Just write.

Posted on | February 13, 2012 | 88 Comments

i was 21 years old, and it was december. my boyfriend at the time and i were on our way home from visiting his family in colorado for Christmas. we never flew anywhere because he loved road trips. we were in his new ford f150, a company vehicle, and we drove it from boulder to park city planning to spend the night before taking another leg of the trip the following day. but when we got to park city there was talk of a bad storm coming, so we pushed on just in case – we didn’t want to get stuck there.

he drove all through the night, through snowy utah, swervy white mountainous roads of southern oregon. i tried to sleep but couldn’t – the weather was scary and sleeping sitting up isn’t my strong point. it was a good truck – 4 wheel drive, bags of sand in the back we had loaded up with for extra weight. all of our luggage and gifts from the holiday were piled in the king cab. as dawn came, we crossed into southeast washington, and the sun came up revealing little to no snow, and my knuckles slowly loosened and got their color back.

with the weather bright and dry, i offered to drive so he could sleep. he must have been completely exhausted and we were only a few hours from home. we pulled over, he put the passenger seat back and went to sleep as i drove, singing along to genesis. the sun was out but i was cautious after hours and hours of driving in cold temps. i drove under the speed limit, going about 55, with the cruise control on.

it happened quickly. i felt the back wheel slip, and it scared me. i yelped out “babe!” before i even knew what was happening. before i knew it, the entire truck was fishtailing and as i tried with everything i had to get it under control, he shot up out of his sleep and tried to help me. but nothing could be done. as we swung around, the front wheel caught the grass in the median and the truck flipped into the air, crashing down on it’s roof and then rolling about 4 more times before coming to rest upside down.

i think i was lucky to be knocked out upon the impact of the first roll. i don’t remember a thing between that and when the truck came to rest. he wasn’t as lucky. he was conscious for the entire ride – windows shattering, gifts flying about, wondering when it would stop and what the outcome would be when it was done.

i opened my eyes and found myself sort of hanging, but crumpled half against the roof. he was outside of the crunched window saying my name, terrified. i was alive. i tasted blood but i was alive. my arm felt as though it had been removed somehow from my body, but i was alive. although i was extremely confused, i knew i was ok, and at the same time knew that was insane. i didn’t die.

a car driving the other way down the freeway had seen it happen and had stopped to help and call 911. sometimes i think about what it must have looked like, how scary that would be to be driving along and see a truck go flying through the air like that. i don’t linger on it too often, but when i do imagine it, it makes me sick to my stomach. i like only knowing my quick, confused, blurry version of it.

i heard sirens, and soon saw feet in the grass. there were lots of questions and i wasn’t allowed to move. my arm didn’t really hurt but it felt detached from my body. i told them that. they used loud and big tools to try and get me out. when they did finally get me out, they put me on a board and tried to make me one with it – straps, braces, they even taped my head securely to it, wrapping the tape around what felt like 70 times. i don’t even know if i was crying.

in the ambulance, they cut my clothes off of me and gave me shots, an iv, oxygen – i don’t know, it all felt like a movie. i loved those jeans and was distressed about it. shock probably. what a stupid thing to care about at such a time. i worried about the fact that i had ruined his company truck, and wondered if he was mad at me. i wondered how much it would cost. i was so happy we hadn’t hit anyone else. i was happy there weren’t many people on the road that morning. i was pissed at a patch of black ice. i didn’t die.

at the hospital they sent me straight to xray to make sure my neck wasn’t broken. it wasn’t, and after they confirmed that, they hastily ripped all the tape from my head, tearing out my hair. my collar bone however, was separated in 2, and they put a butterfly brace on me, helped me into some blue scrub looking pants and top, and started dressing all my wounds. as i sat in the ER bed, M told me he was going to call my mom.

at the time, years from motherhood myself, i still knew that this was going to be awful for her. i was very drugged up but i simultaneously felt relieved i didn’t have to call her, and sorry for him that he had to. when i think about this now that i’m a mom, i can’t even imagine. worse, we were about 4 hours from home, and she’d have the drive ahead of her to worry.

a sheriff came by to talk to me. he said if the truck had rolled another time, we’d had gone into oncoming traffic, the other side of the highway. he said there had been 9 other accidents on that stretch that morning. i had no idea. i didn’t see any other accidents. black ice in the deceiving morning sun was the culprit of each. ours, the worst. i heard him tell the nurse we shouldn’t be alive. i cried.

M was fine physically. as the day wore on, a large bruise formed where his seat belt, his literal lifesaver, had tightened. the fact that i looked like i had been beaten up and felt like it, and he was ok, was the only thing keeping my growing guilt from drowning me. by the time my family arrived, my forehead and right side of my face near my eye, back to my ear, had swollen so full of fluid i was unrecognizable. i had bloody scratches everywhere, and shards of glass in my hand, so tiny that i could only feel them. as the weeks wore on they would work their way out. their scars still remain.

my family walked in to see what had to be a terrifying sight. i’m not sure which was worse for them all – seeing me, or later seeing the truck at the yard when we had to go gather our belongings from it. i was heavily medicated, but pulling up to that truck was like an out of body experience. it was like looking at the wreckage of something with no survivors. i couldn’t wrap my head around how i was in that vehicle. and why i was still here. did. not. compute.

the roof of the drivers side was completely smashed to the headrest. the front was smashed in, along with the back of the bed, you could literally see where the truck slammed into the ground each time. it was like looking at the truck in a funhouse mirror – it looked fake and twisted. the passenger side looked like a pocket, where M had been tucked safely. i smiled at this fact. i looked back at the driver seat, where i had sat, smashed, broken, unrecognizable. i didn’t die.

it took weeks to heal. the broken collarbone was annoying, at first i couldn’t even raise my arm to get soap under there. sleeping was a joke. my face turned colors, people gasped at the sight of me. they had ripped out so much hair from that damned tape that it took months for it to grow back, the little hairs jutting straight out. i looked ridiculous but didn’t care one bit. i was alive. my face was green and yellow, even purple, i had gashes all over, i could barely open both my eyes. but i had a face, i could move, i could bleed, i could see. i didn’t die.

i could go on for pages about the aftermath of a near-tragic car accident like this. the emotions, the fall outs, the anxiety and terror it caused. the way it changed me even though i have refused to ever admit it. but it did – in so many ways, it did. i have no idea why i survived. i won’t get into what i believe or don’t believe, but it was just circumstance in my mind. i could ‘what if’ all day, but i don’t. i consider myself lucky. i didn’t die.

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