What does it mean when you get hit by two cars in eight days? Statistically, I’m guessing it shouldn’t happen. Not to one person. I’ll go further and say that it should be impossible for that person to take hits as hard as these and come out relatively unscathed. Based on my last blog entry about the allergic reaction, you might think I’m making stuff up. Fictitious escapades for your entertainment and pleasure. But no. This is my life. In my groping, grasping, straining effort to understand everything and make sense of it, I have injured myself more severely than these two car accidents did collectively. Here’s what happened.
Last Friday, I was on my way to meet a friend for dinner. I had almost an hour to kill before we were due to meet and was close to the destination, so I decided to turn around and go home first to let out my dog. Traffic was heavy because it was the after work rush hour. I pulled my car up to a pile of other cars and came to a stop in line. While sitting there, I noticed this red car in my rear view just barreling up the lane behind me with no signs of stopping.
“That car’s not going to stop,” I said out loud to myself. Having nowhere to go and no time to act, I braced myself for impact and stepped on my brake so that my car would be less likely to lurch forward into the next car. It was a hard hit, but my last minute decision to step on the brake was an effective one, and the car in front of me was safe. My head whipped forward and back, my seatbelt locked, and an instant headache set it. My neck hurt immediately. I was surprisingly calm. Utter serenity was mine. I may have even laughed light-heatedly, mildly amused at this unexpected turn of events. I pulled my car over to the side of the road as did the other driver and got out to inspect the damage. It was raining and a little chilly. Her car was sadly disfigured, with the hood buckled and the nose smashed in. My car seemed unharmed in comparison. The back bumper was hanging down a bit and the spare tire cover was broken. I went to talk with the lady, who seemed very nervous and flustered and shaken with her cell phone out ad multiple papers in her hands and the contents of her purse scattered across the passenger’s seat. I noticed an empty (thankfully) baby car seat in the back. I stood there i the wet cold for what seemed like several minutes before she noticed me, awed at my own patience (I am not typically a patient person). When she finally noticed me, she jumped a little and looked scared. I gave her a big smile, just to reassure her. She rolled down her window.
“Are you Okay?” I asked her.
“Yes, I think so. Are you?” She asked.
“I’m fine, I’m fine.”
“Sorry,” she stammered, dividing her attention between me and whomever she was on the phone with.
“No problem, really it happens, you know?”
She seemed a bit surprised and gave me an awkward smile.
“Should we call the police?” I asked.
“I think so, I don’t know, this has never happened to me before, I…”
“We probably should,” I said. She nodded.
“I’ll call them and we can just wait in our cars,” I said. Before she rolled her window back up, I patted her arm and she jerked slightly, still jumpy and high from the adrenaline. I was shot through with it too, but it seemed to have the opposite effect on me, one that was soothing and calming more than anything. It took the police about an hour to arrive. I lost patience after 45 minutes and called a second time. Nobody’s perfect, I guess. When he did come, he was efficient in collecting the information and sending me on my way. My car was drivable. Her’s was not. My car was repaired and back to normal by the following Friday.
Then, the day after I got my car back, Saturday, eight days after the first accident, I went out on my motorcycle for a ride with my friend, Heather. It was a beautiful day and we were going to take a long ride out to Bartlet Lake to celebrate. We didn’t get very far though, because my ass got hit by a freaking car!
It was a three lane road, I was in the middle lane, temporarily riding in the blind spot of the car to my left. Just as I was about to speed up and catch up with Heather who had gunned it way up ahead of me, the car to my left swerved into my lane so unexpectedly fast that I had no time to react. The car hit my bike and I went down. Have you ever had a heightened moment such as this where so many vivid images and thoughts explode in your mind simultaneously that to list them out or speak them aloud would take hours? It’s like a figurative monster, a frankenbody of disparate, compounded, incongruous parts, a living mosaic of memories and imaginings. Intriguing, this phenomenon. It calls the whole concept of linear time into question–how antithetical it is to the way a human mind works, how we think, dream, imagine, create. So in a single instant, as I felt the bike collapse beneath me while traveling at an approximate speed of 50 miles per hour, and my body helplessly flung from it, here are some of the more prominent images and thoughts that I remembered from the mosaic:
– Holy shit, this is happening
– oh god oh god oh god oh god…
– Please God, don’t let the car behind me run me over
– no no no no no no…
– The image of the car behind me running me over, crushing my bones, and the thought of how much that would hurt
– Oh no, my beautiful bike, no no no, not my Ducati…
– The image of each member of my family getting the call, their faces turning red, tears streaming down…
– New friends in my life talking to one another about it at a meeting later that night, shaking their heads, eyes moist, saying things like, “I can’t believe it. She just moved here. She had so much going for her then she just died, just like that. Can you believe it?”
