I recently found myself in a little bit of a situation. Not so much a situation, quite frankly; more like there was a bump in the road. Literally. A head-on collision. Don’t worry, I’m not liable.
Paramedics and first responders said that luck was on my side. That if the engine had been pushed back two more inches, my legs would have been destroyed. That if I hadn’t had my seatbelt on, I would’ve flown through the window. Luck was on my side because I was able to walk out of my car after two nice bystanders had to yank open my door together because I couldn’t kick it open.
I, too, was convinced that luck was on my side, mainly because, yes, I was able to walk out. To put it simply, I’m here writing this right now.
I don’t think the gravity of the situation sunk in because I only had superficial wounds—or so I thought.
My body was going to be sore. That’s what the ER doctor said after I got released from the trauma room. That’s standard. My head is going to hurt. That’s standard. Come back immediately if the headache doesn’t go away and you throw up. That isn’t standard.
I got released. I was dog-sitting. I got a burger. I’m chilling. My brother stayed the night. We watched movies. I’m in love with Andrew Garfield, right? I didn’t notice he was in the movie we were watching until almost an hour into the film. He was the main character. It happens, ya know? I thought we were still watching *The Wolf of Wall Street*, not *Hacksaw Ridge*. *The Wolf of Wall Street* was the first movie we watched, and *Hacksaw Ridge* was the third movie we were on.
I woke up the next day, and God, I felt like I had gotten hit by a semi-truck. Thankfully, it was just a Toyota pickup. I went home, and it was chill. I was alright for the most part. Day 1 was the easy day in its entirety.
The rest of the week was spent in darkness and silence. The light burned my eyes, and the pounding in my head wouldn’t go away. The hardest part was just laying there. In stillness, darkness, and silence. The thoughts in my head alone were too loud for me, and I don’t just mean mentally. I’ve never been the type to not do things on my own, and I think that was the worst part of it all.
Just laying there. Not doing anything. Just thinking.
I thought a lot. So much that I was actually afraid I would run out of thoughts at one point. I don’t know if that’s entirely possible, but that’s what it felt like lately. So many thoughts and not a single coherent one. The darkness and silence that I could tolerate intensified the feeling. The feeling of not knowing. It almost touched base with the feeling of fear. I hated it. I’ve never been good at being vulnerable. It’s not a feeling I’m all too familiar with.
Anyways, I thought a lot about my life. Who I am. Who I want to be. How I got to where I am in life. How to get to where I want to go or not. I don’t know if being concussed is the reason, but I couldn’t think of an exact point in my life that brought me to present-day me. Or an exact route that I want to pursue. I guess laying there in a dark and silent room for a week only allowed me to be okay with the stillness that presents itself in life every now and then.
To add to all of this, I don’t quite know what the point of this is. To come to terms that I had a brush with death? To gain full consciousness that maybe I need to stop living on autopilot? To maybe make sure that I can still write fully coherent sentences so I can be certain that I will graduate this semester? All of the above? I’m not sure.
If there was anything gained from laying with myself for a week, it was that I finally understood what it was like to really just embrace myself. No outside factors besides a sore body and a sore mind.
“One is what one is.”
“No use wriggling.”
“The essential doesn’t change.”
“Nothing to be done… Care to finish it?”
— Samuel Beckett, *Waiting for Godot*
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