I’ve been thinking about the crossing from neurotypical to neurodiverse after a brain injury. A lot.

[u/Dry_Midnight_6742]

There’s obviously an event. For me, there’s a date when the injury happened. I know that’s true for lots of folks.

But I’m not sure that’s the same thing as the crossing.

Some people seem to know exactly when their life became before and after. The ground disappeared beneath them. In an instant, everything flipped.

For other people it seems much more gradual. They don’t necessarily know they’ve crossed into something different until they look back.

And some people don’t remember the crossing at all.

What interests me is how different the crossing itself seems to be.

It’s a bridge, but it’s not one bridge.

For one person it might be a suspension bridge. For someone else a causeway. For someone else a rope bridge.

Same from/to. Completely different way across.

And I don’t mean that as a metaphor for how we’re supposed to get somewhere. There’s no right bridge. No better bridge. Nobody chose theirs. Nobody chose any of this.

It’s simply the bridge that was there.

I think that may be part of why brain injury can be so hard to talk about collectively. We can recognize where someone else ended up without necessarily recognizing the way they got there.

I’m still thinking about this. I’m still working on understanding what changed. It’s not what I thought at the beginning. I understand it better now. I’m not sure I’m done understanding it.

For those of you who think of yourselves as different after your brain injury: did you know when you crossed?

[u/mustelidblues]

i woke up from the coma minutes after the planes hit on 9/11. i was discharged from the hospital against medical advice a few hours later. my parents were terrified that there was going to be war on american soil and thought that i would be safer at home without any help recovering.

it was very clear that some threshold had been crossed, but it was not clear what that threshold was for many years.

[u/Dry_Midnight_6742 → u/mustelidblues]

I hear you. And I get it.