Getting Off The Mountain
Understanding the importance of self-care after a traumatic injury.
Illustration by Roshni Capewell
Story by Tarn Bregman
As I laid on the ground, staring up at the sky between the trees, all I could think was, “Shit, I did it again.” It’s the strangest high you’ll ever have, breaking a bone. You’re in so much pain that your body releases more adrenaline than normal, and the hormonal swell transports you from agony to a state of bliss. Everything feels surreal, but you also find yourself connected to your body in a way that goes beyond anyone’s definition of being “comfortable in their own skin.” It’s one of the few times you can feel something that’s usually subconscious – your bones.
At 22 years old, I’ve broken seven bones, four of those seven being spinal vertebrae. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t used those facts to woo girls at bars. I have. But what’s never said is that those injuries have been nothing short of exhausting. There’s nothing attractive in the honest version of those stories, and there are no cool endings. Those injuries will never be “over,” because the process of recovery never really ends.
An object in motion stays in motion. An object in motion that collides with a tree, does not stay in motion. When I was thrown from my bike, I knew I was in trouble. Pain pulsated up and down my body to the rhythm of my heartbeat. My stomach felt like it was going to burst open like in the movie “Alien.” My abdominal pain was all on the front side of my body. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was the result of my spine having caved in 25% on the anterior side. The CT scan would later reveal a series of mostly healthy vertebrae, with one looking like a kicked-in cardboard box. Even before the scan and subsequent diagnosis, though, I knew my spine was broken. I’d felt that pain before.
“[You were] making some bad noises dude. You don’t want to hear those,” said Elliot Sciborski, one of the friends who was there when I crashed. “You were like, ‘OOOWHHH.’ It’s not just, ‘ow, fuck.’ It was ‘AGGHHHHH.”
We were deep in the woods, far from any cell service. It was going to take hours for search and rescue to get to us, and I didn’t have the patience to wait. I felt like I was bleeding internally. In any case, I knew time wasn’t on my side. Adrenaline doesn’t last forever. Sure enough, the adrenaline did run out before I made it out of those woods. But one painful step at a time, I got closer to the car, which meant closer to the hospital.
“[I] definitely was like, ‘Oh, shit. Okay. We’re halfway down a trail that is not easy to get out of in either direction. If we have to carry Tarn, how are we going to get this done?’” said Sciborski, reflecting on the accident. “Once we figured out that you could stand, and actually bear some weight, that’s when we were like, ‘we can get out of here and just walk it.’”
The first couple of months following my injury were far from healthy. “In recovery” was the term I used, but that was a lie. I treated myself like shit. I was actively making things worse. Every waking moment was filled with resentment. Life felt unfair. Why did it have to happen to me?
My summer was gone. So was my identity.
Moving back up to my college house, I fell into a deep hole of depression. I didn’t get out of bed for days at a time, and anytime my parents would call to check in, I would lie and tell them I was doing great. I was in denial about what had happened, and I was too scared to ask anyone for help or let anyone know I was struggling. I didn’t feel like I could be honest with my friends about what I was feeling, and moreover, I didn’t believe that I could maintain the relationships in my life that had been built on a shared love of outdoor activities. I couldn’t bear the thought of my ride-or-die mountain bike persona being damaged.
“From my perspective, I looked at you and it looked like you were doing everything perfect for recovery,” said Emmett Jones, a close friend of mine. Just over a month before my own crash, Jones had broken his neck in a mountain bike accident. Having him as a resource should have made it easier to talk to someone who knew something about what I was feeling. But even with Jones by my side, I just couldn’t bring myself to share how bad I truly felt.
I couldn’t be honest with anyone, because I wasn’t being honest with myself. I’d waited, and it had become clear that no one was coming to shake me by the shoulders and tell me something so motivating that my life would be forever changed.
It felt selfish to ask people for help with little things, and I felt guilty when I decided I needed to be alone. I felt lost.
Recovery didn’t start with an epiphany. There isn’t a single moment I can look back on and say, “that’s when I decided to change.” The change came gradually. At first, physical therapy felt stupid. It was so stupid that I felt repulsed by the idea of having to do it. I dreaded working on myself, because I didn’t want to acknowledge how badly I was sabotaging myself every day. Physical therapy amplified my feeling that life was unfair. But after being bedridden for so long, even the smallest movements felt good. Even though I hated the endless toe-touching, it forced me to work through some of my own thoughts. My music and podcasts were never nearly loud enough to drown out the voice in my head begging for better self-care.
I still have many of my old bad habits. They don’t just go away. Some days, it’s still easier to stay in bed, wrapped up in the false safety net of a comforter, than it is to face the harsh realities of the world. This injury didn’t magically change me. But it did help me understand the importance of self-care, and it gave me a point of reference for how far I’d come on my long, potentially endless road to recovery.
Looking back at what I have overcome is one of the only things that continues to propel me forward. Anytime I feel helpless and weak, which is admittedly a lot, I transport myself back to those moments on the mountain. Retching in pain, but still managing to get up and walk out, even though every step was one of the most painful I’d ever taken.
Recognizing exactly how I was sabotaging myself gave me the ability to understand exactly how I needed to change. But learning to take care of myself didn’t come easy. In fact, it felt offensive at times. Being completely honest with myself was hard, but it gave me an honest idea of who I am.
I’m still not perfect. I still sabotage myself, and I’m still learning what it means to take care of my body and mind. If there’s anything I’ve learned in the time since my injury, it’s that recovery doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t happen unconsciously, either. My process of recovery has taken more willpower than I knew I had.
I’m not happy I broke my back. But I’m not angry anymore, either. What might have taken a lifetime to learn, I learned in months. Injured or not, finding balance, self-care and accepting who you are is a crucial part of life. There’s always going to be pain, and maybe even some suffering. But allowing yourself to understand the bad, and to move it, allows you to feel the good more fully. Hopefully the lessons I’ve learned permeate every other aspect of my life.
When I think about my injury, and where I am now compared to where I was before, it’s easy to shrug off minor accomplishments. I’m still learning to celebrate these little wins, and I know now that recovery and self-care don’t just end. They’re continuous and evolving processes, that shift and change based on what I need. My life will go in whatever direction it goes in, and a lot of it will be due to influences I can’t control. So I might as well take pride and responsibility in the one thing I can control – me.