Adrenaline Rush

I used to be so smart. I always scored in the 99th percentile for my age group on the Iowa test of basic skills when I was in elementary school. My Destination Imagination team went to the global competition for the first time after I joined them in 6th grade. I won a blue ribbon at a horse jumping competition around that time too. The horses satisfied my adrenaline addiction, until I quit when my family moved two hours away from all the friends I had ever made in the world.

I made new friends, but, as I grew into a teenager, my adrenaline addiction became insatiable. When I learned how to drive, I became obsessed with the adrenaline rush I got from hitting 100 mph on local rural roads. Because of my gender and my good grades, my parents didn’t think anything of it when they bought a tiny two-door vehicle. The rush I could get in this car that surpassed any of the adrenaline rushes I had ever had before.

For one summer, I had my driver’s license and satiated my adrenal cravings. Then, school started. On the 7th of October 2011, my best friend and I drove to our school’s football game in that tiny car. About half-way through the game, we got bored, and decided to leave. We drove on the roads behind my house, and we hit 100mph. Both of us were having the time of our lives. I was driving.

Then, we clipped a guidewire and the car spun up into the air. We both screamed.

When I first came to in Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, I struggled to speak and move. I was also very confused. I had suffered a severe traumatic brain injury, which was repeated to me every time I woke up because I could not remember anything from one day to the next.

My best friend whom I had been in the car with suffered minimal injuries. She drove all the way from Muskego to Children’s Hospital in Milwaukee every day, but all I wanted to do when she came was watch the movie Shrek. I had this movie memorized, and it was one familiar thing I could cling to in my state. My brain was so damaged that I didn’t recognize my very rude behavior.

Someone, probably one of my parents, taped a photo of my with my three best friends from soccer to the mesh wall at the foot of my cage bed. I remember thinking, who is that beautiful girl in the middle? Alas, the beautiful girl was me.