I just wanna win when I’m alive

Brain Injury, Stroke, Traffic, and Why I Stay safe

I’ve lived with a TBI near about 27 years and a ischemic stroke within the last two years. Another challenge.

That changes how the world feels.

A lot of people assume that if someone doesn’t go outside much, they’re just avoiding things. Lazy. Antisocial. Overthinking.

Traffic Feels Different After a stroke

One thing people don’t talk about much is how a damaged nervous system reacts to noise and unpredictability.

Traffic is a perfect storm of both.

Engines revving.

Trucks accelerating hard.

Sudden bursts of noise and motion.

For most people it’s background sound. They filter it out.

For me, my brain flags every one of those signals as important.

Not necessarily dangerous — just loud, fast, and unpredictable.

That kind of input piles up quickly.

Living Somewhere You Don’t Like

I live in Castle Rock.

To be honest, I don’t like it here.

It’s loud. There are a lot of big trucks. A lot of aggressive driving. The kind of place where engines seem to announce themselves constantly.

If moving were easy, I probably would.

But moving costs money, and sometimes reality is simply that you stay where you are because that’s what you can afford.

So the situation is what it is.

Staying Inside Isn’t Giving Up

Because of all that, I spend a lot of time inside.

And I’m actually okay with that.

Inside, things are predictable.

The environment is controlled. The noise level is manageable. My nervous system can settle down instead of reacting to whatever just roared past on the road.

That doesn’t mean I stop living.

I exercise at home.

I work on physical therapy at home.

I write at home.

I organize my thoughts at home.

It’s not retreating from life. It’s building a version of life that works with the brain I have now.

Small Victories Still Count

Recovery and adaptation aren’t dramatic.

They’re small decisions.

Getting on the exercise machine.

Doing the stretches my physical therapist just gave me.

Taking care of my body even on days when it feels like work.

That’s the real version of resilience.

Not pretending everything is normal.

But figuring out how to move forward inside the reality you’re living in.