Limitless

I recently got a hair cut.

Not that uncommon for me, especially recently.  I love trying new styles and going edgier and edgier without crossing the line into unprofessional for my line of work.

What makes this hair cut different, why it spurred me to dust off my semi-annual blogging shoes is because of what it exposes.

You can see my scar.

The scar I got at 11 years old when a neurosurgeon cut into my head.  The scar that ended the pain I had been living with for months.  The scar that meant my rescue.

I've had this scar now for more years than I lived before I got it.  It's part of me.  But I don't think I ever really wanted it to be.  Yeah, the medical struggles I went through as a kid were something I'd bring up in casual conversation.  I'd randomly and sarcastically say that my brain is too big for my skull and I have the scar to prove it.

But it wasn't something I really, truly wanted people to know about me.  And I think I finally know why.

It's because I didn't know what it meant about me.  And I think cutting off my hair, exposing the visual proof of what I went through, what I survived, this piece of me that shapes so much of who I am is actually forcing me to come to terms with it all.

But, you know, it's not actually about exposing to the world the fact that I had brain surgery.  What's so different about leaving my scar exposed is that it forces me to think about what I went through.  About the pain.

Chronic pain is a singular experience.  I don't think anyone who hasn't lived through months and then years of uncontrollable, debilitating, life-altering pain can ever grasp the impact it has on a person's life.  You just don't get it till you do.

When I was 11, I dealt with chronic pain for 4 months.  It started August 1st, 2002 and ended November 22, 2002.  And it changed me.  When I was 20, in my junior year of undergrad, I started on a journey of chronic pain that wouldn't stop for nearly two years.  It started in March of 2011 and wouldn't finally stop until January of 2013.  And that journey changed me more.

Those are facts and dates that I know and even talk about if it comes up in conversation.  But I don't often stop, sit, and think about what it actually means for me.

You know with bar applications due this week and work supervisors giving me their tips and tricks on studying for the bar, the topic of how difficult the bar is has come up quite a few times.  And quite a few times I've heard classmates or co-workers or supervisors tell me that taking the bar exam will be the hardest thing I ever do in my life.

I honestly have to stop myself from laughing every goddamn time I hear it.

I know I haven't been there yet, I know I have no clue how time/life-consuming studying will be.  I know that I have no clue how mentally, emotionally, and physically draining actually sitting down and taking that test will be.  I don't know.

But I do know this with absolute certainty: on my list of hardest things I've gone through in my life, it won't even rank in the top 5.

There's something about living with chronic pain that gives you the confidence to understand exactly how far you can go.  I didn't think I could make it.  But then I did.  And now I know.  I know exactly how much I can take.

I know that I can make it through the most grueling academic transition of my life (first semester of law school), all while barely being able to walk or even use my hands.  I made it through first year while hopped up on a huge cocktail of medications, medications that enabled me to show up to class, but that was about it.  My mind was so gone half the time, both from the mind-altering effects of the drugs and the emotional and psychological drain of the physical pain, only slightly dulled by the meds.  I couldn't concentrate in classes.  There was one night I got home from class and the pain, which was normally just in my arms and legs, extended to the rest of my body.  My neck was stiff and I couldn't move.  It was like I was paralyzed.  I might have even been on my way.  I had to be rushed to the ER so they could give me IV dilaudid (read: drug store heroin) and then a lumbar puncture (i.e. my worst fear on the face of the planet).  I went home and then got up and went to school the next morning and started again.

I made it through.  I made it through the chronic pain and the academic load, and on top of all of this, I was struggling with and finally coming to terms with my own sexuality.  By the end of my first year of law school, I had come out, to myself, to my closest friends, to my family, and finally to everyone else.  I had surgery on my spine and side to finally alleviate the pain.  I slowly but surely recovered from that shunt surgery.  I weaned myself off of all the medications I had been relying on to simply keep moving for the prior two years.

I made it through the most grueling, physically painful, emotionally and psychologically draining year of my life.  And then I kept moving.  Because that's one of the things that chronic pain teaches you: you can't stop.  You can't pretend that the pain isn't there, but you can't put your life on hold just because it hurts.  You have got to push forward.  Which is exactly why I don't often stop and take stock of what my journey through chronic pain has taught me.  Because life keeps going.  So did law school, and I had to catch up.

But then I chopped my hair off.  And I realized that everyone I encounter, when they look at the back of my head, will know that something has happened to me in the past that has shaped me, that has forever altered me.  And, you know what?  Before I went through that two year long chronic pain journey, I never would have had the confidence to show off my scar.  But now I do.  Now there's very little that I don't have the confidence to do.  Because, as I said, I know my limits.  Which is to say, I know that I don't have any that I can't push through if I need to.  I know that you strip everything away from me and I'll keep going.