– Rebecca at work, getting a call, or someone coming in to tell her, sitting her down, what she would do, how she would feel…
– My mom. Just her face. Smiling.
– The house I’m about to buy. How disappointed the sellers would be having to put it back on the market.
– My broken body on the pavement. Wrecked.
– My own face as a little girl, before my sister’s accident, all its attendant hope
– Please don’t let me lose control of my bowls and/ or bladder in the moment of death. Allow my dead body to be found clean and not too wrecked.
Where I found myself just moments later, however–after feeling my helmet slam hard against the road and after skidding down it on my left shoulder and hip–was on my feet, shaking with adrenaline, looking around in amazement that I was alive and intact and on my feet. I looked down at myself and couldn’t believe it. There was some road rash on my left hip from where my shirt and jacket rode up, my knees hurt ad I could feel they were skinned. My wrists were slightly sore. But that was it. I removed my helmet and my gloves, unzipped my jacket, and looked down at my motorcycle. It was in bad shape. A guy stopped and got out of his car to help me lift it upright. I pulled it up on the sidewalk. The street was very busy with swiftly moving traffic.
The kid who hit me came back and was beside himself. He couldn’t believe I was standing there, not only alive but seemingly unharmed. His hand spread across his chest and the relief he felt was all over him. He kept saying he was sorry. I patted and soothed him, assured him I was fine. My bike, however, was not fine at all. My heart sank. The tailpipe, the brake, the gas tank, the throttle, the hand brake–everything on the right side of the bike was shaved down, road rashed. The hand brake was ground down at least an inch and a half, the metal just gone as though placed against a high-powered industrial sander. The handlebars were bent badly askew. My beautiful machine was busted. My body, however, was solidly intact. No broken bones. Nothing. I was fine. Just fine. Aside from a red patch on my hip and two skinned knees and a small scrape on my right wrist, all was remarkably well. My friend Heather came back, flying up on her Triumph, busting up oto the sidewalk and leaping off.
“What the hell happened!?”
“I got hit.”
“What?!”
“I got hit.” I pointed to my bike. She pulled off her helmet, glanced at my bike, then turned to me, placed both hands on my arms, holding me out in front of her and looking me up and down.
“Oh my god, are you OK?!”
“I’m fine, really.”
“Holy shit!” she said and grabbed me and hugged me. I couldn’t help but laugh. It was truly amazing and miraculous that I was OK.
This time, I knew what to do. I called the police and when they showed up, I filled out the form again just like an old pro. Now, it’s three days later and most of the soreness is gone already. The kid who hit me was insured, and they are going to pay for my bike to be repaired, or if it’s totaled, they’ll give me the money for it, and they’re going to buy me a new helmet and a new jacket. They are just as amazed as everybody that I am physically unharmed and didn’t find it necessary to go to the hospital or file a medical claim.
I have bouts of sadness about my beloved Ducati being broken and potentially gone forever. I have moments of righteous anger and strong feelings of entitlement, like how dare they not throw themselves at my feet to compensate for this inconvenience and hardship–they being the insurance people who are paying for everything. Because even though they are, that’s just not good enough. I’m still out my bike. I’m still sore. My ass was still thrown to the ground by their insured. And even if they give me fair market value for my bike, that won’t be enough to buy a new one with. They should replace it, damn them!
But my sense is that I am not supposed to be all resentful and entitled. My sense is that I am supposed to be humbled by this experience and very, very grateful. I am supposed to be gracious and cooperative. I am supposed to understand that accidents are called accidents for a reason, because nobody meant for it to happen and everybody is inconvenienced by it and it’s just plain unfortunate for all involved. This seems to be what is required of me right now and so I am trying to rise to the call.
The annoying , unanswerable, proverbial WHY keeps rattling around in my brain, unwilling to stand down and unsatisfied with every attempt to answer it.
So far, I have the following theories:
1. Phoenix drivers are out to get me.
2. I’m out to get me and I’m projecting this long-suffering, self-destructive energy onto Phoenix drivers.
3. There’s a glitch in the matrix.
4. The world was created in a cipher, originated out of nothing, and is hurtling chaotically toward a future of nothingness.
5. There is a God and it’s trying to tell me something in its maddening, non-verbal, indecipherable language.
That’s as far as I’ve gotten. The reality is that I don’t know why. I just don’t know. It feels kind of good not to know. I feel surrendered to the not knowing and that has me humbled, finally.
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