“But we don’t have an elevator.”
“Oh.”
“But we have a ramp.”
“Oh, okay. As long as you’ve got a ramp, I’m good.” They checked me in, and I went to find my room. I rolled down to the “ramp,” and it was literally a cemented-over flight of stairs with a landing. It was an enclosed stairwell with no railings, and this thing was steep as hell.
The problem was that a flight of stairs is much steeper than a ramp. Stairs are like a thirty- to forty-degree angle, but ramps for wheelchairs should be no more than five to ten degrees. That’s a huge difference. Stairs are fine when you’re walking up them, but imagine putting a piece of plywood on your stairs and then trying to push a wheelchair up that slope. I couldn’t push myself up that incline now, let alone when I was first getting used to a manual wheelchair.
Dick had somehow gotten me up and down the thing before dinner, but after dinner I had to face it with these two young women. The two of them struggled together, with me helping as much as I could, and were able to push me up. Miraculously, we got back to my room. We listened to music, had a good time, did some dancing, and knocked back a few drinks. Casey and I both smoked, and by around two in the morning, we were out of cigarettes. Earlier that day I had bought cigarettes, but they were in the van that Dick, Dan, and I had been driving around in. And Dick and Dan had the keys.
Casey and I looked at each other, knowing we desperately needed cigarettes. I said, “Well, Dick and Dan said if I needed anything—anything at all—to knock on their door. And all we need are the keys.” This trip was the first time I’d met Dan, and only the second or third time I’d hung around with Dick. I didn’t know either of these guys that well, and it was two thirty in the morning.
“Fuck it,” I said to Casey. “Let’s go wake ’em up.”
The real problem was that Dick and Dan were down on the first floor. Meaning the ramp from hell was between us and the keys. I asked Casey, “Will you help me down the ramp?”
She said, “Oh, yeah, absolutely.”
Casey was wearing a tank top and shorts and she’d taken off her shoes, but was still wearing her socks. Not exactly dressed for hauling a guy up and down that ramp. But we rolled out there, and I said, “All right, have you got me?”
She grabbed the handles of the chair, locked her knees, and pushed me slowly to the edge. But as soon as I got on that steep slope, I started flying down. Casey was still holding on, stiff-legged, shrieking, “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod!” The concrete ramp was painted, and her socks were just sliding, as if she were skiing down a mountain. We zoomed down to the landing and then right across toward the far wall. Casey was still right behind me. When the chair hit the wall, I flew forward, smacked into the wall, and bounced back into my chair. It was like an insane amusement park ride. Casey didn’t make a sound, but then I started laughing, so she started laughing. I was okay and still thinking of cigarettes.
I looked back at her and said, “Just one more to go. You ready?” What else were we going to do? We were already halfway down the death ramp. She said she was good to go, so we turned around and moved up to the edge of the next one. Casey did the same thing, just held on tight and locked her knees, and off we went, shooting down the ramp with her screaming, “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod!”
But when Casey hit the sidewalk, where it wasn’t painted, her socks got traction, and she came to a dead halt. She let go of the chair—but I kept going, because there wasn’t a wall in front of me this time, just a parking block at the edge of the sidewalk. When the chair hit that, my body went ballistic and just flew. I landed on the ground, rolling around and laughing.
Casey was freaked for a moment, but I was like, “Okay, we survived!” That’s what counts, in my opinion. Sure, I’d flown like an Angry Bird before I crashed, but I was all right. Enjoy the moment, enjoy all that you can, that’s what I say.
So, we finally got to Dick and Dan’s room, and through the door I heard them both sawing logs, loud as can be, sound asleep. I looked up at Casey, then back at the door. I shook my head, feeling a bit sorry for those guys, but then I knocked on the door. I heard one of them stop snoring, get up, and plod over to look through the peephole.
Dan swung the door open and glared down at me with this what-the-fuck-do-you-want look, and I stared back at him and said, feeling kind of guilty, “I need the keys to the van.” He looked over his shoulder at the clock, then back at me, still with that homicidal scowl on his face. I thought he was going to tell me what to do with the keys—but then he noticed Casey standing behind me. He gave her a once-over . . . and then he smiled at me. “No problem,” he said, and he handed over the keys.
