How do you cope with a brush with death?
It's been eight years today since I was in a severe car accident. The consensus of everyone who saw the aftermath is that I should have died- if not on impact, then from internal injuries. The rear axle of my station wagon was driven up through the rear floorboard, which was basically nonexistent from the rear of the car being folded accordion-like against the back of my seat. The metal beam between windshield and driver door had crumpled down on my shoulder. The steering wheel held me in place.
My memories of the event were mercifully nonsensical at first: snippets of chiaroscuro, a voice. They came back, though. The darkness of a tarp being lowered over me to protect me from shards of glass. The soothing drawl of the state trooper speaking through my shattered window. Even the moment before the crash: Breaking Benjamin's "The Diary of Jane" playing over my speakers, the realization that the van behind me wasn't stopping, a struggle to shift into gear and pull off the road, the voice of my first chiropractor in my head saying that the worst thing about a car accident was the reflex to tense up.
I guess my deliberate loosening up helped prevent more serious injuries. I sang Iron Maiden on the stretcher. "Caught Somewhere in Time." I don't remember being placed in the helicopter. I know they cut my clothes off to look for injuries. In my dazed state days later, I mourned the loss of my favorite bra and brand new BDUs. My beloved Aunt Moose sat with me in the ER. I remember her voice. I remember snippets of my parents talking to me in the room that night.
I had a severe TBI and soft tissue damage. The trauma is probably what triggered my RA and definitely my fibro. There was a cut on the back of my left leg so deep that it left a divet. A similar hollow still exists on my right thigh where my steering wheel dug in so deep. The backs of my calves are still discolored. The damaged tissue feels crystallized beneath my skin. After the RA issues began, some of the tissue grew nodules. My back has never been quite the same.
People who have seen the car or pictures of it call this a miracle. I call it the worst thing that ever happened to me. It feels like I came to in an alternate universe. When I discovered the shamanic concept of soul loss, it made perfect sense. Some piece of me is gone now, not lost so much as dead.
After the worst effects of the TBI were gone, I learned a lot about myself. I guess being that close to death has that effect on one. It certainly got me over my thanatophobia. Arguably it made me morbid; I don't think that's such a terrible thing. Death is just another part of life.
Sometimes I miss the profound darkness I woke up from. Is lack of consciousness anything like death? If so, it isn't so bad. It's quiet and warm and black as a windowless room, a quilt pulled up over the head. I don't miss the haze of memory. My own mind was jagged as the shards of my windshield for months. Was it worth coming to? I go back and forth on my answer. Life has its pros and cons. I don't know if surviving was my choice or not, but here I am.
I have no time or energy for the trivialities of life anymore. The harder I aim for pre-accident normality, the harder it is for me to function. Normal is as dead as the girl in that little Subaru. They pulled a wild, mad woman out of the wreckage. I am the jagged edges of sawed-open metal and the softness of that black sleep.
Today I mourn that dumb, sweet girl that I was. I mourn all the lost potential. But I also celebrate the me who emerged from that crushed car.
Happy rebirthday to me.
