it was the day of the saint patrick’s day parade. a pretty big deal in this blue collar city, especially in south bflo. lots ‘o irish folk. i was on my way to my waitressing job at an irish restaurant, just before 4PM when my shift started.

i wasn’t late, but i wasn’t early. just exactly on time. i knew it was going to be a crazy night, and i wasn’t really looking forward to it, but i knew the tips would be good.

i turned left from main street to cross over kenmore, and take the back way into the streets leading up to the restaurant. this route prevented me from having to deal with the nightmare traffic just ahead in front of the main st campus. as i turned, i saw that the light at kenmore was green.

it was never green. never. i was happy, because i thought it would give me a slight lead time, and i’d actually get to work a few minutes early. i drove toward the light, blind on my left side as the view was blocked by a car dealership that jutted out into the curving road i was about to cross. so even though i always looked left and right at intersections, even when the light was in my favor, i couldn’t see left that day. but the light was green and i proceeded.

i was in the middle of the intersection when i saw a flash of brilliant white light and my car was smashed into from the left. i spun around, in what seemed like suspended animation. i saw the car dealership and glass bus shelter and the ice cream shop and the chinese restaurant all revolving as i revolved. i felt at peace, not scared, but confused. i remember thinking as it was happening over and over,

but it was green. the light was green. i didn’t do anything wrong. i didn’t do anything wrong.

i didn’t panic. i wasn’t afraid. everything happened in a few seconds but those seconds stretched out into timelessness. i felt enveloped by something. protected. like there was something surrounding me that protected me. some would say it was shock, i suppose, but it felt like something else.

i was thrown forward and smashed inward in the same moment. my head hit and cracked the windshield, but my seatbelt held me back from flying through it. as the car settled on the opposite side of the intersection, facing the opposite direction i had come from, i looked up at the light.

it was still green. it hadn’t changed yet. i knew i was right, that i hadn’t done anything wrong. i watched it change then, to yellow, and then to red.
carly simon’s song mockingbird was still playing in my stereo, and i reached to shut it off. i saw pedestrians walking past, and i saw that my driver’s door was completely crushed in; my coat jammed into it. the steering column was crushed sideways and my seat was about half the size it should have been.

i remember trying to move my legs, which i was able to do, and then i started to cry and asked weakly for somebody to help me. i could move my feet, and my upper body, but somehow, i couldn’t move otherwise. i was trapped in the car.

i felt like no one was going to help me, that people were just standing there watching me. it felt like forever. i felt blood coming down my face and that’s when i began to cry and call out loudly for help.

this all happened probably over the span of two minutes, maybe three, but it felt like forever. a couple ran over to me, asking if i was okay, and said they saw the whole thing and it wasn’t my fault and that someone had called an ambulance. the girl held my hand. i was grateful for that.

the girl who hit my car, who wasn’t hurt at all, then ran over and was on her knees at my door, crying too, and saying she was sorry, over and over. i heard sirens and then saw lights flashing from somewhere down the road. people were standing around gaping, and the girl who hit me got up when the police came, but the other two, they stayed until the ambulance got there.

i remember it was dusk then, by the time they got me out of the car. they lifted me into the ambulance, in a sort of standing position and one guy reported to someone on a radio that i was ambulatory, though i couldn’t feel anything between my thighs and waist and i couldn’t put any weight on my feet. they were completely supporting my weight.

the medics laid me on a stretcher in the ambulance, and took my vital signs and i kept rambling that someone had to call my work to tell them that i would be late. they told me they thought i should go to the hospital. i said no, that i didn’t think i needed to. they insisted. i said okay. i really had no choice, as i would soon find out.

as i rode in the back, i heard sirens, and i remember thinking, where’s the ambulance? i saw people pulling over, as i was in a propped up position on the stretcher. i started to cry when i realized the cars were pulling over for me, for the ambulance i was in.

i spent three hours on a cold table in the emergency room. i was still dressed in my work uniform; turtleneck under the green polo shirt, khaki pants, sneakers. still had my coat on too. i listened to the staff in the trauma unit talking about disgusting scenes they had witnessed and other assorted personal information. it seemed they had forgotten me.

i laid there alone and finally, i asked someone to please call my mother. why no one had asked to do something like that at first, is beyond me. i also asked them to call my work. they did both. i specifically told them to tell my mother that i was NOT dead, because i knew she’d freak and think they were not telling her something, and i didn’t want her to have an accident on the way there. i heard them tell her that, and i heard them tell my boss that they couldn’t say what had happened or how i was, just that i’d been in an accident and wouldn’t be there.

i began to feel sharp pain against my flesh. i rooted around my turtleneck and found some shattered glass that had found its way deep inside my shirt. i found it in my bra, even later, it fell out of my underwear. none of my clothes were torn or had any holes in them. it’s still a mystery to me, how shattered glass got inside my underwear that way.