Moral of the story: If you’re going to wake a guy up at two in the morning just to get cigarettes out of his van, it doesn’t hurt to have a beautiful woman by your side.
Rolling Meadows and Arlington Heights put on a festival called “Frontier Days” every Fourth of July weekend. It’s a great chance to meet up with friends I don’t see very often, because everyone goes and I’m always bumping into people. When I went in 2009, I ran into one of my high-school friends, Becky Vigna. We talked for a while, and she invited me over to her house, which was just down the street from my condo, to hang out and go swimming or whatever. One of her sisters, Lindsay, was there, too, and I thought she was amazing, but I was feeling a little shy.
Later that summer I went over to Becky’s house on my Can-Am Spyder, which is a three-wheeled motorcycle. I rolled up and Becky and all three of her sisters were tanning in the driveway, all looking great. And I was thinking, How did I get this lucky?
So I hung out and talked with Becky and Lindsay a bit more. I asked Lindsay if she wanted to go for a ride on my bike. She did. While we were out riding, I asked if she wanted to go to a concert with me. I was going to see the Lt. Dan Band, Gary Sinise’s band, out in Wheaton. She said yes.
The night of the concert, I picked her up and drove out to Wheaton. Since I’m friends with Gary, we got to use private parking in the back, where the band parked. Once we got inside, we were led to a cordoned-off space in front of the stage, an area about twenty feet deep between the stage and the front row designed to keep the crowd back for security reasons, and we got to watch the show from there.
The whole concert was awsome. Right away, Gary started giving me looks, pointing at me, giving me the thumbs-up—you know, indicating that the girl I was with was fine. During one song, he came down the steps off the stage, while he was playing, and walked over to me. When there was a break in the song he reached out his hand so I could give him a high five, then he went over to Lindsay, shook her hand, and gave me another approving look. Then he went back up onstage. I thought that was so cool, that he would take the time for me like that, right in the middle of a show.
After the concert, the band had a meet-and-greet, and there was a whole line of people waiting for photo ops with Gary and the guys. Lindsay sat on my lap while I zoomed along in my power wheelchair to the front of the line, and I knocked on the door. The security guys let me in, and I introduced Gary to Lindsay. I was sure it was the best first date ever.
On the way home, I looked at Lindsay and said, “You know, I like you. I like you a lot.” I was kind of nervous. “Do you want to start dating or whatever?”
She said, “Yes.” That’s how it all started, and she was fantastic.
But I soon learned there’s one problem with having the perfect first date. You spend the rest of the relationship haunted by the question, How the hell can I ever top that?
I never did. But damn, it was awesome while it lasted.
Okay, I know I said you shouldn’t learn anything or be inspired by my funny stories, but I was wrong. Sure, sometimes all you really want is an entertaining story and nothing else, like a blockbuster summer movie. But I think these stories are also hopeful stories. You don’t have to continuously live in the moment of whatever tragedy has hammered down on you. You will get out from under th
at shadow. But there’s something else that will help you leave that shadow behind, and it’s not so obvious. Just like I don’t want to stand around telling stories about getting blown up all the time, I also don’t want to always tell funny stories from before I went to Iraq. As good as some of them are, I’m not about remembering only the glory days; I want to focus on new experiences. My life didn’t end in Iraq, it just changed. I’ve got lots to look forward to, and you do, too. Someday, I hope to hear your funny stories.
15
IT’S ALL ABOUT HAVING FUN
If I have what one would call a philosophy of life, this is it: it’s all about having fun.
I know that might not sound like a very deep motto, but there’s more to it than goofing off. Part of having fun is doing so responsibly. Don’t spend time entertaining yourself when you have work to do. Keeping your word and meeting your obligations should always come first—but those things shouldn’t take up every minute of your life. It’s vital that you make some time in your life for having fun. What I’m talking about is enjoying life—spending it with people you like and care about, doing work that you find meaningful, and giving yourself something to look forward to.
