I Am Not the Injury… Except When I Am

I can fake normal pretty well now. After 15 years, I’ve learned how to hold a conversation that sounds like me. Most of the time, it’s a blend — Shannon mixed with the TBI. Sometimes, the TBI takes over completely. And every once in a blue moon, it’s just me. In those rare moments, I almost believe I’m still whole.

But that illusion shatters the moment pain walks in.

It all shifts the moment something stings a little too deeply — a reminder of everything I’ve lost, everything I’ll never get back. Usually, it comes when I’m around people I love. Watching them live dreams that once belonged to me. The mission I planned. The college life I expected. The love, the marriage, the children, the travel, the progression. I want all of it for them. I really do. But no amount of love for them can silence the ache in my chest when I remember it was supposed to be mine, too.

And that’s when it happens.

Dissociation.

Only this time, it's not me stepping away from the TBI. It’s the TBI taking over. I shut down. Shannon — the real me — runs to a corner of my mind and stares at the wall. She hides. She vanishes. And the brain injury takes the wheel.

Sometimes I lash out — get sharp, angry. Sometimes I shrink down and disappear. Either way, the one behind my eyes in those moments is not me. It's the scrambled neurons and the fractured wires. It’s not a person. It’s just pain.

And with it comes that familiar, vicious voice:
“You’re not even human anymore.”
“Everything you do is an act.”
“You’re an imposter.”

When I try to do something normal — something light or normal, like putting my hair in braids — the voice hisses again: “You’re pretending. You don’t belong in this world anymore. You’re just a broken brain trying to wear a costume.”

That’s what imposter syndrome looks like when you’ve lived through a TBI. It’s not just self-doubt. It’s self-erasure. It’s watching yourself vanish and trying to pretend you're still here. It’s begging to be seen as human when you can’t even feel human.

If you’ve ever felt this way — if you’ve ever felt like your pain has pushed you out of your own life — I see you.

And if you’re caring for someone who lives in that gap between identity and injury, please know: it’s not just sadness or grief. It’s a full-body, full-soul effort to stay here. To stay real. To keep trying.

We are not our injuries. But some days, our injuries speak louder than we can.

(I'm finally going through old drafts and reworking them, adding new insights and posting them, so expect quite a few for the next little while).