18 months out and I still don't know who I am anymore — anyone else feel this way?

The grief thing hit me so hard reading this. After my accident I kept waiting to "get back to normal" and it took me a long time to accept that I had to build a new normal instead. That sounds like a fortune cookie but I mean it genuinely — once I stopped measuring myself against who I was before, things got a little lighter. Not easy. Just lighter.

What you're describing has a name — it's called "adjustment disorder" or sometimes post-traumatic grief, and it is so incredibly common after serious physical trauma, way more than people talk about. The body heals on a visible timeline but the psychological piece doesn't follow a schedule. Please don't be hard on yourself for still feeling this at 18 months. If you're not already seeing a therapist who specializes in trauma (not just general talk therapy — specifically somatic or trauma-focused), that distinction actually matters a lot. Your nervous system went through something enormous.

I don't have any useful advice, I just want you to know that the way you described planning everything around your pain levels made me tear up a little. You deserve so much more than this and I really hope things shift for you soon. 💙

The fact that the employer and the contractor are blaming each other is a classic delay tactic — I've seen it play out with friends. The longer they stretch this out the more they're banking on you getting exhausted and accepting less. Please make sure your attorney is pushing back hard on that and not just passively waiting for them to settle it amongst themselves.

I used to work claims and I'll be straight with you — multi-party cases where a carrier can point at another defendant are the ones that stall the longest. Everyone waits for someone else to blink. It doesn't mean your case is weak, it usually just means it needs more aggressive coordination between the legal teams. Worth asking your attorney directly: is there a joint defense agreement between these two parties? That changes the strategy significantly.

On the legal side, when you have a trucking company and a third-party contractor both potentially liable, discovery can take forever because there are two sets of records to subpoena — maintenance logs, driver qualification files, inspection records. It's a lot of moving pieces. That's probably a big reason for the delays. Not an excuse, just context. Also worth knowing: documented mental health treatment (therapy visits, diagnoses) can actually support the non-economic damages part of your claim, so please don't avoid getting that help thinking it "doesn't count."

Turning down the promotion was understandable but don't let fear make every big decision for you from here on out. That's the accident still driving your life. At some point you have to consciously take the wheel back, even imperfectly. You moved, you're hiking again — you're already doing it. Keep going.

You hiked again. You drove again. I know that probably feels small from inside it but from the outside, someone reading about shattered hips and cracked vertebrae — that's not small at all. The hollow feeling is real but so is the progress, even when it's hard to hold both at the same time.