This is the post I didn’t want to write.
What makes it worse is that none of this is new to me.
I wrote about this years ago. It was actually the first thing I ever wrote, even if it wasn’t the first thing I posted. I talked about the panic attacks, the hyper vigilance, the feeling that something wasn’t right.
At the time, I thought acknowledging it meant I was dealing with it.
It didn’t.
Avoidance looked like this:
I stopped being the one who drove my family. My wife became the primary driver. That might not sound like much, but it hit my ego harder than I expected.
My oldest just got his license recently. He was talking about the freedom of having a car. I remember that feeling.
And I realized I felt like I’d lost it.
I tried to talk to my boss about what was going on, but not long after that my performance slipped. There were layoffs. I was one of them.
After that it was the racetrack, then overnight shifts at a grocery store. Jobs where I could minimize driving. Just to and from. Contained.
I told myself I was managing it.
I wasn’t.
The crash is mostly blank.
I remember looking back to check on my son. He was riding with his uncle behind me.
That’s it.
Next thing I know, I’m on the side of the road, gurgling, my son next to me, thinking he’s watching his father die.
I didn’t walk away from that crash.
I woke up in a second hospital. The first one couldn’t handle my injuries.
I was quadriplegic.
There was no downplaying it anymore.
The truth is simple and uncomfortable:
That crash was avoidable.
I had already had panic attacks while driving. I knew something was wrong. For some reason I convinced myself an ATV would be different.
It wasn’t.
I just hadn’t paid the price yet.
My wife was there through all of it. Scared, but supportive. Every step of the hospital.
But support doesn’t erase consequences.
That accident didn’t just affect me.
It traumatized my son.
It cost my wife her career. She had to pivot and build something flexible just to manage my appointments and recovery.
We were separated for six months at one point.
And I added more damage to a body that had already been through enough.
It didn’t just cost me time.
It took six months of my life.
A few weeks of surgeries.
Three months in rehab.
Then months at home, mostly in bed.
Not recovering the way people imagine.
Just… existing. Healing slowly. Hurting constantly. Watching life move without me.
After my first surgery, I was laying in a hospital bed with my wife next to me.
At first it was small.
My feet felt off.
Then my ankles.
Then it crept up into my calves.
And then I realized I couldn’t feel or move anything below my knees.
That’s when I started to panic.
I told the nurse. They sent me for a scan.
It didn’t feel urgent yet.
But after that, everything sped up.
More scans.
Whispered conversations in the corner of the room.
A shift in tone you can’t mistake.
Next thing I know, I’m being rushed back into surgery.
A blood clot was forming on my spine.
I was losing feeling in real time.
After that, I finally got help.
Or at least, I tried.
Psychologist. Prescriptions. A lot of them.
Every appointment seemed to come with a new pill.
Wake up. Take a handful.
Plan your day around the next dose.
Take something to sleep.
Take something to wake up from the sleep meds.
It never felt like help. It felt like maintenance.
I didn’t know what else to do, so I went along with it longer than I should have.
Until I didn’t.
I read about microdosing being used with PTSD and decided I couldn’t just sit still anymore.
At the same time, I leaned harder into philosophy.
Not the abstract kind—the practical kind.
Control what you can.
Let go of what you can’t.
That stuck.
Microdosing, for me, shifted my range.
If mood is a ladder, it didn’t fix everything—but it moved the whole range up.
My lows weren’t as low.
My highs could reach a little higher.
I also found myself talking more. Opening up more. Something I never really did before.
I’m not fixed.
I still have bad days.
I still don’t like driving my family. That fear is still there, just quieter.
But my bad days don’t drag everyone else down the way they used to.
That matters.
What doesn’t go away is the cost.
Every morning I wake up in pain. My back, my neck—constant reminders.
My left leg buzzes from nerve damage.
That’s permanent.
My wife still carries anger, even if she tries not to. Not just from the accident, but from the pattern that led to it.
She’s afraid of having to live without me.
And if I’m honest, I’ve spent a lot of my life moving like that wasn’t a real possibility.
Here’s the truth I avoided for too long:
I told myself my symptoms weren’t “bad enough” to get help.
I told myself I was fine.
That lie didn’t just cost me.
It cost my son.
It cost my wife.
It cost my body.
And I live with that every day.
I knew something was wrong.
I said it out loud years ago.
And I still didn’t deal with it.
I told myself it wasn’t bad enough.
I was wrong.
You don’t get to decide if it’s “bad enough.”
You only decide how long you wait before it costs you something real.
Waiting doesn’t make it go away.
It just compounds interest to the price you’ll pay later.
Mic G
If you want to read where this started, this was the first piece I ever wrote about it: https://lifeafterdoorkicking.com/2018/03/28/ptsd-on-the-smaller-scale/
Life after door kicking. 
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