Who paid for this land?

Politicians - make your laws, break your laws but they do not actually protect your laws.

Lawyers - Argue your laws, use and abuse your laws, but they do not protect your laws.

Judges - Interpret your laws, strive to honor those laws, but do not protect your laws.

Police Officers - Try to enforce your laws, try to stop fellow citizens from acting uncivilized. But they do not protect your laws.

Reporters - Report the news, mangle the news, and provide you with their news about your news. But they do not protect your Freedom of Speech.

Teachers - They promote liberty and freedom, they show how liberty and freedom was achieved, they show the cost that someone else paid for freedom and liberty.

 Soldiers - Protect your laws, protect you from uncivilized hostility that would devastate your life, your family, and everything you care about.

Veterans - All of them but especially the ones eligible for the Veterans of Foreign Wars did the protecting.

This is the land where you can be as hostile as you wish to those who protect(ed) your right to commit that act. Rarely do we ask for anything in return. Never do we take your things, never do we take your partners, and never do we openly complain when you disrespect us. Many other countries you'd be whipped, mutilated, and/or shot for such things.

All in all, this is the Land of the Free. We proudly defended this land, and you, no matter what cost we had to pay.

Abandoned

That is what I am.

Wife and family still by my side, thank God, but in almost every other way I have been abandoned. It is almost as if my accident never happened, at all. If the scars could be wiped away from my body, I bet that "they" (whoever they are) would make them disappear as well.

My accident report doesn't exist. In fact, for me to try to get any information about that day I, a brain injury survivor, have to drive down to Boston and show up in person to get any answers. The financial burdens from a couple of weeks in ICU, again wiped clean. All the critical life support time at Brigham & Woman's, all the surgeries, the time coming out of coma at Northeast Rehab Hospital, all that medical treatment was (for me) completely and totally FREE. I can not find out who secretly paid all the medical bills either. "They" did not wish to be known.

Since I do not know "who" New Hampshire Lawyers don't want to be bothered by me. Firstly, things happened in Boston. Saying Boston is an almost immediate get out of my office response. Finally, after years of desperately (me!) trying to find legal representation I contacted a nationwide service. The service took 3 days and said, "Since we don't know WHO, and without that we don't know what you could gain, we politely reject your case." Don't know what I could gain?

HOW ABOUT SOME FUCKING ANSWERS!!!

Please, without the accident report - which I'm sure would appear if someone sues over this matter - we don't have names of any witnesses and we don't know what happened to me. And to be honest, that is all I want to know: What happened!! Why is my life now such a burden to everyone around me, including me, now?

And people wonder about Robin Williams actions? Here was a resoundingly successful man in the prime of his life facing a sudden inexorable decline into senility and madness. I face that reality every morning when I wake up, I know that depression, I know that mental anguish.

That is what I think many people (even close family) don't understand: Just because I am seemingly jolly go-lucky in attitude, just because I apparently have memory issues, people seem to think I laugh my way through life. I don't.

Jolly go-luckiness is a family trained defense against life's many sadness-es. It helped me handle my P.T.S.D., being able to talk with others as an equal helped me as well. That equality has been stripped from me. The words "brain damaged" does not come up but that is how I am treated. By family, by friends, by the Government (on all levels), and by legal representation.

The only thing that sometimes pops into my mind is why haven't I ended this problem? If I did so, family would be released from further emotional and financial baggage I present and "they"/"who" can now stop worrying that I'll find them and sue them for interfering in those so called god given rights that I sweated and bled to defend. That is the bitter irony for me, here I spent a couple years of  my young life defending American freedoms... while having someone now using those freedoms to deny me mine. In many ways I wish "they" had just killed me: all of this would be over, for me at the least.

Yes, my life sucks and I am abandoned searching for ways out of suck.

Exhaustion is my enemy

    Granted it is everyone's enemy. For me getting tired intefere's with my ability to speak, to think, and to stay upright. I've been letting my enjoyment of working allow me to get into situations that are, in hindsight, high risk and should be avoided.

    See part of my daily routine, since my accident, has been a nap. It usually takes place in the afternoon after 6 - 8 hours of wakefulness. The more mental activity that takes place in that time frame, the more necessary the nap becomes. With my new job I strove to find one that I could work 3 - 4 hours in the morning, go home and take my wife to work, then go home and continue my daily routine.

    Here is one aspect that is surprise to people when I share it: My pain NEVER stops.

    The extensive nerve damage in my forearms makes it so they are always a live wire of pain. This pain has become, essentially, background noise that is always heard but unless you focus on it, not paid much attention. As I get tired, the background noise/pain becomes more noticeable until I reach a point where my arms become inoperable.

    Last night, after a day of 12 hours of nice mental activity I paid the unwanted price: I fell down. I was so tired, unrealized, that I stumble while going through the front door of my house. The door, which closes on it own, snagged my back heel causing me to stumble. Hands full at the time I went down falling into a window, ripping the screen, and landing heavily on the window frame cracking some ribs. I also sprained my ankle in the process and scratched up my body in various areas from sudden violent contact with things.

    This places me in an awkward position indeed: Scheduled to work, going to see if I can call out so I can go to my primary care physician to get properly checked out and treated. Also going to see if work can comply with my shift request or I'll have to say goodbye to them and continue looking for worthwhile activity with which to spend my days.

    The terror I put my wife through during that fall - I will not let that happen again, ever!