None of us knows why any of us are here. Life is a huge mystery. It’s bigger than anything any one person can imagine. Just about the only thing I know for certain is that life is meant to be lived. It’s meant to be enjoyed, and I’m not talking about sitting on your couch with a beer while you watch television (not that there’s anything wrong with that, once in a while). My advice is to get out of the house, go to new places, meet new people, and try new things. Don’t listen to your fear—give in to your curiosity! Follow the part of your soul that wants to feel and have adventures. In the end, your life is nothing more than the sum of your experiences, the memories that you’ve made, so open yourself up to as many great moments as possible.
This is one reason why I have so many tattoos: I love them. Sure, they hurt a bit while they’re being made, but I love being a canvas for art. Each tattoo on my body means something to me. By the time I got blown up, I had eight tattoos. After I was blown up, I had roughly six and a half. Now I have nine. Something tells me there will be more of these in my future.
I feel the same way about my piercings. I’ve had lots of them—in my ears, my tongue, my nipples. The pain is a rush, and it’s fun to see how people react to them. People tell me that when I’m ninety years old and my body goes to shit, I’ll be sorry. Maybe, maybe not. But I’ll never get tired of telling the stories about how I got my tats. Everything that happens in my life, no matter how painful, becomes part of my story, and I regret not a single moment.
This might seem like an oddly sunny outlook for someone who has been blown up in combat, but I had to go through a very dark place in my life to find it. Roughly four months into my rehab at Walter Reed, I hit an emotional wall and sank into a major depression. It built up slowly and snuck up on me. Then, one day, it hit me full force at a moment when I was at my most vulnerable: in the shower.
Sitting there, naked under the spray and trying to wash myself, I knew it was impossible to pretend I didn’t see what had happened to my body. There were no clothes to hide the uneven stumps of my legs or the mangled end of my left arm. All my scars were bare and plain to see. I tried not to let it get to me, but I couldn’t stop the ugly thoughts that started filling my head: Oh my God, I’m half a person. Jesus. Half a person. Oh my God.
I lost it and started crying, right there, alone in the shower. My defenses fell apart. Every positive message I’d been telling myself felt like a lie. It was like being so far down a black hole that I was certain there was no way back up. I felt empty. Broken. It was a total meltdown. No one wants to end up there. And I’d been making so much progress that suddenly going backward like this was that much more of a hit, like running into a wall you thought you’d already climbed over. Now all that progress seemed like nothing compared to the road ahead of me.
Then it got worse. I began a downward spiral. Over the next two weeks, I suffered from panic attacks and chronic anxiety. My life was a living hell. I couldn’t sleep, and I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I didn’t want to be alone, but I didn’t want anybody around either. To be honest, I had no idea what I wanted. All I knew was that I was fucked. I felt as if every nerve and emotion in my body was pulling me in a different direction. I wanted to run away, but I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to die, but I felt as if I didn’t want to go on living. I was lost.
After two weeks of that unrelenting shit, I reached a breaking point and decided, Damn it, I cannot live like this. I need to find a way out of this hole. There has to be way. I simply refused to accept it. I felt like I had hit bottom, but even at the bottom of that hole, I thought that there had to be some light at the top if I could only get to it somehow. I needed to do something. I mean, a pilot in a nosedive doesn’t just sit there watching the ground rush up at him. He pulls back on the stick as hard as he can.
I finally figured out if I had no idea what to do, maybe someone else did. I’d been doing that thing I do—working so hard to be independent—that it took me two weeks of hell before I thought of asking for help. It’s hard to do, but when you’re in a place like this, no matter how much you don’t want to admit it, just call someone. It might be embarrassing, you might feel vulnerable, but that’s what friends are for, right? Your friends want to help. Give them that chance.
