28 years crushed

I was able to talk to my sister the other day.
The one that is 13 months and 3 days older than I.
We shared a room and just about everything else growing up and she was there (age 13) when I (age 12) sustained the TBI from the tree that my tube collided with upon descending a snow covered path. She was the one who was furious when she saw them pulling my seemingly lifeless body in a sled across the field to the cars. My head rested on her shoulder or lap as she accompanied me home and then to the hospital.  She has never even complained about me throwing up in the car, and then riding to hospital in that car. She had to fill out incident reports and medical histories about me. She listened to me scream from the other room "don't take my clothes off" when they were trying to get me into appropriate hospital attire.
Though it was a closed head injury it caused some swelling that lasted awhile and she remembers my head being swollen and squishy. I remember that part too, but the memory of it doesn't bother me nearly as much.
It was a very traumatic experience for her.
This is my sister who knew me better than anyone. I was often her little shadow. She knew me before the accident and she knew me after. She has always seemed to know better than even myself how the accident had effected me.
She is the sister that saw, through our adolescence and beyond, how the head injury effected friendships and relationships. She watched me struggle and has confessed she wishes she had known how to explain to people what they didn't understand about me; that even though it was me it wasn't really me.
So when I told her of how things had taken a turn with my neuropsychologist,
she was very angry.
She was furious when I told her that at one point in trying to understand all of this, my concussion doctor -after discussing with the neuropsychologist- had suggested that the concussion problems may be secondary to mental illness.
"No, the only reason you have mental illness problems is because of head injury!" she fumed. "They need to understand that"
and she was furious that the office manager treated me the way she had. She was baffled that a place that treats people with neurological conditions would ever think that is a good idea.
She pointed out that they put my life in jeopardy. I explained to my sister that I was no longer in crises when that lady yelled at me, but she pointed out it did not matter and that I was still vulnerable. She is right.
Sometimes we need big sisters to speak up for us.
And it was especially wrong considering I had recently had a manic episode. I do not like to admit things like this and also I have made such huge progress I like to not focus on it as much as possible, but the truth is I have had to be hyper-diligent in fending off and being aware of suicidal thoughts and feelings.
and that is all I want to say about that, because I know enough to know I don't really want to die and if they plague me too much or start tainting other desires I've got loads of tools to fight it... including the antidepressant that my doctor recently doubled my dose of.
But even more than all of this the one thing that my dear sister was able to recognize, the most important thing I tried and have tried to explain to Dr. He, was that that moment of him deciding I was done with TBI related treatment and therapy was actually the beginning of me accepting how TBI was the part of my whole self and the perfectly imperfect part of my life that I need to come to understand and accept in order to really stay connected with my self and feel that I was of value.
In that moment, 28 years of hope were crushed
as he dropped me and then allowed me to be transformed into whatever monster of a liar or "crazy person" his facility has painted me to be, ignoring the fact that head injury is what drove me there and what has been driving me to be heard ever sense.
My sister got it as she put it into the word context of what I was trying to explain "28 years of hope were crushed." She understands the magnitude of this for me.
I cannot just let this go. To do so is to die. I cannot believe that I do not belong or am unwelcome at a neuroscience institution that specializes in treating people with TBI, especially when they were my hope and chance to rewrite the wrongs of abandonment and rejection that had perpetuated the negative effects of my first TBI related emotional regulation difficulties.
The rejection of a man I connected so easily and naturally with and could love in any form is one thing
but coupled with the rejection of my broken brain where it is supposed to be safe and cared for is too much to bare.
So I fight for me.