“No, it’s my party. If I’m not there, my drunk friends’ll trash my house.” Not the greatest line, but she agreed to come with me.
Robi was long gone by that point, so Caroline drove us back to the house. When we pulled into my driveway, we saw that the party was starting to wind down. We got out, walked out back to the bonfire, smoked a cigarette, and then we went back to the car. That’s where we stayed, all night, just talking—about me, her, us . . . about everything and nothing.
It was a gorgeous night, warm and clear. There were so few streetlights out there in the boondocks that it got almost perfectly dark at night, which made it possible to see more stars than I’d ever imagined. Out in the middle of nowhere, with the world around us so immaculately black, the moon seemed ten times brighter. It was amazing.
That perfect night was the first time we kissed.
As soon as I kissed her, I knew it was love. It was like having fireworks go off in my heart. She was the one, and I felt it. Before that night I’d suspected it, I’d hoped for it . . . and when I kissed her, I knew for sure. She was the one for me.
That was as far as we went that night, but it changed me. I knew I’d never be the same.
We said good night as the sun came up, and then I got out of the car and watched her drive away. The last thing I wanted to do that morning was leave her, but my flight left for Vegas later that day. The week went by too fast and then I flew back to Iraq and rejoined my unit.
Caroline and I talked on the phone as often as we were able, and we traded e-mails all the time. Whatever I was feeling or thinking about each day, I put it in my e-mails to her. I wasn’t holding anything back.
Roughly five weeks later, two of my best friends in the Army got killed by a roadside IED. That shook me up bad. I couldn’t understand why great guys like them had died while I had gotten away with barely a scratch after one and a half tours in downtown hell. “Why them and not me?” I sent that off to my mom, a couple of friends, and Caroline. Looking back, I suppose that was one of those moments that people are referring to when they say, “Be careful what you wish for—because you just might get it.”
The next morning, I got blown up.
After I woke up at Walter Reed, I didn’t want to talk to Caroline. I didn’t want her to see what had happened to me, so I stopped answering her e-mails or taking her calls. She didn’t give up on me, though. She kept sending me e-mails, and my mom read them to me while I lay in bed. I never asked to send a reply. What was I going to say? I had no words for what I was feeling. I should have known better. I’d been pouring everything out to her for a couple months now and she’d stuck by me long distance and everything. But on some level, I guess I hoped that if Caroline never saw me again, she would always remember me the way I was, and that part of me would still be alive—it would still exist in her memory. It sounds crazy to me when I say it like that, but at the time I still hadn’t really accepted what had happened to me. I didn’t want her to see me like this. Or maybe I didn’t want to see her seeing me like this, in my hospital bed after being blown to pieces. It would be that much more real to see it reflected in her eyes. I couldn’t do it.
Unfortunately, I didn’t understand that I was hurting Caroline with my silence. I was too wrapped up in my own pain and loss to think about her feelings. After all, she’d been putting herself out there for me while I was in Iraq. That couldn’t have been easy for her back home in Wisconsin. Some folks would say my reaction was understandable, given the circumstances, but I’m not sure that makes it right. It explains how I was behaving, but it doesn’t justify it.
She flew out to Washington, D.C., to visit me in the hospital, which was pretty amazing considering the way I’d been treating her. Once she was standing in front of me, I couldn’t not talk to her. I saw that she was wearing the horseshoe charm necklace I had given her. That was the first time I’d noticed that mine had been lost in the explosion. She had brought me a photo of the two of us. It was inside a store-bought frame whose edges she had decorated with the red and white ribbons she’d been wearing in her hair the night we met.
Then she took my hand, and I knew that it was okay for her to see me, because when she looked at me, she didn’t see my missing limbs or my scars or my burns. She saw me, the real person, and the way she looked at me made me realize that in her eyes, I was still the same guy she had kissed on that perfect night by the lake. I was still Bryan. I’d thought that she would see me the way I was seeing myself, seeing only what was missing. But she saw the person she had fallen in love with. I realized that if you assume people see nothing but your flaws, you can force them to see you in your worst light. That’s what I’d done to her all the time I didn’t answer her e-mails. If someone is kind enough, if they love you enough to see beauty in you, do yourself a favor—see yourself through their eyes.
After her first visit, we began dating. Over the next six months, she made several trips out to Walter Reed to spend time with me. Our whole relationship consisted of us being together at the hospital. Or going out to dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant.
For the longest time, though, I thought I was only half a person—half a body. I thought that mattered. It really doesn’t. Being with Caroline made feel whole again, like a real person, not just half of one. It wasn’t any one thing she did or said that made the difference. It was all the little moments, like when we were riding in an elevator—me in my wheelchair and her standing beside me—and then I’d glance her way and see her staring at me. At first it seemed weird, but then I realized she wasn’t gawking at me. It was as if she was radiating love and understanding, and it felt good just to bask in it, like sitting in the sunlight.
I never told her that. I don’t know why. Back then those feelings were all still so new and raw that I didn’t really know how to put words to them. Now I realize she really needed to hear those things from me.
The unconditional quality of Caroline’s love for me after I came home from Iraq helped me feel at ease with who I had become. I couldn’t have asked for anything more than that.
