Navigating the Emotional Wreckage of My First Car Crash

                “I’m okay. I’m okay.” I didn’t know how many times I said it, or when I started to realize I was saying it not because it was true, but because I knew it wasn’t and was trying so desperately to convince myself it was. I started to throw a “yeah” in front from time to time, as if the casual nature of such a word might diminish just how serious I had begun to perceive the situation to be.
                They kept asking, so I kept saying it—“I’m okay.” I finally started to realize they weren’t looking for that answer; they were calling me out on the falsity of my statement, simply waiting for me to admit the truth. That’s when the first tears started. Unwelcome visitors bringing the reality of my panic uncomfortably to the surface. The tears were the inescapable proof that I was lying: I was not okay. And although they had already known it, now I could no longer pretend.
                I didn’t want the tears to gush—no sprinklers masquerading as tear ducts, no wailing cries—all I could think of was how desperately I wanted to not make a scene. This was a wish completely devoid of any semblance of possibility, considering the fact that the right side of my windshield was currently being invaded by the left end of a tow truck, while my passenger door hugged it like a stubbornly terrified preschooler who couldn’t fathom why his mother would abandon him in this foreign hellhole. The intersection had already become a stage, privy to the curious eyes of passersby; a weeping young woman would only prove to be another player. When Shakespeare said “All the world’s a stage”, car crashes were not what he had in mind.
                Impact. That’s what everyone talks about, right? Moment of impact. That’s the point in the movie when the slow motion kicks in, the driver or passenger rolling—almost twirling—quite gracefully through the air. The glass shards twinkle across the screen to the soft crescendo of classical music. They make it look artsy. Unless the beauty of the music and the subtly selected camera angles are meant as an ironic and clearly purposeful juxtaposition of the hideous and jarring nature of a car crash, it’s really all wrong.
                The moment of impact isn’t the one that stuck with me, though. There’s a brief moment where it just seems wrong—I cannot even begin to fathom the measurement of time during which the brain registers this, or how long it takes for the thought to blossom into the realization of the root cause. There is a recognition that, according to the logic of mere seconds ago, your vehicle and therefore the body inside it should be in motion, and they simply aren’t. But these thoughts are not what stuck with me. Nobody talks about the disintegration of logic in your body’s reaction, the diminished sense of prioritization. The minutiae that you focus on.
                “You’re bleeding.” I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear it—blood at the scene of a car accident is a far cry from unexpected—and yet, like everything else, it seemed wrong. It was true though. Left knee. Small cut. It was a surprising amount of blood for such a cut that size, gruesomely disproportionate. I didn’t know what I had hit my knee on, or how long it had been bleeding, and I’m sure the tow truck driver and his passenger took the expression on my face to be horror at the sight of my own blood—terror spurred on by the tangible proof of my bodily harm.
                It wasn’t. I was embarrassed.
                All that blood, and not a single Band-Aid in my car.
                Oh, the things I would have given simply to have one tissue to wipe the blood away. It was a blatant reminder of my complete and utter helplessness: I couldn't even wipe away the blood from a cut. Perhaps, in some small sense, my mind recognized this. My focus on it was not quite compartmentalization so much as a shifting of priorities to cope with the confusion and discomfort: If I can wipe this blood away, I can take care of this. I can handle this situation. In the days that followed, I made a joke of it: of all the things to focus on—the shattered windshield, the ruined headlight, the dented passenger door, the tears, the confusion, my mother’s suffocating hugs—I had just wanted a Band-Aid. And the jokes brought laughs, because I could stand there and tell them. We could laugh, because I was fine.
                The soreness came the next day, and the day after that, a familiar sensation made foreign by the nature of its origin. I grew to accept it, as I adjusted to hearing myself referring to the fact that I’d been in a car accident. As I write, it still seems wrong. It still sounds wrong, too—and as much as I loathe the sight of the word “wrong” written over and over again, I am at a loss for any superior or even equivalent wording or phrasing to accurately reflect my sentiments. Hearing it, it seems someone else’s voice should be greeting my ears with the phrase, someone else’s lips should form the words. It’ll pass, I know it will, and the cuts will close and the bruises will fade and the sun will rise and set and the seasons will change, and there will come a day where the tires of some car—possibly the black 2007 Mercury Milan which, on a fairly average Wednesday morning, hit the back of a tow truck in my home town—will roll over the pavement on that intersection, and my heart rate will barely register a jump.
                But until that day comes, I’ll settle for appreciating the irony of hitting a tow truck which, of course, would not tow my car home.

Words Forever Unheard: An Open Letter to My Grandmother

                I’m not quite sure how to proceed with this blog post. To share one’s writing is an act of indescribable intimacy, a glance into the deeper machinations of the mind, and also of the heart. And so it is with hesitation that I confide this to be quite possibly the most intimate of my writings thus far—as I cannot possibly foresee what I will write in a day, a week, or a month from now. Yet I feel compelled to share.
                My intention is not to inundate you with painfully emotional overshares or anecdotes, but I wish to share this piece—not only as a means of self-expression, but also in the hopes that those who are familiar with the pangs of loss may find some comfort and solace in the words expressed herein, and the sentiments behind them.


Dear Grandma,
                I miss you. I suppose that’s the simplest thing to say, and the easiest way to say it—it is the entirety of my emotions summed up in the neatest possible way. Three short words. Simplicity for a situation that is anything but simple. I suppose that, next to true closure, that’s all we really want in mourning—simplicity, a lack of complication in the swell of emotions that breaks over the daily monotonies and the uncertainties in how we’re supposed to proceed with our lives. Simplicity, however, does not come, not really, and while it has taken me this long to realize this, there are days where I long for it nonetheless.
                People say it gets easier with time, and I think to an extent that might be true. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t days when I believe that to be the most commonly spoon-fed lie to ever grace the ears of the human race. I think the truth is really a bit of a secret—and that secret is that you learn to live with a little bit of pain, but that pain is tempered. Not even tempered, really, but eclipsed, by all the glories and affectionate reminiscences of past moments. It’s hard to let the tears continue to fall when I think of us singing (you, beautifully; me, not so much) “Animal Crackers in My Soup” times too numerous to count.
                There’s something inherently pleasant about grandmothers, the archetypal ideal of motherly love, but I’ve heard the horror stories. Comparison to the cold indifferences of others is one of the quickest routes to instant appreciation, some say, but with you, such comparisons did not breed appreciation, for it already existed—it simply allowed the well of love within me to spring forward with a ferocity which had been previously unattained. I didn’t need bad grandmothers to show me how beautiful mine was. Is, really.
                People say beautiful when they talk about faces and art. But that’s not enough. Real beauty transcends, a true testament laying siege against the ravages of time. Your beauty will transcend time in the remembrances that we allow to live on. The most beautiful thing someone can be is a good person—and that phrase will never do justice to all the beauty that you both brought out and placed in the world.
                There is no cure for grief. Even those who depend blindly on the passage of time to kiss away the wounds of loss and fill the empty spaces will find that such hopes do not bear delicious fruit—rather, they should find a burst of saccharine sweetness followed by the blandest of aftertastes, almost bitter at the end. The reality is that loss is pain, and all the pieces of that pain may not disintegrate. And I know that pain can breed strength, and that in that strength, one can find something beautiful. Knowing you are gone is difficult. But knowing I had you—and in a way, will always have you—that makes it easy.

Love always,
Sarah