Our bodies have pretty much healed, but I think my emotions may still be recovering from the jolt. I've been caught between the feeling of "Wow, I can't believe we walked away from that" to the morbid appreciation of the fact that had any of the variables been different during the crash, we would have been staring down a much bleaker fate.
Emotions run heavy after these sort of things, my friend Leslie reminded me. (Shameless plug for her latest Huffington Post article.) While this may be an observation of the obvious, it should be said. Yeah, deep emotions. Life and death emotions dislodged during impact. That stark realization that it only takes one event to completely undo life.
My world still feels a little bit like a snow globe, but it could be so much worse.
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2 comments:
You are right. How many times we flip on the news or open the paper and we hear about accidents all the time- but they are always something that happen 'to someone else.' They aren't real for us. Then something like this happens with someone we know and love involved, and suddenly life seems very fragile and shockingly random. My best advice is to be gentle with yourself. Allow yourself to feel whatever you need to feel-- don't let anyone tell you "You should be angry" or "Make sure you drive such and such road right away so you don't get frightened of it," or whatever. You do what you need to do, rest when you want to rest, give hugs when you need to hold people, treat yourself to those things that you enjoy but seldom splurge on. This is your life and you are safe. The car was just a car and it did it's job- it took the impact and saved lives. That's worth whatever expense is left.
Just delurking to say that I agree with Anonymous above. Take plenty of time.
In Sept I was involved in a 70mph pile up on the motorway which involved my car flipping and rolling across three lanes. I was hit by about 6 or 7 cars and trucks on my way to stopping upside down on the embankment.
I walked away with some nice cuts and bruises but that was it for the physical side of things.
The emotional side of it takes the longest, I spent a long time walking around halfway between being totally emotionally numb and feeling like a deer in the headlights because of the realisation of what could have been.
Take as long as you need because at the end of the day, you all walked away from something which had a serious impact (no pun intended) both physically and emotionally and having these thoughts is a very natural thing.
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