- In my mid-20s, I was fit, active, and had a great job and friends.
- Then, when I was riding my bike one day, a car hit me, and I was left with injuries.
- My recovery was difficult, and I became deeply depressed.
Although I’d been depressed and lonely at my Long Island high school, going to college at Binghamton University improved my life. My Chinese immigrant parents were disappointed it wasn’t an Ivy League, yet I was happy to be away from their incessant nagging, where I had more room to explore.
After graduation, I moved to New York City, where I quickly obtained a white-collar job with an accelerated career trajectory, much to my parents’ delight. As long as I kept my foot on the gas, I felt like a successful young man on a path paved with gold.
I could pay the rent for my one-bedroom apartment, save in a 401(k), and pick up any tab I needed to. I spent weekends at crowded clubs with classmates, drinking and joking around, trying — and failing — to date.
I didn’t know I was one bike wreck away from freefall.
When a car collided with my bike, there were immediate and lasting consequences
The morning it happened, I had capped off an easy 6-mile run with 30 pull-ups in the park and practiced my handstand afterward. I took pride in physical fitness.
I earned a D1 varsity letter on the college swim team. It was warm for mid-September, so I biked to my friend’s apartment afterward. On my way home, I was riding in the protected bike lane when a car hit me head-on, cracking my front bike fork and tire and knocking me to the ground. My helmet flew off in the impact.
I never lost consciousness, as far as I could tell. An avid cyclist, I’d learned there were only two types of bicycle crashes: those you could walk away from and those you couldn’t. During my own traumatic collision, my brain focused on taking inventory.
Dying at 27 would have been a travesty, but if everything hurt this much, I definitely wasn’t dead. The fact that I could feel every excruciating detail meant I probably wasn’t paralyzed, either.
Thank goodness the driver stopped and called emergency services. In adrenaline-laced confusion, I wanted to resist the ambulance. I was between jobs with no health insurance, and medical debt could destroy me financially. Still, I couldn’t stand, much less walk, and was gushing blood from my right brow. I had no choice; I would have to accept the bills and figure it out later.
A heroic nurse’s gentle hands carefully stitched my head with small, neat sutures. She informed me that in New York City, pedestrians were automatically covered by no-fault insurance. Between the high of medical-grade morphine and the relief that I wouldn’t be paying thousands of dollars in medical bills, I floated through a battery of tests, diagnoses, and follow-up schedules.
I was lucky to have survived, but I didn’t feel lucky
Yet when the drugs wore off, so did the good feelings. I had survived a serious run-in, but it didn’t feel like a miracle; it felt like a sick joke. I begged the attending for another dose of morphine before checking out of the hospital 12 hours later.
I spent the next months navigating a typhoon of medical specialists, lawyers, and insurance agents. I cried often, which aggravated my cracked ribs and reminded me of my station, which only tightened the spiral.
My mother was abuzz with worry, but her solution was to nag me to “get over it.” I think my emotional state distressed her. She might have thought it would be better if I just kept it to myself. I tried to express that I felt sadness and anger, but her blank stare seemingly revealed her difficulty in relating to me emotionally.
Vicodin did help with suppressing feelings. It wiped away the pain, washed out the grief, and, in moments, even supplemented joy. But weeks later, the constipation had gotten so severe that I considered re-admitting myself to the hospital. I knew I had to flush the opioids from my system. I hated facing my reality. The mountain of recovery seemed too daunting. It was much easier to drown in the melancholy.
Some Sundays, gravity glued me to the bare wood floorboards of my bedroom. It would take hours of repeatedly cajoling myself to move. Existence felt like freefalling off a mental edge, unable to find purchase on its slippery slope.
I stopped doing many of the things I’d loved before
Before the incident, my parents and I celebrated an A I had earned on the coding boot camp midterm, part of a larger career transition I had embarked upon.
I soon discovered that missing weeks of classwork meant I would have to repeat the course with another cohort. I also missed attending regular poetry open mics. Life felt less real without the communities I had found in those spaces. Still, my friends showed up relentlessly, taking me to museums and letting me sit when I was tired. They continued to make reservations for us and understood if I canceled at the last minute.
I could see the physical decay of stagnation take effect as my muscles, a pride of ceaseless practice, atrophied. I faced body dysmorphia over the scarring and unevenness in my body. I once modeled on a waterproof bag campaign, galavanting on a beach, bare-chested, proud. It seemed like that entire range of possibilities vanished in an instant.
I had been training to compete in triathlons, determined to use the skill I had devoted so much time to in the pool. Instead, I was caged in a cycle of three sets of 10 reps of mobility exercises. Hours of cruel, sweaty, demeaning work to gain a few degrees of movement.
In my darkest times, my friends were there for me
I’ve learned that depression has many faces. Suicidal ideation can come with an ice-cold certainty. I felt it creep in, its convincing logic slithering toward a comforting conclusion. Blessed are the friends who pick up the phone in the darkest times. I’d call when I could, and they would hold space, enough for me to make another week.
Over time, I’ve learned to rely on and be relied upon by those who love you, who share your achievements and shortcomings, fragility and candor, hold you where you are, and gently put you back where you belong.
I started therapy, urged on by my brother, who was worried about me. It took a while for me to understand how to apply that tool and unwind all the safeguards. Radical honesty and self-examination were new, and their revelations were difficult to confront, process, accept, and love.
Two years later, I still need therapy — physical and psychological. I read books on ways others have coped with mental illness, and my friends and I check in on each other. I call my mom, too.
My healing journey is ongoing. I’ve learned that navigating the pitfalls of your own mind is not linear, and regression should be expected. These experiences made me recognize how precarious mental health issues can be, especially when compounded by medical challenges. It isn’t always easy, but there are many moments of joy in being seen and being loved by others and by myself.
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