the last person I saw. The last person I touched…and the first person to break my heart…I felt it as soon as he walked into my hospital room. Out of all the pain, anger, and confusion, the strongest emotion I felt was fear. Fear of losing the only part of my life I could understand. I panicked the first time he looked at me. I was broken and torn. Desperate for his acceptance, and then he was gone. I was lost without a word to say.
With daily rehab and therapy, I relearned how to walk, talk and feed myself again after removing the wires that held my face together, that is. I relearned all of this with double vision. You realize the head injury is massive when the side effects are multi-vision. Everything I looked at duplicated itself two to six times. I was forced to wear an eye patch over my left eye to block out the blur and strengthen my sight. All I could do is wait through the months of testing and healing.
As the months went by, I could finally open my mouth, but I didn’t know enough words to form a sentence. Due to the partial damage to my frontal cortex, which is responsible for processing nouns, it was extremely difficult for me to converse with others. Ironically, I still had my verbs. For instance, I could say “open,” but I had no idea how to say “door.” It would take me at least five minutes to say a sentence because I couldn’t remember the word for the person, place, or thing. I didn’t know how to say a correct sentence or ask a simple question. I didn’t know how to tell anyone how weak, thirsty, and confused I felt. I didn’t know anything but verbs.
For a short while, I used my hands to talk for me. As time went by, the healing in my body and my brain began to progress. I was able to relearn and consume information. I couldn’t talk that well, but I could type. Typing was the first lesson I started in rehab. I typed and typed until I could finally read the words. Though I had a hard time writing a sentence, my typing speed was over 140 wpm. With daily rehab, speech therapy, and occupational therapy, I relearned enough in one year to return my senior year and graduate with my class. I couldn’t have done any of this without my parents, who took me almost a year to recall.
I struggle to forget the day I walked back into that high school. I can still feel the lapse as my identity was ripped from me—an honor student one day and in special education the next. I was instantly consumed by fear right when I sat down. The teacher asked us to practice writing our names, so I stood up and said, “I don’t belong here!” I was so ashamed and so embarrassed to return to a school where I was once esteemed. No one understood what I had physically gone through. I walked and talked and moved much slower than everyone else. I had two massive head injuries; what did they expect? I was mocked and made fun of by the very people who used to call me their friend. The same people who used to call me Dr. Belcastro. They witnessed my achievements and then marked me as Dr. Retard. I was changed that day. I was unacceptable to them, so I was immediately unacceptable to myself. I allowed their opinion to alter my future.
I didn’t know who I was or who I was supposed to be for twenty-six years, but I remember what it felt like to be free from bondage. To be able to jump out of bed in excitement for a new day. To look forward to each year. I remember how my life was supposed to turn out. I remember, and that’s why I’ve spent every single day since in a deep depression. A depression that only faith could break.
Faith…that is the most significant concept in every individual life. Believing you were meant for more, and if you believe with all your heart, you can have whatever you ask for (see Mark 11:23-24). That seems like a simple solution to the failures life can bring us. If only there wasn’t an adversary seeking to devoir me every single day (see 1 Peter 5:8).
Some days, I’m blessed with the energy to speak. Knowledge in the Word opens my mouth to claim what I say shall be (see Proverbs 15:2). These faith-filled days are the only days I live for…to feel His healing power surround me. I reach out my hands to take hold, but it invariably slips through my fingers.
I’ve tried being the smartest. I’ve tried being the fastest. I’ve even tried being the strongest. But trying to be a Christian is the hardest type of person I’ve ever tried to be. It’s a never-ending glory sparked by a fragment of understanding and fulfilled by a pea size of faith. I know my faith is bigger than a pea! So now’s the hard part: I have to keep the faith, and this is just the beginning.
