This is just something really weird, unexpected, spooky, and bizarre I noticed looking back. I was in a car accident with a drunk driver. Shortly after, my family was abusive and manipulative. The concussion I got was assessed to be minor and that all made sense. My memory has been really good and I was able to learn a lot of new things, read, etc.

Over the course of a year, I developed serious long term symptoms out of the blue. Suddenly couldn't comfortably look at patterns and wear colors. At the height of the issues, I couldn't look at pictures, magazines, computers, listen to music, work, turn the lights on or even cope with the noise of going outside. Traveling for the holidays was completely out of the question and communicating with anyone outside of my husband that I live with was kind of non existent because of the trouble with the phone.

I was really really scared. I'm getting all the medical help I need, so don't worry. But something felt really wrong inside. I had no way of distracting myself from that feeling since I had lost so many activities. Slowly, what happened with my abusive ex family started becoming clear. Because of these symptoms, I was isolated from the influences that kept me blind to what happened.

I didn't make this connection until it was over. But now that I've identified the abusers, recovered all my memories, and made decisions that keep me safe, I'm regaining all those fun distracting things I couldn't do before. This is really weird. It's almost like my symptoms protected me before I could even process what was going on with the abusive ex family.