Crossing Into UnNormal

INTRODUCTION
I used to run into burning buildings for a living. Now I write poems about the day my brain didn't come back the same as the rest of me. Neither one of us saw that coming.
Nobody hands you a manual when this happens. You get a discharge sheet, a follow-up appointment three weeks out, and a lot of people telling you that you look fine. You do look fine. That's part of the problem.
This isn't a book about fixing yourself. It's a book about the line - the one between who you were and who you are now - and what it actually feels like to cross it. Some of it's going to make you laugh. Some of it's going to knock the wind out of you. That's on purpose. That's how it actually went.
I'm not a doctor, a therapist, or anybody's guru. I'm a retired fire chief who got hit by something invisible and had to figure out how to keep leading anyway. If you're standing on your own side of that line right now, wondering if anybody else made it across - I did. Come on over. I saved you a seat.
- Chief Chuck E Carroll