Sandee Rodriguez
How do you start life over, with no reference to the past?
At the age of 24, I woke, one day, from a deep coma. I sustained a Traumatic Brain Injury from a near-fatal car accident. I don’t remember waking up, I just came to know that I was paralyzed, in the hospital and fighting to stay alive. My only thoughts were, I wanted to get out of there and go home. I didn’t understand the severity of what had happened and the devastation of discovery.
I had no idea that my life had started over, from scratch, until I was home for a few weeks and looking at pictures of my family from past events. Marriage photos, couple photos, senior pictures. I recognized everyone except one girl. I looked over the framed pictures, all in a row and kept stopping at her. Who was she? Why is she up there with family?
One and a half minutes went by, and my brain smacked myself; oh my god, that’s me! My stomach felt like a boulder fell into it and I was gob smacked. I felt so small and lost. How can I not recognize myself? Even if it’s a picture from my past? It was then I realized how severe my poor brain was damaged. I had near-total Retrograde Amnesia of 24 years. How do I move forward? I was numb. Not long after that, the serious boyfriend I had for 3 years, my first love, broke up with me because I was different. It’s not you or your brain injury Sandee, it’s me, he’d say. I felt like the car I was in, hit me again; at 55 mph.
I had to get to know myself all over again; and create a new Sandee. I hated myself. Even though I had no memory of anything, I still hated life. I thought about suicide, at time or two; talk therapy helped to silence those thoughts. After a short while, I started to force myself to look in the mirror, as long as I could take it, and just see me.
I did this every day and after a few weeks, I started to tell myself positive things. It started with an angry tone of voice, with the words, “you are beautiful, you are worthy, you are important, you are loved.”
I could only get a few words, angrily, out, and wouldn’t look at myself as I said those words. I’d force myself to do this a few times a day, at the beginning. It took several weeks before I would look at myself in the mirror saying those words. I sounded like I was trying to convince myself or my tone sounded like I was scolding myself; but I didn’t look away.
As often as I would do this, I noticed my tone get lighter, my posture would stand taller, and my gaze became softer. After 4 months of this daily ritual, I noticed I was saying I, instead of you, without making a conscious effort. I started to like myself more. I started making the effort to do things I knew I liked before. More importantly, try new things that would help me feel safer in my immediate surroundings. I signed up to take Hapkido, a martial art classes, to work on building strength I lost from the hospital stay, coordination, and self-esteem to know I could protect myself if I needed.
I started taking college classes and educated myself on anatomy, my body and health. I wanted to understand what bones were broken, fractured and how it affected my body as a whole. I started writing poetry and a one-act play. I started going to open-mic poetry nights at a coffee house near my home. I would continue to grasp puzzle pieces of memories, of my past, as best I could. I didn’t really have interest to date yet, and that made my mom feel good. She loved that I was learning Hapkido, so I had control of my environment when I did date.
Memory flashbacks came up, every-so-often and it was very weird. Getting these short stories or partial images, in my head, that didn’t make sense or needed clarification, by my family or the few friends I still had. Weird for them as well, asking about something that happened with them, I was there, but telling me like I was a stranger to them. And everyone, pretty much, still was.
