Nicole Elmabruock

I’ve spent my whole life trying to be “better” than I am. Now I’m 35 years old and have found myself, and am finally content. Amazingly, this is due to my trauma.

Seventeen years ago I sustained a severe traumatic brain injury, during my senior year of high school. This experience absolutely upended my entire life (and the lives of my loved ones) – it really has been the most transformational experience, which I would not trade for anything. I can promise that, unless you’ve experienced it, you do not know what it means to be in the acute phase of brain injury and go through infancy for the second time. I wore diapers, at 18, for too many months; I had to relearn how to do every single thing (eating, walking, talking, thinking, driving, etc.). There are several months of that time that I have no memory of. You name it, I had deficits in it.

I think most relevant for me personally was the social aspect of my recovery – as I state numerous times throughout this piece, my social standing has been very dominant in my life. I very much had to relearn appropriate psychosocial mores and values and especially conduct. Friends did come visit me in the hospital (which was pointless for me since I do not remember any of their visits), but after I was deemed well enough to return home, I didn’t hear from most of them anymore. I wish that some of them could have helped me to be less awkward in social situations, but I guess 18 years old is not the time when young people feel the need to be empathic in that regard. One friend, Jen Nash, is pretty much the only one who made an effort to keep in contact with me.
As a result of lack of friendships and due to the disability acclimation effort I was undergoing, I was lonely too frequently and wishing that I had died in the accident. However, with my family’s assistance and help from too many non-schoolmates to name, I was able to graduate high school and start college.

Attending college two and a half hours away from my family forced me to solidify my identity. At the beginning of college I had no idea what sort of person I would try to become. Was I going to spend time with the party crowd (like I thought I used to do – did not have the correct conception of myself), or was I going to hang out with the Christian crowd? Was I going to be the person my parents raised me to be, or was I going to be my own person? I would say most young people experience this same life event, and for me it was compounded since I was new to navigating disability. I became good friends with one woman in particular, Susanna Spiccia, who introduced me to the Christian students at Georgia College & State University.

During college, my life and self-esteem were profoundly shaped by two GCSU faculty and staff. My first year I was enrolled in Dr. Dan Bauer’s English 1101 and 1102 courses. These were the classes that helped us learn how to think and to write, and amazingly I had retained much of my writing ability despite my brain injury. Dr. Bauer worked with me to get my writing up to the standard of an honors first year college student, and he helped me believe in myself. My self-esteem was buoyed, and then in my second or third year, a man named Mike Chambers became the Director of Disability Services. He was incredibly compassionate and attentive and helped me get the supports I needed to be a success in undergrad (these supports included extra time on tests, a separate room to take tests in, a notetaker, etc. – not things that give me an edge over my classmates but things that help me concentrate and such).

Unfortunately now was not yet the time for my life to become more complete. I dated a man for a few months in my second or third year at GCSU – I was introduced to him by friends, but they didn’t know how evil he was. I thought I was falling into the identity of a good girlfriend, but he was quite sexually abusive. I don’t want to say fully sexually abusive because maybe his actions did not rise to the level of taking advantage of me, since I was complicit – but I didn’t know how to (or couldn’t) advocate for myself. Other friends I still keep in touch with say that jerk did truly take advantage of me.

Due to yet more assistance from too many people to name, I was able to graduate GCSU with honors – I was very proud of myself since 8 years prior I had been unconscious in a coma. A few months later I was living with Suz at Walton on the Chattahoochee, a truly magical apartment residence, and again was trying to find my man and went about it so wrongly. I came to be friends with at least one single guy (probably several single guys) at the coffee shop, we hung out for a few weeks, we kissed, and I would just ruin it and make it awkward (with that one particular guy I have no idea what exactly happened, but regardless I’m glad it happened).

While at Walton and after undergrad where one is supposed to learn things to get a job, my lack of work skills prevented me from getting appropriate gainful employment for several years, which obviously was such a great blow to my self-esteem and how I felt about myself. In Vinings, I got my first job at the grocery store Publix, as a bagger, with a Bachelor’s gained with honors. But I honestly did love it since interacting with people makes me so happy. This experience led to my first full-time job with a medical billing company – I interacted positively with a customer, the CIO of this company, and he was instrumental in getting me a job there. Unrelated to him, however, I don’t think I’d ever been treated worse by coworkers and managers, so I quit after two years. After these years of attempting to be professional, of not being able to find a job worthy of me, I finally said to myself, “Screw it, I am going to graduate school to learn how to advocate for myself and people like me.”

I was accepted into a graduate Rehabilitation Counseling program. There I was trying way too hard for way too long to be friends with my classmates (I just wanted to know I was accepted, I guess). I did not understand that these were mostly established adults trying to complete the necessary requirements for jobs and who were not concerned whether classmates liked them or not. During this time I was extremely lonely again (although I don’t think I was wishing I had perished in the car wreck, thankfully) and cried very frequently, even when this was more than inappropriate, like at school. Yes, I had depression at the time, but I was in the process of learning how to combat it as a counselor – it seemed I didn’t apply any of those tools to myself. The intense loneliness I felt ended up being a good thing because I reached out to my neighbor, and we decided we liked each other a lot and started dating. This man is amazing and has taught me so much about life and about myself.

Hisham is an immigrant and has had plenty of suffering himself, and unfortunately I just made him suffer some more. When I first met him, I was so incredibly immature and didn’t even try to act like a “normal” woman. I am more than appalled at the way I acted and the way I treated him – let me share some of my behaviors. I began hanging out with him and his roommates to deny my loneliness, and there was one guy named Osama – for some reason, for many weeks, I kept saying, “Osama yo momma.” I thought it was hilarious but I’m sure they wanted to tell me to shut up the entire time – so super immature. When I was with him in the community (Starbucks, Walmart, hanging with friends, etc.), I made sure to