I liked to draw as a kid. A triad of trees, swirly branches, and yellow leaves depicted my first trip to the apple orchard with Mom. Orange spheres, numerated jerseys, and perpendicular lines illustrated my first Indiana Pacers basketball game with Dad. But no matter my thinking at the time of these drawings, I could never really draw anything random, or anything from my own imagination, as everything was shaped by my environment. My childhood drawings were, in a sense, already drawn for me.
I started drawing more independently when I got older. My high school drawings were not of trees and lily pads, not made with crayons and markers, and not inscribed on sidewalks and posters: these drawings were abstractions of my dreams and goals for the future. But I’d be foolish to consider these drawings entirely my own.
I come from a family of engineers and nurses. My occupational dreams were passively skewed because of this, making it difficult to conceive of an occupational nuance that would thoroughly set me apart from the familial redundancy. But I did not have to lose any hair trying to draw something new for myself. Fate did that for me.
On September 18, 2015, a speeding vehicle smashed into my pedestrian body. The next thirty days were quiet and dark. I woke up from the coma feeling dizzy, seeing blurry, and bearing agony unlike anything ever experienced before and hopefully will ever experience. The doctors called it a severe diffuse axonal brain injury; but I was too drugged and confused for weeks to know the difference between my rear and a hole in the ground.
My recovery is nothing short of extraordinary, deemed miraculous by many, but those details are not the focus of this essay. Putting it briefly, I went from a wheelchair to a walker in a week; from a walker to a gait belt in a month; and a gait belt to a college diploma in two years. I met a lawyer at this time and found my calling to the legal profession.
Going to law school as a first-generation student means two things for me. First, it means victory over the injury. It took a lot for me to get here; not to mention the unconditional love and support I received from others. Second, it means victory over the ordinary. It is a special thing to be number one, but it comes with a heavy weight of responsibility as the road ahead is a foreign one, establishing a kind of precedent for my family name.
Today, I have begun a new drawing for my success in law school that is made of colors my family line never saw, and on a canvas the world never thought possible for a brain injured guy like me. But here I am, still drawing.
pc: https://www.artistsnetwork.com/art-techniques/drawing-practice/
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