They tell you that when you hit two hundred kilometers per hour, physics doesn't negotiate.
You don't crash; you disintegrate.
I was sitting in the front left passenger seat. There were four others in the back who walked away with little more than bumps and bruises, and the driver didn't have a single scratch. But luck didn't reach the front passenger side, and the driver? He just disappeared.
Not a single look back, not once trying to find out if I was alive, okay, or breathing. Just gone.
One second, the world was moving at terminal velocity. The car violently broke apart, and I was airborne, flung completely clear of the vehicle, punching through a gauntlet of six trees like a stray bullet before finally lodging in the seventh, forty-five meters out.
That was just the opening act.
Instead of an ICU bed and immediate intervention, I spent the next sixteen hours lying in a clinic hallway. While I waited, my lungs collapsed and my brain starved of oxygen. By the time they finally managed to install a tracheostomy, the damage was already done. Or so they thought.
I didn't wake up the next day, or the next week. I spent three months locked inside a three-month coma, a complete blackout while the rest of the world kept spinning on its axis, completely unaware that I was hanging by a thread.
When I finally clawed my way back to the surface, the medical prognosis was delivered like a final sentence:
I’ve never been great at taking orders.
If you're told you'll never walk or talk again, the only logical response is to prove the math wrong. It took a solid year of brutal, millimeter-by-millimeter rehabilitation to force my legs to carry weight. When I finally started taking steps again—shaking, unsteady, and figuring out how to balance on two feet—people started calling me Wobbles. The name stuck, and honestly, it’s a badge of honor. It means I'm still here, moving forward.
And because a TBI loves to throw complications into the mix, my left side—my dominant side for my entire life—refused to cooperate. So, what do you do when the wiring gets fried? You rewire it yourself. I forced my brain to adapt, teaching myself how to write all over again, this time right-handed.
The physical scars healed, but the battle didn't stop at the hospital doors. Because my voice is slow, deep, monotone, and nasal—and sometimes my tongue just decides to slur like I’ve been day-drinking tequila—people make the lazy mistake of treating you like you're retarded or hammered. They hear a deliberate delivery and assume the lights aren't on upstairs.
The joke is on them. I've learned to read people by studying their faces while I speak, watching the exact moment they underestimate me.
A "vegetable" doesn't architect advanced automotive parts identification platforms, engineer automated emergency safety software, or run a business. They don't manage complex technical ecosystems or teach themselves the precision of mixing tracks on decks.
They drew a line in the sand and told me where it ended. I just built a new track right over it.