If you or someone you love has been hurt in an accident….
No it’s not a Saiontz And Kirk commercial … it’s a perspective you might not have considered. Or maybe you have … and you just need to hear it again. Here’s the story of My Accident…
I was sixteen years old with a learners’ permit. I was working a relatively new job at a restaurant and I was scheduled to close that night. During that time, the first year of my first “real” job, I was getting “hazed” (for lack of a better word) as the new girl. And the girl, or should I say, the completely grown and educated senior staff person who was closing with me that shift, was particularly cruel that night. She was doing absolutely everything she could to make my life and my job miserable as she and I tended to our closing duties. She was rude, made me do things twice and criticized my every move. And I was bound to follow her command because she was the well-respected senior staff and I didn’t know any better.
I had already confided in my parents about the ‘mean girl’ behavior that had been going on for quite some time now and had on several occasions, talked about quitting. But my father wouldn’t have such a thing.
“Don’t you dare let them win!” he said. “You keep going back and you do your best. You’re not going to let them drive you out. That’s what they want. You quitting means that they have won.”
So, by this night I had already made up my mind to push through and not be defeated. But it made me angry … really angry! I was done crying about it and now I was just pissed.
And by the time I clocked out and walked to the car where my mother waited in the passenger seat to allow me to drive home … I was furious.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked. “Why are you so angry?” Angry words spewed out of my mouth and in response to them came “You’re not going to talk to me that way”, “Knock it off”. In an effort to curb my anger, she made me more angry.
A back and forth banter between a teenage girl who had just been torn to shreds and a mother who couldn’t understand her ensued.
Eventually, it became, “Pull over the car, you’re not driving.”
But it was too late … I was too angry … I didn’t pull over.
It was raining and we were headed down a portion of road that had only one lane in each direction with a speed limit of 50 mph. Going the full 50, in the rain, fighting … before I knew it, I had lost control of my vehicle. I jerked the wheel, fish tailed and sailed into oncoming traffic, hitting a truck head-on. The combined impact of both vehicles led to a 100 mph impact. No one had a chance to brake.
I have no visual memory of the impact or the seconds leading up to it. I woke-up to by-standers prying my door open and my vehicle filled with smoke. It was hardly recognizable. Both air bags deployed and the dash was pushed into the car. My mother was beside me, incoherently moaning, and I could see fluids pouring onto the street. As the two men pulled me out onto my feet, my feet gave out. I didn’t realize at that time that I had jammed my feet into my legs from the high impact. I heard one of the men say, “Hurry…this car is going to blow.” And inside that car laid my mother, too hurt to be moved.
I cried out to the men, “This is my fault!” And a sweet, broken english, well-meaning voice said to me in my ear “Shhh … don’t incriminate yourself.” The men carried me to the guard rails where I sat in pain and watched the only view of the accident that I had caused. My mother was in too much pain for the men to carry her out and the truck doors were too mangled to open. Alone, I sat there and sobbed. I caused this accident. It was all my fault and tonight, I thought, someone might die because I let my anger get the best of me.
When the first responders came, I remember my mother wailing as they pulled her out of the vehicle and I asked a paramedic who was evaluating me if my Mom was going to die? She looked right into my eyes and very sincerely said, “I don’t know honey. But we’re going to get her help as fast as we can.” She then asked me what happened to my clothes. For the first time I looked down at myself and saw that my red work polo and khaki shorts had been shredded – from the seat belt? from the shearing force of a car slamming to a halt under 100mph impact? … who knows? Right then, all that I wanted to know was that everyone was going to be ok. I was the only one sitting outside of the vehicles and that wasn’t fair. I alone should be paying the price for my mistake … not these people … not my Mom.
The entire stretch of the road was shut-down. The ‘jaws of life’ were brought to the scene to open the truck from the top and to get its passengers out. My Mom was pushed on a stretcher all the way down the street to a helicopter waiting in a near-by parking lot and then flown via medevac to Shock Trauma. I was later told that the street was lined with parked cars and people on their knees in prayer. They transported me via ambulance to a different trauma center to avoid the trauma teams receiving two critical patients at once. Because of the high impact of the accident, it was protocol to assume our injuries were life threatening.
