So. . . here it is: a blog of my own.
Although the recent blogs definitely helped to inspire me to do this, some things that have happened over the past two weeks have had a great deal to do with it, too. Writing and reflecting go hand in hand - at least, they always have with me - and I've certainly found myself doing quite a bit of reflecting lately. It strikes me that as long as I'm doing all of this life- and self-examination, I might as well have an outlet for it. If those thoughts don't interest anyone else. . . oh, well - guess that means that my blog will in effect turn into my online diary. If they do? Well, I like to think that a large part of the way that I make my living involves encouraging others to think. . . I might as well do it in my free time, too.
So what has led to all of this thinking that I've been doing? I'll confine this post to what happened to me about two weeks ago: a car accident. I was on my way to work on December 3 (just another manic Monday), and I was (as was my not-so-smart habit) putting on my makeup while I was driving. Lest you think that I'm a complete idiot, I'm really not. . . that comment conjures images of my driving down the road with my eyes plastered to the rearview mirror for minutes at a time without looking out for other cars, deer (always a threat on my path to work), fallen tree branches, or anything else that I might hit. I never took my eyes off the road for a more than a second or two, and I never did it when there was another car in front of me that might slow down or brake suddenly in front of me. In short, I thought that I was being seriously careful and knew exactly what I was doing.
I'd laugh at a habitually drunk driver for that logic. I wonder why I didn't see the flaws in my own.
So. . . I was going around a curve, and I made sure that I was into the curve before glancing up to put on eyeliner (I think under the lower lashes on my right eye. . . it would occur to me later on that I went around for the rest of the day with eyeliner on only one eye). I felt my tires go a few inches off the road, and I cut back onto the highway. Unfortunately, it had rained enough over the weekend to make the grass on the side of the road and the road itself just slick enough for my brakes to lock, and I completely lost control of the car. I skidded over 130 feet across the highway onto the grass on the other side and found myself heading straight toward some trees and a fence.
All that I could think as I tried unsuccessfully to regain control of my car (and skidded another 150+ feet in the grass) was, "People have died doing what I'm doing right now." By extension, of course, it occurred to me that I could die, too, but I sort of compartmentalized that part of the equation as I tried in vain to miss the trees. The impact smashed in the front of my dear old 1995 Honda Accord - which I had bought when it was a baby with 41 miles on it and which at that point had over 348,000 - and ripped off my front bumper as it knocked me into a 180 degree turn. Amazingly enough, as old as they were, the airbags deployed (the scariest part of the whole thing was seeing the powder when they did. . . I thought at first that it was smoke), and the seat belt held me perfectly still. In short, I killed my car, but I walked away with a slightly banged-up left knee (it's still a little bit sore) and a few bruises (apparently from the airbag) that would show up two days later on my left arm. I wasn't even sore on Tuesday.
Had a vehicle been traveling in the southbound lane, I could easily have been killed. Had my car flipped (always a possibility when you're hurtling over an embankment, however slight, at. . . uh. . . over 55 miles per hour), I could have been killed. If my windshield or windows had shattered, I cut have been seriously cut up. (The windshield spidered but did not shatter; the windows were intact.) It's not lost on me how blessed I am to have walked away with a wounded knee. . . and if I had died, it would have been my own stupid fault.
Not surprisingly, I spent a lot of time during the rest of that week thinking about just how quickly life can change. . . and how quickly it can end, actually. I also thought about a few close calls that I've had and reminded myself that there was a reason that it wasn't my time to go when they happened.
Claude and I were talking about this subject a few days ago, and he asked whether I thought that everyone really does have a designated time to die. The second part of my answer was, ". . . and I believe that a person can through her own stupidity skid across a highway during morning drive time and end up with only a bruise on her knee."
And the first part? I'll save that for my next post. . . and the story of why what happened the following week reinforced my awareness of how quickly life can change. . . and how quickly it can end.