What I loved—and still love—about Caroline is that she doesn’t just talk about doing things, she does them. She sees the potential in everything around her; she perceives things and people not as they are but as they could be. To give you an example, she had some funky old window shutters. She was going to throw them away but thought they looked too cool to waste, so she built a coffee table out of them.
I was so impressed when she showed it to me. “You built that?”
“All it took was a hammer and some nails,” she said. “Simple.”
“Awesome.”
She lives the way I like to live. I was convinced I’d found the perfect woman.
Then, all at once, everything seemed to go wrong. I had planned a weekend away from Walter Reed, a trip down to Fort Hood, Texas, to see my Army buddies. I invited Caroline to meet me down there so I could introduce her to my friends, and she accepted. This was a really big deal to me. I’ve been through life and death with these guys; in some ways, I’m closer to them than I am to my family. I wanted them to meet Caroline because I was in love with her. I caught a Friday-afternoon flight, and Caroline was supposed to meet me in Texas the next day.
Saturday arrived, but Caroline didn’t.
I called her and asked what had happened. She said she had lost her ID, and that without it she couldn’t board the plane. I couldn’t believe it. I was devastated. It was kind of like the night she didn’t come to my party. But this time, instead of going after her, I got pissed and didn’t talk to her for days. More not talking on my part.
Later, I learned that despite telling me she was twenty-one years old, Caroline was, in fact, only nineteen (not that I would have cared). I’m not sure this had anything to do with her not getting on the plane, but learning she had been lying to me made me really angry. It hurt me to think that she didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth. I didn’t think about all that time I hadn’t ans
wered her e-mails.
I broke up with her—she’d say she broke up with me—and we shut each other out for nearly a year. Then we started talking again. That led to us hanging out, though not exactly dating as we had been. I made a trip up to Wisconsin and learned that she had started dating a new guy. I met him. He seemed like an okay dude.
Two weeks later, she came to visit me in D.C. for a weekend. During that trip, I asked her, “What’s the deal with us? I know you’ve got this new guy, but you’ve only been with him three months, and I think you know that what you and I have is special.”
“You really hurt me when you stopped talking to me,” she said. “I’m afraid that when you go traveling, one day you’ll leave and not call me anymore.”
“Why would you think that?”
“You did it before.”
“What? When I was mad at you for a few days because you didn’t come to Texas? What’d you think I was gonna do?”
The next thing I knew, we were kissing. Maybe it was something I said, but I doubt it.
All these feelings I’d had when I first met her came rushing back, and for a moment I actually believed that she’d choose to stay with me, that we’d be together again.
I was wrong. Everything turned weird between us, and she went back to Wisconsin.
I sent her an e-mail and poured my heart out, told her exactly how I felt about her and how much she meant to me. She never replied to that message.
More time passed, and we made plans to get together again. She was going to come visit me for St. Patrick’s Day so that we could have a few beers together. The day before she was supposed to arrive, she called to say she wasn’t coming.
“Why not?”
“My boyfriend read your last e-mail. He says I’m not allowed to hang out with you anymore, and he doesn’t want me talking to you either. He doesn’t think it’s a good idea.”
“A good idea? All I want to do is have a beer with you on .St Patty’s.”
“Sorry.” She hung up.
I wasn’t done talking, but I knew she wouldn’t take any more of my calls, so I got in my car and drove up to Wisconsin. I pulled up to the bar where she worked . . . and then I sat in my car, wondering what the hell to do next. I wondered, What if her boyfriend’s there? Damn it, I’m sure he is. Where else would he be? That would be just my luck. Finally, I decided it didn’t matter. I hadn’t driven all that way just to wuss out, so I got out of my car and went inside. And, as I’d expected, Caroline and her boyfriend were sitting together at the bar. Of course they are. I had no idea what to say, so I climbed up onto a bar stool next to them and ordered a beer.
Caroline looked at me, dumbfounded. “What are you doing here?”
“You said you’d have a beer with me on St. Patrick’s Day, so here I am. All I want is a beer.” I nodded at her boyfriend. “Hey. What’s up?” He didn’t look happy to see me.
The conversation was tense, awkward, and sparse as I drank my beer. To be honest, there wasn’t much to say. When my mug was empty, I set it down, said my farewells, and left.
That was the last time I ever saw Caroline, but not the last time I spoke to her.
A few months after my unannounced visit to Wisconsin, we spoke once via text message. It didn’t go well. At the end of it, I got fed up and told her, “Fine, I’ll just lose all your info. Consider yourself deleted.” I purged her information from my phone and computer.
Whenever I go back up to my family’s vacation house, I find myself thinking about Caroline, and I ask myself, Why did I let things happen the way they did? Why didn’t I do this or that differently? I hate feeling that way, because I don’t believe in living with regrets. Yet every time I go out to the house on the lake, I kick myself and grumble, “Son of a bitch. This is not the way this was supposed to work.”
I’ve lain awake more nights than I can count, asking myself over and over, How did my relationship with Caroline go so completely wrong? How did I meet the greatest, most beautiful girl in the world, fall in love with her, and then lose her?
