It's unfortunate Simmons ever even was suspended in the first place. Maybe he should have used better language. I'm not sure. I completely understand why people think what they think about the NFL at a time like this however, but there are almost 1,700 NFL football players and a lot of them really are living life in a positive way. The only real friends I ever had were college roommates at the University of Alabama who play, or played, in the National Football League. I was born with the inability to write (dysgraphia), to do arithmetic (dyscalculia), to see or feel fingers (finger agnosia) and to tell left from right (left-right disorientation) then acquired Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after almost dying in the violent F-5 Tuscaloosa tornado. On April 27th 2011 New England Patriot middle linebacker Dont'a Hightower grabbed my body off a bathroom floor then tucked me underneath a bathroom sink as the large storm passed us by. Overcoming PTSD can be a bumpy road for anybody. Combine with the day to day disabilities I face because of neurological disorder life felt impossible. Fortunately, my college roommates Dont'a Hightower, Nico Johnson, a linebacker on the Cincinnati Bengals, and recently retired Carolina Panther cornerback De'Quan Menzie all helped me with the things I struggle with because of disability.
3 years prior to the Tuscaloosa tornado, I left home for college with dreams of law school after pouring everything I had into tutoring, physical therapy, occupational therapy and class from inside special education classrooms. The brain disease I live with is called Gerstmann Syndrome and is acquired after bleeding into the brain during a stroke or traumatic head injury in an area of the left parietal lobe called the angular gyrus. Despite my condition, my family thought making the right choices in life and working hard could get me to my goals and beyond every time, but the events and aftermath of the Tuscaloosa tornado changed my life substantially. Therapists insisted I write as an outlet for the PTSD. I love stories and telling a story of my life couldn't have been closer to my heart but writing is a great big challenge when you can't see or feel fingers because of your brain. Most of us with Gerstmann Syndrome don’t have the skills to hold a pencil and write effectively and efficiently. When I was struggling to write a book because of disability, the New York Times best-selling author John Green reached out to me and said “My writing advice begins and ends with reading. Reading is the only apprenticeship we have as writers, the only path to discovering how people over the centuries have managed to make us believe in stories as deeply as we believe in the world around us. But aside from reading (and reading and reading!), I’d urge you just to keep writing, keep trying to find more effective ways to communicate stories to readers in a way they’ll find interesting. At some point you don't have control over what people think about your writing. That's part of the fear, sure, but it's also part of what makes it a wonderful experience. Books don't become real until they have readers, and you aren't handing over something complete. Instead you're presenting readers with one side of a conversation, and in reading the book, they're providing the other voice (or voices) in that conversation.”
The readers were my college roommates and in the rush of careers as NFL athletes, Dont’a Hightower, Nico Johnson and DeQuan Menzie never once forgot about me, reading rough draft after rough draft of my writing, letting me know where the writing lacked and why. There’s a line from the movie “Stand By Me,” a line written by Stephen King, which says “I never had any friends like the ones I had when I was 12 years old. Jesus, does anyone?” Here the answer is yes. My roommates couldn’t tell me everything a real book editor could, but they helped out the best they could. I couldn’t have become an author without their collaboration, and with their help I released a book for Rare Disease Day 2014 then established a Facebook group focused on encouraging the disabled to pursue their ambitions, changing the conversation from what the disabled can't do to what the disabled can do. I have lived much of 2014 hotel to hotel off Hotwire.com where I can afford in Nashville by the airport. I have not always had a place to stay, and have often slept in places I never thought I would sleep, but I am living an ultimate dream. Because of the experience, I know without question I can write and share a story that finds its way on Amazon Kindle Cognitive Psychology best-seller lists without editors, publishers, librarians, or book sellers. In the course of my life, doctors, therapists, neurologists, and special education instructors have told me what I can’t do, but friendship has shown me what I can accomplish. All the guys responsible for helping me get where I am today play in the NFL and are just as good a representative of the NFL as anyone else. NFL players don't choose which stories get the biggest headlines. Mine doesn't get talked about but after hearing what I've been hearing from people I'm begging to think it should.