finally they were going to take x-rays, and asked me if i could be pregnant. i said i supposed i could be, so they better do the test. they gave me a urine cup and showed me the direction of the bathroom.

up until this point, for 3 hours, i hadn’t moved my legs or feet or lower body at all. i started to simply move my right foot to slide off the table, but as soon as i did that, gravity took hold and i started to scream.

it was the worst pain i could never have imagined. four or five of the staff ran into the room and descended on me, settling me back onto the table. the shock had worn off. something was very wrong.

just as they were wheeling me off to be x-rayed, my mother arrived and she saw me in the hall.

x-rays were even worse than the pain i had just experienced. i was instructed to move my legs–pull them up and open them. i was almost screaming. groaning and crying. it was horrible. the technician was cold as ice. didn’t make any sign of caring or compassion. cold. i suppose what he’d see everyday was so awful, that my lack of a compound fracture was really no big deal. my pain was nothing compared to what they must see all the time.

after returning me to the ER, my mother there, a doctor came in with the x-ray film, to show us where i had a fracture. it was a hairline, on the right side of my pubic bone. you could barely see it, but boy, could i feel it. if i even moved any part of my body from the chest down, sometimes even an arm, it made the pain worse.

they call your pelvis the center of gravity, and i found out just how true that was. almost every movement i made for weeks afterward, affected it.

they didn’t keep me overnight but instead wheeled me out to my mother’s waiting car, lifted me into it for her, and then left us there. she had called my dad and asked him to meet us at her house so he could carry me up the stairs to the bedroom i was to live in for the next month or so.

he was there, shaking and very visibly upset. of the two of them, my mother is the calm one in a crisis, it’s my dad that can’t handle other people’s physical pain, especially when it’s his child.

this was probably the worst moment of the whole ordeal. they had to carry me standing, lifting me under the arms on both sides, up the stairs. it was excruciating. i was almost hyperventilating by the time they got me situated in the bed.

it was also extremely humiliating. for two solid weeks, i couldn’t get out of bed at all. i had to use a bedpan. i had nightmares and would wake up screaming and my mom would come running. i didn’t want the door closed to my room. i cried all the time. i was depressed and just moving any part of my body below my shoulders caused me pain and i had whiplash.

everyone i knew came to visit. i mean, absolutely everyone. but then my mom had to go back to work, and by this time, i was okay, just healing, and i could drag myself to the bathroom using a walker. the visitors stopped coming so often, and i spent most of my days alone in bed, barely able to walk. i couldn’t concentrate on anything because of the head injury, a severe concussion, so i couldn’t read, and even TV was difficult to watch.

i felt completely isolated. the man i’d been seeing, who i was in love with at the time, broke up with me by writing a note to me, and leaving it with my roommate. she read it to me over the phone. i had no income, though my employer was wonderful about it all, i didn’t think i’d be back to work as a waitress.

i remember one morning, when i was more able to move about, sitting in a tub full of hot water, and thinking about suicide. i felt like nothing was going to get any better, and this was the culmination of the abusive relationship year, rejection, humiliation, complete lack of focus as far as what i would do (since i’d graduated almost a year before) for a career, and the loss of a dear pet and the loss of my pregnancy the fall before.

i thought about just not bothering anymore, though i had no real plan, and then i recalled that moment the other car was hitting me. i had felt enveloped by something. something that had protected me.

the insurance adjuster who had gone to see my car, a total loss, thought that i had been killed, due to the condition of the car, and was shocked to find out i only had a broken pelvis and concussion.

this was my real first experience with the notion that even when you do everything right, things don’t always go as planned. it was my real first experience with a complete and total loss of control.

but somehow, i had not died. i had not been permanently maimed (though it would take many years before the residual pain of the injury ceased). i would walk normally again. i realized that there was a reason i had lived through this. i had no business thinking about killing myself.

but it was a low point. probably the lowest, after a year of one low point after another. and it was also the turning point.

eventually i walked again. i began to volunteer at the abused women’s shelter. i got my first job working with kids. i made new friends and got my own apartment. i took a women’s poetry class and began to blossom as a poet. i got my first guitar.

that day, was the low point, but it was also the beginning of my new life. i knew from the pocket of peace i experienced and that total loss of control over my destiny- leaving myself in the hands of something i couldn’t identify or understand- that sometimes we just have to let go. if i had seen it coming, if i had known, i might very well have frozen or fought against it, and then the breakage might have been much greater.

it’s been a long time since then, and a very convoluted road to get to the place i am now. but i am happy with the things i did in response to that year from hell, and that moment of collision.

the light was green. i didn’t do anything wrong. sometimes, life just happens, and there’s nothing we can do about it, but pick ourselves up and go on. we don’t always have control.

life is messy. letting go, instead of holding on so tightly to what we think should be or happen, is where peace can take hold.