Well, at long last, I think I’ve unraveled the mystery and found the answer: I’m an idiot.
When I was lying in my bed at Walter Reed and ignoring Caroline’s e-mails, I showed no trust in her, in the feelings she obviously had for me. But she still stuck by me through those bad times. Even when I couldn’t love myself, she still loved me. I kind of took that for granted. Even though we got through it, there were times I still held back from telling her everything. And that was wearing her down. I didn’t pour it all out to her until that e-mail I sent her when she was already with her new boyfriend. I should have known how that would go over.
You might think after reading about my relationship with Caroline, that I’m a complete loser when it comes to women, but I’m really not. Ever since I finished rehab, I’ve had better luck on the dating scene than I ever had before I got blown up, and I owe a lot of that good fortune to the confidence I gained from my appearance on the cover of Esquire.
I never thought I was good-looking in any kind of way. But after so many strangers told me, “You have such presence,” or “You have a good look,” I began to take notice. During interviews, more than one reporter said to me something like “It doesn’t hurt that you’re good-looking, too.” After a while that sort of constant positive reinforcement started to stick with me. That’s how my confidence was built.
Soon it was the same thing with women telling me I was good-looking. At first it was only Caroline, but after her there were others. Women I had just met kept telling me that I was handsome or cute. I’d hear this and throw a funny look at them. “Really?”
“Absolutely.”
After hearing it enough times, I began to think it might not be total bullshit.
Those little moments add up, and in the long run, they make a difference.
When I was interviewed by Esquire, I said that I thought my injuries had made me ugly. I don’t think that way anymore. And traveling as a spokesperson for Quantum Rehab, I’ve had the chance to meet lots of people all over the United States. Becoming a public speaker gave a huge boost to my self-confidence. Once I learned how to talk to a crowd, talking to one woman in a bar or at a party didn’t seem so intimidating anymore. Then I started to land acting gigs—on CSI: NY, All My Children, and The Wire, and in movies like The Wrestler—and I really began to believe that I wasn’t some modern-day Quasimodo freak.
Esquire can’t take all the credit for helping me make this transformation, though. The truth is, it all started with Caroline. She didn’t judge me based on how I look or how many parts I have. She cared about who I am as a human being. Whether it’s about looks or limbs, you can’t put yourself down. You’ve got to believe in the good other people see in you. If you don’t, then deep down you can’t love yourself. And that will sabotage the relationships you have with people who do love you. You’ll shut them out because you don’t trust their love, you’ll think that they can’t love you for whatever stupid reasons you get stuck in your head.
The power of love is what makes everything else possible. That’s why it matters. That’s how Caroline made me into a whole person again. Sure, it hurt that I lost her in the end, but she brought me healing beyond what the doctors could do, and I will always owe her for that.
So don’t be afraid to show your feelings to the people you love. And if someone wants to show you love, don’t ask why—just accept it, because that’s as good as life gets.
10
KNOW WHEN TO WALK ALONE
We all need help sometimes. When you start learning how to ride a bicycle, there’s nothing wrong with using training wheels until you get the hang of it. Kids learning to swim in a pool where even the shallow end would be over their heads ought to start with an adult beside them to help keep them afloat, or with one of those funny-looking flotation vests. At any age, if you decide to take up parachuting, your first jump has to be with a qualified instructor, someone trained to help you out if somet
hing goes wrong. This is all common sense: if you’re learning to do something potentially dangerous, you take a few precautions during the learning process.
There comes a time, though, when you have to take off the training wheels, leave the flotation vest on the beach, or jump out of the plane by yourself. Sooner or later, we all need to be able to walk alone.
I had friends at my side the first time I got on a skateboard after I left rehab. It’s easy to wipe out on a skateboard even when you have all your limbs. For me to try it alone after such a radical change in my body would have been beyond stupid—it would have been insane. Once I got comfortable being back on the board, though, I didn’t want anybody looming over me. After a certain point I knew it had to be about me, alone on the board, facing my fear.
Perched at the top of a skate ramp, ready to plunge straight down, I felt as if I had a half-million butterflies banging around inside my gut, slamming back and forth in my stomach. It was my choice to be there; I had put myself in that situation. Taking that risk was my choice, and I did it because I knew I’d hate myself if I didn’t. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t nervous as hell.
My body sent me crazy signals, like telegrams written on adrenaline: “What the hell are you doing, man?” Looking straight down that ten-foot wall, I couldn’t help thinking, It doesn’t look this high from the ground. I admit it: I hesitated. I knew that if I made one mistake, I could crack my head open on the cement.
That was my cue to just do it, that awareness of the challenge. That nervous feeling was telling me I was doing something exciting and I wasn’t going to let my fear keep me from that. One push was all it took.
Gravity took over. My stomach lurched into my chest as I felt wind on my face—not a gust of natural wind, this was all about the speed of my body in free fall. My transformed body. Could I trust it? In a way, most of my skateboarding experience had been lost with my legs. For a few seconds that felt stretched by my fear, all I knew was the thrill of gaining momentum. Then my run panned out, and I coasted up the other side of the half-pipe before making a gentle arc back to the bottom.
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