Memories

In February (on a Tuesday), I was driving to work. I had driven the route every work day for over a year, so it was all very familiar. My security badge for work was in the back seat, when it is normally in the front seat. I wanted to grab it so that I could have it when I went through the security checkpoint at work, but something kept telling me to just focus on the road.

Eventually, I just decided to grab it. The next few minutes (seconds?) were a complete blur–literally. I started to go off the edge of the road a bit (after taking my eyes off of it for a split second), so I quickly jerked my steering wheel to the left to put myself back on the road. Of course, I overcorrected, and I ended up spinning too far to the left. Somehow, a car that was coming toward me, missed hitting me. I tried to fix my error, but I overcorrected again and flew too far to the right. I don’t know how many times this happened. I was screaming. It was dark, and my head was spinning, and I thought another car would hit me. The road I was on was usually fairly busy, even at that time of the morning. There had only been one car, though–the car that somehow missed hitting me. The next thing I knew, my car stopped, just inches short of hitting a guard rail on the driver’s side; my back tires were on the edge of the road, nearly falling off  the hill behind me.

I couldn’t think. I was in the other lane, and my car was sideways, and I somehow managed to gather my thoughts enough to realize I needed to get out of that road before a car came around the corner and hit me without realizing I was there. I got back on the road, in my lane, and I started making my way toward work, but my legs started shaking so bad, and I had to pull over. I was too much of a nervous wreck, so I called my husband. By the time he arrived, I felt a little better, so he just followed me home, and I went to bed.

When I woke up, I felt like it was a dream. I didn’t write about it right away because I didn’t know how to say how it made me feel. Nine months have passed, and I still don’t really know what to say. I just know I need to write it out so that I can get over it.

For the past nine months, I’ve had dreams of wrecking my car. Sometimes, I’m terrified of driving, and I breathe a sigh of relief every time I pass the part of the road that it happened on. When a car in front of me starts to drift off the road, I slow down and back off, afraid of what could happen. I’m afraid of someone drifting into my lane and hitting me head-on. After the “incident,” I started having moments of feeling a bit “unreal” when I was driving. I would start to daze, and I’d have to quickly snap out of it to focus on driving. Most of those feelings have gone away, but they’re still there; that’s why I wanted to write this.

Since it happened, I’ve stopped texting while driving (even though I wasn’t texting at the time). I don’t even answer my phone if someone is calling. I usually just pull over and answer it if I need to. I always keep my security badge in the front seat, and I put it around my neck before driving. I don’t even mess with the radio while driving. That moment just made me realize how quickly I can lose control, even on a familiar road. Driving is serious–you’re operating a heavy machine, and it’s terrifying when that heavy machine is flying across a dark highway with a screaming person inside that is wondering if she’ll be dead or alive when the vehicle stops.

{ 9 comments }