True love

is your silence.

YT:TBI/PTSD

Please do not assume the state of their friendship has anything to do with anything other than the fact that rebuilding a life is no small feat. I say this from both personal and professional experience: PTSD and TBIs [Traumatic Brain Injury] have impacts that no one can anticipate. One's personal landscape changes, irrevocably, in a second. Emotional, physical, physiological: your state of being becomes a snow globe of pain, terror, and confusion. They are two separate people who shared a physical experience, but each had different individual injuries and relied on different coping mechanisms. Outside of those factors, when one goes from being a vibrant, independent, active person to requiring 24/7 assistance, it colors your perspective. It diminishes you. It takes away from your sense of self and identity. Sometimes being visually reminded of it is too painful. Sometimes, you just don't want to think about it for 5 flipping seconds. Sometimes you don't know how or why you suddenly respond to something strongly. We have triggers we never had before and life is suddenly extremely insecure. And terrifying. Some days, one trigger can setback months of progress. Additionally, everything takes so much more time and energy. The ladies are doing the best that they can and their best is brilliant. They are still healing and will be grappling with this for the rest of their lives. That is a very hard 2:30AM, all alone realization to make. It's a huge thing to be faced with and something that deserves the respect of time. We all heal at our own paces.