3ish Weeks Post Car Accident: A Perspective

Hey! It’s been awhile! Much longer than I thought, in fact! One of these days I’m going to start blogging again as a fun leisure activity, and not as a “I’ve got too much on my mind now and it’s going to explode if I don’t write one time randomly in a several month period” kind of thing. But I’m not there yet.

I’ve been meaning to blog about my recent car accident for several days now, but haven’t gotten around to it. Mostly I was waiting until resolution because I didn’t want to write openly about it as things were still getting handled. But also I was actually mostly fine with everything so I didn’t feel the urgency to write … until now.

At the scene of the accident and in the couple days following I kept expecting to have that freak out moment where it all just hits me and I collapse in an overwhelming sense of panic, which was somehow being held back during the immediacy of the situation. And then that didn’t seem to happen, until today, except not in the way I expect. Ooohh…foreshadowing.

So let’s rewind. It was a warm Saturday at the start of November. It was almost/sorta/just at noon time and my mother and I were ready for lunch. We decided on Suzie Burger, so I charted out a route to get there from our current location on Broadway. As I was going through an intersection, all of a sudden a car comes out of nowhere and runs the red light right in front of me! 3ish weeks out I chuckle at the irony that I chose that specific street because I specifically wanted to take a numbered street with stoplights because it’s inherently safer than dealing with intersections with stop signs.

There was this moment when my brain realized an accident was going to occur and knew there was literally nothing I could do to avoid it. So I had this split second of prepared “well this is happening” before it happened. Like, I had to let this happen now and then once it’s done I can assess the damage. The force of the impact sent my car turning 90 degrees into the road the other car was on, and sent the other car turning 180 degrees. While my knowledge of psychics is limited to what I remember from high school and college, I’m pretty sure the other car was going much faster for the momentum to throw us in those directions.

After impact my first reaction was to get my car out of the road. To safety!! But when I tried my car wouldn’t accelerate. That may have had something to do with the lovely crumple of my front end. The next thought was if I couldn’t move out of the road I should turn off the car. I think exploding from whatever damage was preventing the car from moving would be way more serious than someone else coming down the road and not seeing my car stopped there. My mom commented later how she could tell I don’t have children because at no point did I throw my arm out over her seat to protect her. Oops.

The next thought was to ascertain my aforementioned passenger was okay (she was!) and then to feel if I was ok. I remember think how badly my boobs hurt from the sudden stop, but I cannot remember at what point I realized my ankle hurt or my arm was burnt from the airbag deployment. Those realizations came sometime between this moment and me later sitting on the curb. Mostly I wanted to make sure nothing felt broken in my neck or back, and it didn’t.

Then came the “let’s take in the car damage” part of the moment. That’s when I became fully aware the airbags had deployed and that my car was quite crumply, plus my window was cracked. That was also when I realized my glasses had flown off my face into the wreckage abyss. I saw my prescription sunglasses in the overhead sunglasses spot that had flown open, so I put those babies on to look around. I have this reoccurring anxiety around what if my glasses get broken like it’s going to be the worst thing to happen ever, so I looked around frantically at my feet and the damage thinking they were utterly ruined. Instead, they very kindly folded themselves up and landed in the cup holder next to me. They just get me.

Luckily for us there was a witness nearby who came over to help and provide a statement. I’m pretty sure I didn’t exit the car until police arrived because I was just so panicked that I was physically shaking. But I got out of the car and hobbled to sit on the curb because my ankle hurt.

It was at this moment of sitting on the curb that I first wondered to myself when I was going to just melt down from the fright of it all. Because while I felt hella shaky and anxious, I felt collected and more focused on what I need to do now that the accident had happened. I made sure to talk to the police and give them my info, and make sure the other info was getting taken since I was injured and not leaving the curb. The fire guys came over to take my vitals and mentioned how low my heart rate was considering I had just been in a car accident.

I would like to interrupt this narrative to mention that every time I say or type that I was in a car accident I think of that scene in Hot Fuzz where Simon Pegg calls it a “collision” because “accident implies there is nobody to blame.” I did try a few times to say I was in a car “collision” but it sounded way too pretentious, so I stopped.

Anyway, once I gave all the info on the scene and had to wait for the tow truck, I took the waiting time to make a list of the things I had to do next. I pulled out my AAA card to figure out what do to, and since it said if in a collision to “immediately” call, I called still sitting on the side of the road. The lady asked me some questions and when we got to “when did this happen” and I said not long ago, I’m still on the side of the road, the lady insisted I should hang up and call back when I was done. Except I was waiting for the tow truck and I didn’t know how long that would take (the cops joked about how long it takes), I said I was fine and calmly gave my info. The AAA lady also commented on how calmly I provided the info seeing as I was still at the scene, and that other people often call freaking out. I'm sensing a pattern…

Between the wait time on the side of the road and my drive in the tow truck I formulated a list of people who had to be contacted and plans that had to be updated. I had to message immediately to cancel that evening’s plans because I could not hobble on my (later determined only sprained) ankle through a haunted house. And I had to call my beautician to cancel my next day hair appointment because I had no idea if 24 hours later I would be able to sit comfortably for 2.5 hours while getting my hair done. And that was the right call b/c my ankle hurt so bad with me just sitting around Saturday evening and Sunday. I also had to text my work group text so everyone knew I’d be working from home some days because (1) I no longer had a working car and (2) I’d need medical attention of some kind. I also made note that on Monday I had to inform my team I was tentative for performing on Wednesday because again, ankle, and I had to will myself to be at least mobile by Tuesday because I refused to cancel those plans. And then of course when I found out Wednesday’s show was being recorded I also had to will myself to be show ready by Wednesday because dang it I wasn’t going to let some dumb sprained ankle get in my way!