Inside the ambulance with me, was a passenger from the truck that I had struck. When they closed the doors and the sound level dropped inside the ambulance, I said to the man, “I am so sorry sir.” “Yeah, well my leg is all cut up because of you” was his response. He didn’t need to accept my apology. I hurt him and the people he was with and that was on me. No one was there to tell me it would “be okay” or that it was “just a mistake”. I fucked up royally and I knew it.
Eventually my Dad and sister got the call and made it up to the hospital to see me. I was stable, miraculously, no major injuries other than my feet, a badly strained neck and back and some bumps and bruises. They soon left to go see my Mom who was expectedly in worse shape.
And then no one else came. The news apparently didn’t make it to the rest of my family that night. I sat in my hospital room until the following afternoon, alone. And I wondered if my Mom pulled through. I wondered if the other people survived too. I wondered if because of my moment of anger, I was responsible for killing someone. The burden was so heavy, I just wanted to die.
You see, I’m convinced, if you’re a normal human being … nothing is worse than unintentionally hurting someone else. Knowing that I was responsible for hurting people was the worst punishment I could have ever gotten. So when I was later found “not guilty” on all counts due to the fact that the police officer in court had not witnessed the accident and the other party did not show … I hadn’t “gotten off”. Fines and a delayed ability to get my license wouldn’t have mattered at that point. I had already paid the price. Hearing my mother wail as they pulled her out of the vehicle, being told that she might not survive, sitting in that hospital room wondering what had happened to everyone … praying and crying in the dark, alone … that was my price! That was living hell!
I later found out that everyone in the other car survived with minor injuries and were released from the hospital the next day. My Mom too survived – with a shattered wrist, cracked ribs and bruised lungs, but our relationship took way longer to heal than our wounds did. Because she, like so many who are hurt, wanted me to pay a price. What she couldn’t understand that day is what so many people can’t understand. Sometimes the natural consequences of an action are the most impactful. And life-long cycles of anger in a home can have devastating consequences.
What I did get from that day (aside from chronic back pain and weak ankles) … was a very serious respect for driving. It was my father who made me get back behind the wheel before fear paralyzed me from ever driving again. But never again would you find a reckless driver in my seat. Nor would you find me in the passenger seat with a reckless driver next to me. – Later in my teens I was known to tell any one of my friends to pull over if I thought someone’s driving was unsafe and I’d start walking. No racing or “donuts” in my youth. I had already used my “how to cheat death card”. There were no more second chances. Life was precious and I needed to feel safe again.
I learned the importance of controlling my anger and the gravity that not controlling it could cause. And I learned that no amount of bad examples set for me would excuse me for the consequences of my own actions. Just because I grew up in a home where anger was often uncontrolled, it didn’t excuse me from the harm that I myself had caused.
I learned that people don’t have to accept your apology and they don’t have to see your perspective … but you still owe them that apology and you still owe yourself a lesson.
I learned that although my father may have been right about not letting people “win” by pushing me out … I still let them get the best of me by allowing myself to get so angry. And in doing so, I almost paid the price with a person’s life. So I did lose.
I could have left the scene of the accident forever changed with anger and blame and a lack of personal responsibility. I also could have left the scene with paralyzing guilt and fear. Instead, with time and serious soul-searching … I gained respect, experience, and perspective. And I learned how to admit when I was wrong and to take responsibility.
As I started out saying … this isn’t a law firm commercial. If you’ve been hurt by someone’s negligence … by all means get your bills paid for and your life compensated …but while you heal your body and your home … heal your heart too. And consider for a moment that the negligent perpetrator may not be a monster after all … but a hurt little girl who with a split second jerk of the wheel will hold a lifetime of regret.
And if it was you who’s at fault … own it, pick it clean for lessons, put those lessons in your backpack and continue on your journey called “life”. Your pack may be little heavier now … but it’s filled with tools that may one day come in handy.
(follow-up note: Those “mean girls” at one point in my life or another all came back and apologized to me. I admire each of them for their maturity and they’ve grown to be lovely adults. And I’m really glad I didn’t quit that job … because I ended up meeting the love of my life there a few years later. Ain’t life funny that way!)
