The New Normal.
Welcome to the new normal. April 1st, 2023 a whole new person was born it seems like. From a guy who was just a loving father, husband, son, grandson, and much more... It started off as just a regular day, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine it would end up the way it did...
World Flashing Before Your Eyes
I headed to temporarily locate my brother's production trailer for the night prior to it departing the next day for San Diego. Alongside the road through the famous underpass is where it all changed... A split second... A tire, A axel, A life.
Finding out that my brother's trailer axel had blown the trailer needed to be taken to the repair shop so they could repair it first thing... Setting off for the destination, a decision was to be made do I go home and leave my brother to handle the trailer alone or do I follow him to the destination for support?
Well... I decided to follow him. Driving along, averaging 30-40 mph behind the rental truck and production trailer... listening to music, flashers running... It was only moments away from my whole life-changing... The memory of looking in the rearview mirror for a split second only to see a large truck gaining on me, so yet another split-second decision to stay in position or begin to turn my steering wheel...
Grabbing the steering wheel, turning slightly to the right to take the impact ramming me into the side barrier spinning my SUV to then take a second impact into the back side of the large truck bed. At the same time instead of the large truck plowing into me and forcing me into my brother's trailer the large truck was slowed by my impact only clipping into the corner of my brother's trailer vs plowing into the full back of the trailer.
So why the new normal? Well... where do I begin? Memory, Processing, Mechanics, the list is quite long nowadays. Things that once took me 1-2hrs to do take me 4-5hrs to do now. I live by my journals and notes for just about anything I do cause my memory has been pretty sporadic. I choose to try and look at the bright side of everything but this one hurts quite a bit I'm not going to lie.
It's hard realizing that I likely won't be able to produce another major show again without A LOT of help, I won't be able to multi-task and run multiple things ever again... I won't be able to do certain activities with my kids because I'm fearful of what might happen to my head or to my mental state.
This has taken such a large toll on my family that sometimes I wonder how in the world I get so lucky to have a family that often gets irritated with me and often struggles to find the good in what's happening just like me...
Do I regret getting in my car that night to follow my brother? I've been asked this question so many times and I'll be honest the answer isn't as simple as one would think. The new normal for me is realizing that everything I've done for the past two decades is taking a massive shift. Everything that I've known and can do is taking a massive shift and sadly this time it's not really for the better but My family and I are doing all that we can to make the best of it when and how we can.
... So much more to say but I'm gonna leave it here for now.