Chapter 1

I was brain injured before it was trendy. Before the football players and the boxers and the soldiers started coming out. Before other families emerged to talk about the devastation, before common people started looking for answers. I wasn’t hit by shrapnel or gunfire, by a fist or a flying object. I was knocked unconscious by pavement and a wheel, by a driver who wasn’t paying attention. By accident.

I have no memory of before. For me, it all started after.

I was hit by a truck. My neck snapped, my brain shook, and I almost died. I was three. Dad believed I was destined to live; in part because the day it happened, it was Tu B’Shevat, the Jewish festival of the trees, and according to some rabbinic law he read, fruit from a tree isn’t supposed to be eaten in the tree’s first three years of life. In its fourth year, it goes to God, and after that, anyone can eat it.

I was a couple of weeks from my fourth birthday, so maybe on that day I was a piece of fruit, and my soul was still mine. Maybe for a moment I was one with a tree. At times I thought I almost remembered looking up and melding into branches, if only for a second—long enough to feel the leaves tickle, to hear the whisper of the birds, to be spared.

But then, people sometimes feel things when certain parts of the brain are stimulated—an otherworldly presence, supernatural power, supreme calm. A few years ago, I was in a traumatic brain injury group with a girl who saw Jesus every time she had magnet therapy.

Maybe my savior was a tree.

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Michelle Adelman graduated from Northwestern University with a BS and an MS in Journalism, and earned her MFA in Writing from Columbia University. Her journalism has appeared in Time Out New York and elsewhere.

Hypertext Magazine and Studio (HMS) publishes original, brave, and striking narratives of historically marginalized, emerging, and established writers online and in print. HMS empowers Chicago-area adults by teaching writing workshops that spark curiosity, empower creative expression, and promote self-advocacy. By welcoming a diversity of voices and communities, HMS celebrates the transformative power of story and inclusion.

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