So I told a few old friends from home about some of what I was going through. One of them suggested I start listening to some music that would fuel my will to get up and fight for myself. “Y’know,” one of them wrote in an e-mail, “Timmy’s band is getting really big now. You should check them out.” That was how I learned about Rise Against, a band featuring Tim McIlrath, a guy I’d known in high school. I bought a few of their CDs, and from the first moment I heard one, I was hooked. It was raw courage with power chords—exactly what I had needed, what I had been craving. Then I heard these lyrics from their song “Survive”:Life for you has been less than kind
So take a number, stand in line
We’ve all been sorry, we’ve all been hurt
But how we survive is what makes us who we are
Those lines stuck in my head from the first time I heard them, and I knew there was something important in them, something true. I made them the cornerstone of my recovery. That was the 180-degree attitude adjustment my soul had needed. It was like getting a wake-up call from my subconscious: “Stop whining, damn it! Get off your ass and live!” It felt as if I had grabbed the first rung of the ladder I needed to climb to get back to my life.
The next thing I did was tell my mom, “I need to get the hell out of here. I need to see real life again. I need to know what it is I’m trying to get well for.” That was when she took me on the long weekend trip to Las Vegas that I told you about. Those three days were about one simple thing: having fun. It wasn’t about therapy; it was just me, living my life and having a good time. That was what I had been missing. It made me feel human again.
After I came home from Las Vegas, I continued listening to Rise Against. I was rockin’ to one of their CDs while I sat in front of the reflecting pond by the Malone House. Watching the ripples in the water, I thought about my life. Y’know, I told myself, you just had three days of fun. While you were in Vegas, you didn’t think about what had happened. It didn’t matter that you’d lost your legs. No one treated you like a freak. You had a good time. So if you felt better while having a good time, then why not try to have a good time all the time? Don’t put yourself in situations where you can feel sorry for yourself and get depressed. Get off your ass, go do new things, and have some fun. No one else can do this for you. It’s all on you. Make yourself happy!
I felt as if my eyes were open for the first time: if I wanted to be happy, it was up to me. That’s the bottom line of it. You want to be in control of your own life, right? So who else has the power to make you happy? No matter
what bad shit has happened to you, how you react to it and move forward is all on your shoulders. Sure, I couldn’t change the fact that I lost both of my legs and an arm. And without a doubt there was going to be some pain and a whole lot of work to get myself mobile and independent again. I couldn’t change the facts. But I did—and do—have the power over how I live my life.
Maybe some nasty shit has happened to you—an accident, illness, you lose someone you love, or whatever. It sucks and you can’t change any of it. You’ve got no power over the past, only the future. You’ll make yourself crazy if you obsess about what you could’ve or should’ve done, and it’s a waste of time feeling angry about it or sorry for yourself. So screw that. The only thing you can do is decide to move forward and find happiness again.
Once I got that idea into my head, my whole point of view changed. I went out and just started having fun. Anything I felt like doing, any experience I wanted to have, I went out and tried it. I wanted to go to the mall by myself, so I went. I found the steepest hill and I tried to climb it. It didn’t matter to me what anyone else said. No one—not my mom, my friends, or my doctors—could talk me out of things anymore. I understand that they were concerned for me and didn’t want me to hurt myself, but obviously they wouldn’t have had quite the same reaction if I still had all my limbs, and I refused to be defined by the injuries I had suffered. I’m more than that. I’m still a man, and I will not let anyone tell me that there’s something I can’t do. Maybe I can’t do things the way other people do them, but if there’s something I have my heart set on, I will always find a way to make it happen.
A lot of the things I do for fun these days—wakeboarding, skiing, waterskiing, and driving ATVs—I learned to do after I left rehab. I had to relearn how to skateboard. If I can push myself and do these things, anyone can. All it takes is the desire to get off your ass and really live. No matter what your condition, you can make the same choice. You want to go back to school? Do it. Learn a new skill, a new language? Why not? You can decide to do anything. You can decide to change your life. I know that’s not going to happen right away for everyone. In a lot of cases, it’s gonna take time. You need to be open to change, and you need to make an effort. Nobody will do it for you. No one will make you better. You need to be the one to change your own life.
No Turning Back Page 19