Scene 04-Tony's Introduction

***************************Tony’s Introduction**************************************

Tony doesn’t actually remember the day of his accident with his fiancé.

Well, not the day of, or the week leading up to it,
But I remember ten days previous to the accident,
I’m sitting there with my fiancé and my soon to be mother-in-law,
We was making plans for the wedding,
she and I, we’re arguing about - wineglasses or something,
My fiancé’s sitting over there -

and the hardest thing I had to, kinda keep re-teaching myself as I “came back to life” after this accident with my fiancé,
I was the only survivor.

*********************************************************************************

The events surrounding the incident that causes TBI are almost always a blur - everything is happening in a relatively normal manner - in Tony’s case, he was driving home from a party with his fiancé - and suddenly you’re waking up in a hospital with hours, days, or sometimes years removed from the event.  You don’t understand where you are or why you can’t do the things you are supposed to be doing - it doesn’t make sense and you want to get back to the life you know and understand.

This desire is common among survivors and seemed to exist in the Crumley House Resident who became the model for Tony’s characteristics - I will call him “James”.


A former construction worker from central Tennessee, “James” came from a hands-on, working background focused on the completion of physical projects as a mark of the day’s success.  He was also cautious about whom he trusted, and it was hard to form a friendly relationship - though I did see him naturally reach out to new male residents at the Crumley House, seeming to enjoy behaving in a “big-brother” manner as residents became situated in their accommodations.  Despite his willingness to assist others, “James” did not appreciate having to ask for assistance and resented when the rules of the establishment - as opposed to his personal limitations - restricted what he was able to do.  Despite jerky movements, it seemed that by his physical abilities, “James” could have operated outside, though he would likely have limited employment options and certainly wouldn’t be able to return to construction work - he could also at times display a vengeful, violent temper, and I suspect that this may have provided ample reason to remain at the Crumley House.

It’s from these characteristics that I created the character of Tony.

In the piece, Tony represents the struggle discussed at the start of this essay - wanting to return to how things were before his accident - and anger at the limitations imposed by the recovery restricting his ability to make that return. 

As human’s we have a desire for consistency - we want to know that what is true today was true yesterday and will continue to be true tomorrow - the bagel shop on the corner opens before 7am and has fresh coffee.  Even relatively small discrepancies in that consistency can cause frustration - what, why the hell is the bagel shop closed today - but when brain injury occurs the hope of any consistency is gone.  Everything changes.  Yet there tends to be a (false) belief that the goal of recovery is to return to the pre injury consistency.  Due to difficulties with memory after the accident, this disruption of consistency can be further accentuated because, even if the changes are consistent - the bagel shop has actually been closed for two years now - the surviving person may have difficulties remembering that the changes occurred, and this creates uncertainty about the new “normal”.

With somewhat trivial changes - the bagel shop - this can be frustrating but is manageable - but when a life situation is irrevocably altered due to a survivors situation, this can be damning.  In the character Tony’s situation, his fiancé died next to him in the car, but he had to be reminded of her death each day of his early recovery.

I am a fellow survivor, but I cannot fully comprehend the enormity of this tragedy.

His anger makes sense to me.  When the world that you spent a lifetime building is torn asunder and you must be reminded of it each day, an understandable anger can arise.  These circumstances, however, while accounting for a source of the anger, do not excuse it - to state this in an crassly, unsympathetic, pragmatic manner: Shit happened, now deal with it. 

I have had anger issues that have come up in my recovery process - both in the intensive recovery immediately after the accident and the years that have followed - and I understand that, in reality, the bluntness of this advice is absurd - emotions are not switches that can be tuned to the correct setting - but the truth of the statement remains.  The fact that brain injury, and the particularities of the tragedy surrounding it, occurred cannot be changed - the primary goal of recovery must be to adapt to these new circumstances.  This does not mean one should deny the pain or anger caused by the events, but learn how to accept the situation and continue personal growth.


In Who Am I, Again?, Tony is in the process of making this adjustment - he still longs for the past and in some cases dwells in it, but is still conscious of the necessity of moving forward.  What I have come to realize as I reexamine the characters and stories in this piece, of the three residents, Tony is the natural storyteller - his stories, while true, tend to be presented in a slightly grandiose manner and with a storyteller's flair (this will be demonstrated and discussed more in future posts).  Similarly, “James” - while viewing the idea of storytelling as a profession with slight distain - loved to share his own stories and seemed to be conscious of presenting the facts in a manner that would elicit a reaction.

Sensing the storytelling flair of “James” is only an observation and I cannot support it with quantifiable data - I am relying on my abstract “storyteller’s instinct” to reach this hypothesis - but I posit that, if my instinct is true, it seems possible - perhaps even likely - that by embracing his storytelling tendency, “James” is finding a way to better understand and come to grips with his current experience (please leave your thoughts in the COMMENTS below).

While the experience and motivation for “James’s” storytelling is not available to me, I have come to recognize this motivation does exist in the character of Tony, though I did not consciously imbue him with this quality when composing the piece.  This returns to some of the ideas presented in the second entry of this blog (Scene 01-Introduction) - and after nearly a decade of working with the character, I have come to recognize that Tony uses his ability to create a gripping narrative as a way to better understand his personal situation in recovery.  Please note, I recognize that using “the recognition of the tendencies in a character” that I created to support my own argument concerning the healing process of storytelling becomes almost absurdly “meta” - and I do not mean to imply that this constitutes any sort of solid “proof”, but it is an idea that I will continue to explore as I relate and comment Tony’s stories in future postings.

But until then, please leave your thoughts, however pragmatic or meta they may be.  As I write, my fingers are spitting out a lot of ideas and I would love to hear your arguments for or against  - my hope is that these essays help to start a conversation so together we can discover what recovery means and how to make this journey in the best way possible.

Those are my thoughts for this entry, thanks for reading.  Quick note - I'm going on a short vacation, so there will be no more posts this week, but I will be posting next Monday, so keep an eye out.  Thanks for reading.