The day of and the days following my accident I never hit that freak out moment. Instead of being overwhelmed with the fright of it all, I was overwhelmed with something else – a sincere sense of gratitude and respect for all the people I had interacted with because of the accident. From the witness and bystander who came up right at the beginning, to the police and fire personnel called to the scene, to the super helpful tow truck driver who found a AAA affiliated place to take my car, to the car place who took my car so close to closing on a Saturday, to all the AAA people who called me or emailed me to make sure everything got moving through the process, to the nice x-ray tech who did my first ever “are my bones broken?” x-rays, to the Hertz rental car people, to the nice people who sold me my new car, and to all the wonderful family and friends who were concerns and offered help, I felt so much heartfelt gratitude and kindness for everyone. And many of these people do these things for jobs every day, and help so many people just by going about their normal lives. Sometimes we spend so much time getting riled up over the politicians and celebrities and nonsense outlier b.s. people that we forget it’s really the everyday people just out and about in our lives and our cities that really make up the world.

3ish weeks out I still feel all that. And I am thankful that I will take those feeling away from this, and hoping not much else. Especially not the increased anxiety I feel while driving, b/c drivers in my city are IDIOTS!! But today I felt something else that finally triggered that anticipated, though oddly different, freak out. I never once felt scared that I could have been seriously injured or almost died. I’m dealing just fine with driving even if it’s a little scarier. What’s really getting to me is the sheer amount of mental energy dealing with the aftermath of the accident! I was already in a place of figuring out how I feel about my normal day to day work, needs and hobbies from working through my anxiety. But now I just feel overwhelmed with what seems an unending list of car accident related to dos!

It all started the Monday (2 days) after the accident. I took the info from the police, the car place, and AAA, and made v1 of my “Car Accident To Do List” because there are SOOOO many things. I had to figure out what to do with my busted car, figure out the temporary rental car, eventually get a new car, make sure I really wasn’t injured that badly, and all of this had to at some times go through the insurance. And it felt like every time I checked something off the list (call this person, see that person, send that info) I had to add 2-3 more things to the list at least. I eventually rewrote the list on my dry erase board so I could remove items as I did them, or otherwise I would be overwhelmed by the sheer number for tasks! I swear it’s somewhere in the 30s by now because there’s rental cars to return, and police reports to get, and info to give to get the replacement money for the car, and documents to sign and send, and deductibles to get reimbursed, and 2 people to send the police report to, which took over two weeks to even be available. And evidently keys to mail b/c I don’t own my busted car anymore! I’ve still got 5 items to finish (knocked out 3 today b/c it helped calm me down after freaking out!) b/c some things depend on other things, so those items just sit there and stare at me, reminding me it’s been 3+ weeks of constantly thinking about all the thing I have to do, and I didn’t even do anything to bring this about!!

This is the time where I take a break and say how thankful I am for how low maintenance this actually was. My car took so much damage to that my mom and I didn’t have to! I walked away with a sprained ankle and an arm burn from the airbag, and nothing else with any lasting impact. And my mom was just sore, so thank goodness for that! And it wasn’t my fault, so that made everything so much easier, especially as I mentioned everyone has been super awesome and helpful! It just sucks that even in best case scenario land, it’s still been really hard. Of course, I can only imagine how it was for the other driver, and I just hope for nothing but the best case scenario for her too! I'm relatively fine and I don't want some mistake on her part to be so hard for her to come back from too.

And of course it’s always stupid shit that precipitates that moment of overwhelmed crying – not all the busy work stress or the worrying about putting the right amount of effort into important life things to make them go, but some dumb ass stupid nonsense stuff. So I found myself feeling panicked and in tears because I just feel so overwhelmed right now. Even though I know have less to do than I've already done, I still just want my headspace back. All this car accident nonsense (admit it, you thought “collision” just now) is distracting me from being proactive at work, it’s taking up lots of free time when I’d rather be doing other things, it’s making me too tired to write anything – funny or serious – and it’s just generally tiring me out so I can’t be as open, and cheerful and focused as I to want be, and I need the mental energy for that thing that’s taking up the 2^nd largest chunk of brain space. It’s like, I don’t want to miss out on my actual life stuff because I have to make room for all this car accident stuff, but making the space for it in my life right now is wearing me out.

So that’s where I am right now. Ooh, I also forget to mention how I kind of get a weird pleasure of people’s reactions to showing them pictures of my crumpled car. Now that it's clear everything is fine, it’s actually really cool to see all those car parts all smashed up. I forget how bad it looks in my excitement to share the pictures! I will NOT post them here, so let me know (if you read this far in  my blog) if you want to see the pictures!! That assumes you're not one of the bajillion people I've already shown them to.