abi Possibilities

This is a guest post from Jesse, one of our service providers at Possibilities. In talking with him, he told me the story of the "Best Worst Thing" that ever happened to him and I knew this would be a wonderful story to share.

So here is Jesse's story...

Whenever anyone asks what the best thing that ever happened to me was, it's always the same shocking answer.  It isn’t my first kiss, or my sweet sixteen birthday extravaganza. It isn’t my first promotion or my first time watching a movie on the big screen.

When I was 18, I was hit by a drunk driver on New Years Eve, receiving a fractured skull and 22 staple stitches.

It was this moment of my life where everything changed -- the crash that defined me. I was no longer just a person, in that smashing second I became a true survivor. 

And if I could go back in time, I wouldn’t change a thing.

The accident left me on my back for over a month -- needless to say, the injury ruined my holiday season and most of my last year in high school. I lost the ability to retain numbers and even the most basic math took months to begin reorganizing inside my mind.

To add insult to injury, the drunk drivers were in an uninsured car, and because no one saw who was driving, nobody was charged or penalized. 

You would think in the months that followed I would have been angry and justified in being angry. If I were the person I was before the accident, I truly would have been. I would have been bitter and seeking justice, I would have been revengeful and unwilling to forgive.

I would have used it as another excuse to lose faith.

Fortunately none of these negative thought patterns occurred, not even for a second.

I “woke up” from that accident a changed person. Though I was in pain I was also in bliss. It was within seconds of regaining consciousness that I found myself overwhelmed with a feeling of being special, chosen, of being lucky. More than ever in my life, I felt a true understanding that “everything happens for a reason.”

I couldn’t doubt that everything happened for a reason.

When I found out the drunk drivers were free to go, I wasn’t even angry for a moment. I felt an immediate sense of being grateful that it wasn’t me -- that I didn’t have to watch a teenager spread across a windshield or live a life knowing my foolish actions caused such a tragic mess. 

And when things got stressful and sad, as they often do for people in healing, there was always that voice…as if it were placed inside of me the moment I was cracked open…that I could relax in my life now, that I could value my life now. That this happened to me, and it happened for a reason.

I didn’t know before my accident that I wanted to be a social worker.

I didn’t know before my accident that I wanted to be alive, that I desired to love and to learn, that what I had was precious…

I didn’t know before my accident that there was a will to live inside of me. 

I wish there was a trick to it I could share, or even an explanation to how things turned out for me the way they did but there really isn’t. Somehow my mind made the leap right over the “victim” phase and straight into the “survivor” mentality.

And though that leap doesn’t come as quickly for some others, it's this reframing that is the most liberating of all for survivors of accidents. It's looking beyond the circumstance, the players in the game, and the consequences and beginning to look instead at the objective picture of our lives.

My happiness, my self worth, my will to live well…all elements of myself engraved into me that New Years Eve, all elements of myself that I had not found and quite possibly never would have were it not for those drunk drivers.

This best worst thing was the moment that I came to realize how strong I can be, how loving and forgiving, how special this little life I am leading really is and the depth of our human experiences. It was easily the most profound and unforgettable thing…something I wouldn’t wish on anyone and yet something I hope (in some less painful way) everyone can experience.

A serious injury changes everything, it is a rebirth.

I can only hope more people who fall “victim” of drunk drivers can see things this way -- the potentials for growth in even the most traumatic of experiences, the way we tell the story of our lives and fraction things off in “good” and “bad” or “best” and “worst” when really sometimes life is both those things simultaneously.

My injury was the best worst moment of my life, because through it I began to see my life clearly for the first time, for better or for worse, and all the possibilities in between.

There's nothing really to add here -- Jesse has touchingly summarized the biggest shift people can make after an injury -- to see all the possibilities, to experience a "rebirth" that lets them get on with creating the life they want.

What is your "Best Worst Moment"? One that let you take a dramatically new direction or shifted your world view to see totally new possibilities?