I HAVE BEEN LEFT TO TAKE HIS PLACE

A lot had happened with me before the auto crash; right up until that date and time; January 29th, 1983, soon after midnight. I worked that Friday evening, after attending Calculus class at Kent State University, a branch found in Tuscarawas County. So much more has happened with me since then.

After the car wreck, I became someone else, at many levels. Many memories and my physical abilities were not yet developed completely before the crash, when he accidentally drove his Ford Pinto into an embankment before we rolled over. My body was hurled outward from the passenger seat. My senses were knocked out of me. So were many memories, including my speech patterns.

Parts of what I state will likely be incorrect. I can only relay the information that I know about now, after reading about and hearing other versions of the details. Please inform me if you know a different version.

We left the local bar, after listening to the band playing 70's and 80's music, since it was late January of 1983. As far as I know, we were with other friends at the club, listening to the band. Somehow, we learned of a Geodesic-style home, having been built near Deis Hill road, close to the city park in Dover, Ohio.

Instead of returning to Jill's apartment that dark, and very early Saturday morning, with some light snow on the ground, to retrieve my own car, we decided to visit that Geodesic home. The temperature outside was around the freezing point. There was only slight snow on the roads. Even if we had a couple drinks at the club, some friends were there who would have discouraged us from traveling if we had drank too much alcohol. I think I was going to visit Jill again later, so my drinking was light. Besides, I was 24 years old. A full year out of my Air Force enlistment. And, a college student. Drinking just to get drunk was not fun anymore. Not when that was intermixed with college studies and projects, homework assignments, my part-time and full-time job at K-Mart, practicing my Karate skills, and spending time with my lovely full-time girlfriend. 

All the events which have occurred since my irrevocable traumatic brain injury very early on January 29th, 1983, will forever be blurred in my mind. Did that really happen? Even what is happening now, recently, and in my past as recorded from my own mind, using those translucent and discolored thoughts has been altered as my perception changes daily.

I am not the person I was. No matter how hard it try, nor how thoroughly I have searched to return to being that person, he no longer exists. I have been left to take his place.

It has been difficult. Extremely hard with all my neurological and memory problems, and my muscular weaknesses. With what has happened with me medically, the lost memories that may never be fully recovered again, all my newly discovered muscle weaknesses and coordination problems that I try to work around so fervently, I strive to merely exist as I have become.

My condition changes. To meet me as I am now would be to encounter another rational, normal human being. I am not. Lord knows I try.