Something strange has been happening inside of me. Or maybe “strange” isn’t the right word. “New” is the better descriptor.
I feel stable. Like . . . genuinely, almost boringly, stable.
My head is clearer. My heart doesn’t swing wildly between apocalyptic despair and grandiose mission anymore. Perhaps this is what people mean by maturity—not the performance of being grown, but the actual experience of it. Settled. Grounded. Awake.
The truth is, I’ve lived for so long in the extremes that I forgot what the middle feels like.
Severe TBI at 17, married 6 months later, undergrad in two years, four kids before 23 and during law school, and publishing Saving the Subject by 26. People wonder how I’ve accomplished these things at a young age. They hear about the past decade of my post-TBI journey and naturally question it procedurally: Just how?
I never know how to answer their questions outside of the “grace of God.” How else am I to respond? They often want life hacks, optimization strategies, a procedure they can replicate. But the truth, and nothing but the truth, is that I was constantly running from death these last ten years, and my goals of college graduation, LSAT, and law school were like flickers of light in a darkening mind that frequently wanted to give up and let it all unwind. Indeed, so many of these achievements grew from that wild, unstable place, a frenzied momentum making it all feel urgent and existentially necessary.
No one sees their own life clearly, let alone the life of another person. To elaborate: during a recent bench trial, the judge told me he was advised long ago not to use the word “clearly” in legal arguments. He didn’t explain why. But any practicing attorney knows the world of lawyering is profoundly unclear, and case outcomes are rarely predictable.
What may be “clear” to one person is not clear to the trier of fact, and certainly not to the other side. “Clarity” in law requires two things: clarity in the facts and clarity in the law. Even when the matter is factually clear, it may not be legally clear—and vice versa. Or worse, when both are uncertain. Hence the subsequent years of litigation over what is factually and legally clear.
Nothing is “clearly” evident until the judgment is pronounced, the verdict is read, or the outcome is experienced. This epistemological elongation may be necessary for due process and legal justice, but in the real world, it is lamentable. This is why I wrote the “Interlude: An Argument Against Argument” between chapters three and four of Saving the Subject. (I digress a little here).
If college and law school were “flickers” for my recovery, then writing Saving the Subject was its bonfire. I felt so compelled to get it out into the world. Writing that book gave form to the formless swirl of everything I’d lived since the accident. It gave words to years of silent confusion.
I’ve sold many copies since its release in the summer of 2024, but I haven’t heard many reactions to it. It’s not an “easy” or “light” read, so the silence makes sense. But when you pour so much of yourself into something, and then release that thing into the world, external validation becomes a kind of oxygen. That doesn’t justify my impatience, but it does clarify it. This, too, is part of learning to live from the center instead of the edge.
Today I sit in this stillness—this ordinary, sustainable rhythm—watching my kids grow, my reputation build, and my wife achieve her own dreams of medicine. But I wonder: Will the creativity still flow? Will the urgency still burn? Will the words still come when I’m not in flames?
I think they will, but differently. Maybe I don’t need to write like my life depends on it anymore? Maybe I don’t have to scream to be heard anymore? Maybe I can speak gently and authoritatively from life’s center, no longer the edge.
For the first time in a decade, I feel like I’m inhabiting my life instead of surviving it. Like the parts of me that were scattered across that Marilyn Street pavement in Columbus, Indiana, 10 years ago are finally coming together.
Maybe this is what being a “subject” feels like—not spectacular or loud, but restful. Not exploding with meaning, but living presently and consistently.
I’m not speaking my PUP as often as before these days.
I think I’m starting to live it.
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