40: eulogy for a 2010 toyota highlander 🏁
a tale of two car accidents (july 2023)
Iteration #40 of this monthly letter full of feelings.
This issue's theme is: ✶ not quite near death experiences ✶
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Last Monday, I was involved in a car accident – a single vehicle rollover to be exact. I’m not physically injured but the car was totalled. I didn’t go to the hospital because I thought it would be too expensive and I was “fine.” Everything is confusing and nobody told me how to handle things like car accidents. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I was really sore, exhausted, and my nervous system was wrecked; I found out later I had a concussion. The loudest feelings I had were shame and loneliness. Those feelings are mostly gone now after allowing friends and family to drive us around for a week, realizing we weren’t the only people in the world who didn’t have collision coverage, learning that car insurance has to cover bodily harm in NYS, and the ER is the only place you can go for “head stuff.” I know a little more about ~how to be an adult~ now but I’m still afraid of getting my blood drawn.
Before I get into it, I just want to say: I loved this car so much. I’ve always rolled my eyes at people who name their cars or refer to them as “she,” but alas – I loved her. She got us across the united states and was the only place that was really truly “ours” for a while when we were living with family. I learned how to trust myself driving again in this thing. At the scene of the accident, the first responders kept telling me that the Toyota Highlander did her job and kept me alive. When the tow truck flipped her over and the her broken tires crashed back onto the ground, dear reader, I cried.
I realized I was having concussion symptoms the next day but didn’t think it was anything to worry about because the cops told me to go to the hospital if I felt anything I “hadn’t felt before,” and I guess I’d felt all of these things before. People would look at me with concerned eyes when they heard the details of the accident or that I hadn’t seen a doctor afterward and I’d immediately revert to my default “it’s fine, I’m fine, don’t worry!” I didn’t want to be too dramatic or too needy. I’d love to try one of those period pain simulators so I could know how everyone else feels. Am I normal? Is my threshold for pain too low or too high? Right, of course, not too anything actually. But really, how do I tell if something is wrong?
It took me another week to get my head checked out, and a few days ago a doctor confirmed that what I am experiencing is indeed a concussion, but nothing to worry about – further bloodwork & head scans would reveal nothing too serious. I’m just going to be experiencing light sensitivity for a bit longer as I recover; so I’m supposed to be avoiding screens. I’ve been getting pretty good at typing without looking, so let’s see if I can get through this without a headache.
I won’t go into too many details about the specifics of the accident but I am going to try to gently explain the sensation of being in a moving car once you realize you’re not in control and about to crash. I’ve experienced this one other time in my life, 13 years ago. I’ve been thinking about that time a lot because of whose life flashed before my eyes (spoiler alert: it wasn’t mine).
The first time I experienced anything close to “near death,” I was in the back seat of an old subaru, not far from my mom’s house. It was the summer after I turned 18 and I had just started dating this guy who was 3 years older than me. It would eventually turn into a year-long abusive relationship. The red flags were there but I was too caught up in it all, even if he didn’t seem like a catch to my friends. He was 21 and so mysterious I couldn’t pin down his history; his temper would erupt if I pushed too hard on the details. I was a teenager growing up in a conservative town in the early aughts – I didn’t know shit about warning signs. I loved the adrenaline rush of kissing someone who seemed like bad news.
My friend’s parents had just dropped me off from a trip to a beach town with two friends from high school. Trying to find pictures from the trip, I was reminded of how much I wanted to be one of those friends – she was prettier, smarter, and more interesting than me. She knew how to start a fire and how to paint. She made careful choices about who to spend her time with (something I wasn’t known for). We had kissed earlier that year at our first and only high school party with alcohol. I would go on to kiss a lot of folks with bodies like hers “for attention” in the years ahead. In the same collection of summer photographs, I found some throwaway light leak frames from a roll of film. They’re the closest visual representation I can find to that feeling where the car is spinning and you’re supposed to see your life flash before your eyes.
I remember returning to an empty house and feeling restless, but knowing the “healthy” thing to do to was just rest and stay in bed. I was never good at getting to sleep. I remember texting that I wasn’t up for an adventure and I needed to stay in. It was my mom’s birthday, and I didn’t want to be gone when she got home. He convinced me (as he always had a way of doing) to come out with him. We hadn’t seen each other in a week and he know how to wield the power of urgency; everything always felt life or death.
When they picked me up, he had me switch seats with him so I had the working seatbelt. I don’t remember where we were going, I was just along for the ride. Somewhere only minutes into our drive, we took a corner and all of the sudden everything was spinning. All I could see were flashes of light and my body was moving fast like one of those fairgrounds rides where you go around in circles and the momentum keeps you from falling. We were spinning, spinning, spinning and all I could think about was my mom. I was flooded with guilt; I couldn’t believe I had made such a stupid choice that would force her to grieve me.
