Writing Through the Pain

Writing. I used to hate it as a kid. My mother loves telling people now how I told my fourth-grade teacher that no matter what happens, the last job I would ever want is to be a writer. I did not just say this because I did not want to do the assignment. It was just true. As a child, I would rather have been reading a book than writing one.

I have never been one for the limelight. I was never someone who wanted to stand on stage and bask in the glow and admiration of others. I would much rather have preferred being outside, riding on a skateboard or reading a book. Perhaps climbing a tree or just walking around, getting lost in my own thoughts. My imagination wanders all the time and sometimes I love what it comes up with, and sometimes I despise it. I preferred to be alone and still do sometimes, though for a different reason now.

Throughout the years, small nuggets of inspiration would strike, and I knew I needed to put pen to paper and take down my thoughts, even if nothing ever came of it, like the fake season I wrote on a vacation of one of my favorite web series. I participated in all of the family activities and pictures during the trip, but all of the spare time was spent writing that product of my imagination. Of course, the real show was much, much better than what I came up with, and I enjoyed contrasting my thoughts with the direction of the show.

I was never much of a dreamer, whether you take it as real life or while I sleep. However, one night while I was in college, I had a dream that was stronger and more vivid than any other dream I had ever experienced. When I awoke the next morning, I had to write down what I remembered. A scene of people with supernatural powers were fighting in a college stadium with life and death stakes. I spent much of my free time over the next week expanding the single scene to one that I thought would make a decent book or movie with the right direction.

After the week, I read my work though and realized I could not spend any more time on this hobby. Despite how much I enjoyed writing it, I had too much else to do and everything else felt too important. These papers, and the thought, were stuffed away to take care the rest of my life. Have I mentioned I’m not good about taking care of myself unless everyone else is absolutely taken care of first?

Fast forward a few years to my life at 25. I’ve worked at a summer camp where I met a woman who would eventually be my girlfriend, and spoiler, now my wife. We got a dog and rented a house together when I started a job with a telecom company where I would go around to homes, apartments, and businesses where I would install and repair television and internet services.

It was a good job with a great company. I got to spend most of my days alone, driving to and from job sites in my van and even when I reached the destination, I would normally most of my time alone on the job as well. But one day, a day that began as any other, I performed a morning job and stopped to grab a bite of lunch before going on my next job. The next thing I remember, I’m waking up in a hospital, about 6 hours have passed, and I have a searing headache.

One of the managers from my garage was sitting off to my right, probably taking care of this situation that had happened. My fiancé and her mother came in shortly after I woke up and I was happy to see them, though I hated that I caused the looks on their faces. They asked me what happened, and I told them that I could not remember.

What we were told was that after I had eaten lunch that day, I picked up a job and in the middle of it, something happened. I wish I knew, or could describe it better, but since I was alone for most of that job, no one was around to witness anything happening. Apparently the customer called the garage and said I was acting odd and just pacing in their backyard. When the manager came out to check on me, I was found squatting in the back of my van.

They opened the door and asked me to come out of my van. I said that I felt bad and he stepped back thinking I was going to be ill, but instead I fell forward, out of the van and my eyes began to roll back into my head, which was when they called 911 and I was taken to the hospital.

All this happened over 6 years ago, and I still cannot remember anything between stopping for lunch and when I awoke in the hospital.

I told the manager that I would see them tomorrow and he laughed. My fiancé assured him that I was serious, but the manager instead told me before he left that I need to be 100% better before I came back to work and until then I should stay home.

As we made our way out of the hospital, I repeated the same questions every 5 minutes, unaware that I had already asked them. My fiancé, being the angel she is, answered my questions every time and never got impatient with me.

The best guess that the initial doctor provided was that I had Transient Global Amnesia. I lost hours of my life and maybe they’ll come back, and maybe they will never return. What I did get was a daily onslaught of headaches and migraines.

My manager told me to come back when I was 100% better, and the next year drug on for an eternity. I had a workers’ compensation claim open for me since the incident happened at work, but I was informed that the claim was denied, so any additional medical care would have to be paid for by me. I went to several doctors – two general doctors, four different neurologists, a headache specialist, a physical therapist, a chiropractor, and a holistic doctor – trying to figure out what had happened and how to handle this diagnosis and the headaches that accompanied it. Needless to say, visiting all of these doctors took a toll on my finances and I never received an answer to the question that continued to remind itself of its presence.

To get back to the original purpose of this story, while I was out of work for that long, long year, I started out doing smaller tasks to be helpful around the house. Whatever I could manage to do meant a lot to myself and my fiancé at the time, now my wife. She took care of all the finances for that year, and it is one of the many ways I will always be grateful to her.

Eventually I was able to handle more tasks around the house, though because I lost consciousness I was not allowed to drive for six months. I felt like a burden. I felt like I caused such a problem in our home because of this issue that had befallen me.

One day while I was cleaning, I found the old writing I had done during college of my crazy dream. I thought about how I had loved writing it, but I had pushed it aside because of the obligations of life. It had made me happy.

I sat down and began to write. Lengthening the scene, planning others around it to feed into this scene and what would happen to the main character because of it. Before I realized it, I had written most of the chapter to a book I was now planning, and my head was not hurting as much as usual.

It was not a cure, but I had found a way to help the daily pain. Writing let me escape from the pain I was becoming accustomed to and make a better world. I had a plan for most of my life and in one day, the plan fell apart and I needed to change.

I never was able to return to that telecom company since I never got 100% better. I managed to return to the work force, ironically for the company that had denied my workers’ compensation claim, so right now I’m helping others when I did not get help.

It has been 6 years since that incident and the writing I do still helps the pain. I continued to work on that story that began with a dream and despite everything, I was elated to find a self-publishing company that is currently reviewing the book. Right now, the schedule is for my first book in a planned trilogy to come out in October, and I cannot wait to hold something I wrote as a professionally bound book and more than a tall stack of papers. Something with my name on it, that I worked on for years through life events and tragedies.

Writing has changed me. I now carry a notebook everywhere I go to write down ideas for scenes, characters, and new books. I look forward to weekends now because it means more time to write and not just a break from work. Writing through the pain is what I love to do now.