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Lived Through This
How to Live Through a Car Crash
We all need a witness, even in our darkest moments
In Chicago, on a May morning so bright it teased tulip heads from their sleep, I nearly killed a man I’d never met.
I had just dropped off my daughters at school and was headed to work. I turned off the radio, unable to focus on it anyway. Even though I functioned and appeared fine on the surface, the combination of a new divorce, a new boyfriend, and my children’s emotional needs had turned my brain into a tangled mess of anxiety and grief that needed a daily combing out.
So, on that short little car trip, I did what I’d been doing so much of lately: I dove head-first into the world of my thoughts. I finally had some blessed space to do so.
Like every morning, I checked the oncoming lane of the busy street before turning left. Only this particular morning, instead of yielding to the vehicle coming straight at me, I turned anyway, hitting it head-on.
What I remember from the aftermath of that wreck — before the ambulances arrived, before I assessed my wounds, before I heard a bystander say, “Is all of that blood?” and another one respond, “Thank God, it’s just fluids from the cars”—was the sight of the other driver’s face. I could just make it out…