A woman came out of her house to see if we were okay. She kept saying she was so surprised we were alive after all the sounds she heard; how lucky we were. There was something about a fence and baby goats and the goats were also very lucky that they were far away from the fence when we hit it. I remember my boyfriend picking glass out of his hair and listening to him say over and over again how lucky I was that we had switched seats. Once we got back to my mom’s house, we stayed up all night because he thought he had a concussion but wouldn’t go get it checked out because he didn’t have insurance. He told me not to let him fall asleep, and I remember thinking it was selfish of him to put that responsibility on me. I remember laying on the couch for hours, waiting for my mom to get home and playing silly, happy, young & in love.
I didn’t tell anyone about the accident. I was embarrassed. I had gotten into a fast car with a boy I knew was dangerous. I didn’t want anyone to say “I told you so.” I didn’t want to make anyone worry about me.
I was driving this time, and when it happened I didn't see anything flash before my eyes. I was very aware as soon as it started: I am now in an accident. I have nightmares about driving off the road into a body of water and I thought that's what was about to happen. Turning down a thin winding road over a creek, I felt and heard metal scraping and I lost control of the car. As it was falling on its side in slow motion, I rolled my eyes at myself for being so stupid to let this happen. I didn’t know exactly what it was that happened, but I knew it must have been silly. Something that would only ever happen to someone as careless and clumsy as me (I know that’s… not a cool way to think about yourself and I’m fully aware that my brain is sometimes not my friend; I don’t condone this messaging!). Careening toward an unknown end, I remember thinking “I deserve whatever happens next” (again, brain is not always my friend. We’re working on better self talk). As the car lost momentum, I braced myself for something terrible. I felt the movement stop and realized I was in the oncoming traffic lane. Survival mode kicked in and I leaned into the car horn, sending out a blaring alarm to anyone nearby.
I was trapped in the car for a few minutes before bystanders helped me out. One of them happened to be a firefighter and I had to jump from the passenger side door into her arms. I had no service and couldn’t use my phone; someone had already called 911. A neighbor offered me a pink La Croix – said it’s all they had that was cold. Before I realized, all of the bystanders were gone and it was just people in uniform at the scene. "You are so lucky, you should play the lottery tonight" one of the orange vests kept telling me. It was the only advice anyone would give. They kept asking me if I had a ride home and I told them over and over again that I didn’t have cell service and this was our only car. The cop gave me a courtesy ride after issuing me a ticket. I cried when they asked me if I had any questions about the stupid ticket and I cried when I got into the back of their cop car and I cried some more because I was embarrassed of crying so much.
I am doing okay now. I am very behind on work, which is not necessarily new for me. On the day of the accident, there was a new moon. It happened around the middle of the day, just like the crash. I read something the night before that said “there are times to rebuild, and there are times to create an entirely new foundation.”
Anyway, I guess this was all an attempt to try to make sense of a larger pattern of some kind, and maybe a way to say I’m struggling to keep up lately. I was already feeling exhausted and when this happened, it felt like anything I was trying to push to finish just got thrown out of my hands. I am trying to be kind with myself (something I’ve been trying to do for a while now).
Work and things from July
I have been trying to “take it easy” this month, even before the accident. I realized I was really burnt out this spring and I’ll write about that more in another letter. I’ve been working on this art show with my budding artist collective that’s up all summer at Chicory Naturalist in Kingston, a shop run by absolute sweetheart
who also writes a great newsletter! Midnight Garden includes work from 20+ local and international artists who make poetry out of everything. The exhibition is meant to feel more like a work in progress than a traditional gallery presentation, with some pieces framed and mounted, others pinned up and taped: blurring the lines between ephemera and art. Chris gives such a sweet caption in this instagram post from when the show first went up:
Healing isn’t linear it’s ok to cry about something you thought you healed from ✶ a rainbow in roundout and a caption about sight & migraines & goodbyes by sophie strand ✶ a doctor’s note saying it’s ok to be late shared by Cam Flowers ✶ a line from an andrea gibson poem stitched onto fabric and stapled to a tree by Shana Lee Hampton ✶ A sign that reads “Due to Ghosts haunting our store we cannot use our computers or ovens. Please be patient as we wait” shared by
on instagram. I feel like this sign but if it said “due to ghosts haunting the space behind my eyes, I cannot use computers or phones.”
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I love you and I'm so glad that you're taking care of yourself after such a tough experience! 💕