Splintered piece of glass falls, in the seat, gets caught
“Understanding in a car crash” Thursday
These broken windows, open locks, reminders of the youth we lost
It’s Thursday the 2nd of February 2023. I stay a little late at the office to catch up on work as it’s been a really heavy week. I leave at 5:50pm and get in my car. I put the podcast app on and continue listening to the true crime podcast I had been listening to on the way in this morning. It’s the story of a man who killed his wife by faking a crash, and then tried it again later with his second wife. Sounds like a real piece of shit. I briefly consider switching instead to Spotify as I’m on a bit of a Postal Service kick right now but decide instead to stay with the podcast, then set out from work.
Quite often I give somebody from work a life home with me but this evening it’s just me. Which is fine, I selfishly quite like driving alone. It means I can either indulge in a podcast or turn the music up loud and pretend I can actually sing without anybody hearing.
I start making my way down the middle road until I reach The Sun Inn at Calbourne. The road is closed here (I’ll later learn that a lorry or van turned on to it’s side. Hold my beer.) so I turn left and head over to the Yarmouth road.
So push the seats back a little further
“Understanding in a car crash” Thursday
I can see the headlights coming
So push the seats back a little further
Roll the windows down and take a breath
I reach the Yarmouth Road and as I stop at the junction I note how weird it is, that there is a car indicating to turn off at this junction. Instead of just turning off, they stop and hold up the traffic behind them to flash me out despite really not needing to in anyway. I pull out and continue about my journey. I don’t think I am a dangerous driver. I don’t toddle along at 30mph every where but I’m also not a speed demon. I frequently seem to get people behind me angry on the middle road as I will not overtake a cyclist until I am absolutely sure there is room and nobody coming the other way.
I take a bend as the podcast speaks about this guy crashing his car into a tree before setting it alight with his drugged wife inside. Then I don’t really know what happened. The steering wheel violently pulls right. It’s already a blur but I remember pulling the wheel back to the left to try to get control. Then I remember this really loud noise. And then gravity changes. FUCK. The car is rolling over. It rolls over and I’m upright again, but the motion continues and it again rolls over.
The next thing that I remember was being sat in the car but I am suspended upside down. The seatbelt is holding me up as gravity pulls me down. I instinctively look to the passenger seat and the back seats to see if anyone is there. In this moment I am having the most surreal experience of my entire life. There is glass all around. I pull on the driver side door handle but it doesn’t really budge.
I can see the headlights coming
“Understanding in a car crash” Thursday
They paint the world in red and broken glass
I try to take off my seatbelt but my weight and the gravity has it pulled really tight. So I press downwards against the roof to release some pressure and then undo the seatbelt. I push against the door and it scrapes on the road as it opens enough for me to crawl out.
All the random shit in my car is all over the road. There’s a camping chair that has been in the boot since we went to Cormac’s scout camp back in July. There is an old pair of Libbie’s boots. Some jump leads. A random screwdriver set. Lizzie’s swimming costume which we threw in the boot, covered in sand back in August when she wrapped herself in a towel in the backseat. I don’t really know what has happened, where I am, or what to do. So I start picking up the camping chair to move it out of the road. As I do a man puts his arm around my shoulders and says “Calm down. Calm down. Are you ok? What happened?”
I don’t know what happened. A woman then dashes over and tells me to sit down. An Asda driver gets out of his van and runs over alongside a young guy. The two of them begin working out how to control the traffic and get cars past as I have blocked the road. I sit down on the muddy grass next to the road as two women and a male off duty fire officer ask if I am ok, ask if anybody else is in the car. They ask who they can call for me and I blank…….. “oh, my wife. I need to tell her that I’m ok.” I touch my pocket but my phone isn’t there. I go to get up and look for it and they insist that I don’t move. One lady asks what Libbie’s phone number is and I struggle to remember it before suddenly it comes into my head. We dial but no answer. And again.
I then try typing a message to Libbie on my Apple Watch but it takes too long and the lady again tries to ring Libbie. This time she answers. “I’ve got your husband with me….” I can only imagine what must have gone through Libbie’s head. I tell her what happened and say I’m fine but she doesn’t believe me. I do feel fine by the way. If these people would let me I could get up and help do whatever needs to be done.
Time runs through our veins
“Understanding in a car crash” Thursday
(It starts and stops and starts and stops again)
The accident happened at 6:10pm. I’m still sat on the muddy grass at around 6:30pm when a first responder on her way to work as hospital stops to assist. A really nice guy lends me a coat to keep warm and tells me not to feel stupid and that he did something similar on this road when he was younger. The first responder takes my blood pressure and checks my heart rate. It is, unsurprisingly, pretty high. She says she will need to take a blood sugar test which means a quick prick on my finger. I tell her that I’m terrified of needles or any kind of injections and she laughs and tells me I just walked away from a car crash, a pin prick is nothing.
Somebody is on the phone to the police and hands the phone to me. They ask for my details. They ask if I have been drinking (I haven’t by the way). They then tell me to ring my insurance company and ask them to arrange vehicle recovery. I pass the phone back and go to ring my insurers, the people stood around me tell me not to bother and that the police should sort it themselves.
At 7:30pm an ambulance arrives along with police and fire crew. I am taking inside the ambulance and they ask me some questions. They ask if I have any pain or feel I could have broken anything. I tell them I am fine. I honestly feel fine, just a bit zoned out and confused. The paramedic tells me that looking at the state of the car I am incredibly lucky to even be walking away. I genuinely do not know if I feel happy or sad at that. She says she needs to do an ECG and asks me to lift up my t-shirt. I start laughing.
The weekend before this I decided that I wanted to shave all my hair off. Lizzie wanted to help so she did some of my head but once that was done she wanted to carry on, so I left her take the clippers and shave my chest. It’s regrown a little and I basically have stubble on my chest. I remember at the time that Libbie said how ridiculous I would look if I got rushed into hospital like that.
The police ask me some questions. I expect them to breathalyse me but they don’t. He says he is confident I am not intoxicated. He says the ambulance needs to take me to hospital as they are concerned that the airbags going off could have injured my chest. He tells me they will get the car taken away and that he finishes his shift at 11pm. He is going to ring me then to update me on what has happened. I never hear from him again.
I don’t want to feel this way forever
“Understanding in a car crash” Thursday
A dead letter marked return to sender
I want to rewind now. Towards the end of 2022 I noticed a very large slip in my mental health. I had begun struggling every day in a way that I had not for years. Although I never harmed myself I had suicidal ideation episodes and they got more regular. A few days before Christmas I told Libbie that things were getting worse and they I wanted to reach out for some medical help. The Christmas and New Year break put all that into slow motion but shortly after the new year I was put onto an antidepressant I had never tried before and at a much higher dose (4x) any dose I had been prescribed previously.
I was pretty cynical about it to be honest. My experience with anti-depressants in the past was that if they had an effect it was barely noticeable, but I will try anything right now to be the best that I can be for my kids more than anything else.
This new prescription and higher dose works wonders. I feel significantly better after a few weeks. Libbie starts commenting that I am annoyingly happy around the house. People at work comment that I am lively and irritating. I even started writing something one night to go on Facebook to explain what a positive effect it was having and to encourage anybody struggling to seek help and try a new medication and to be open to it. I decided not to as sometimes I think I overshare or that I come across preachy about mental health. I don’t think we talk about it enough or openly enough, still.
Back to the crash. The ambulance arrives at hospital and I am taking into accident and emergency. It is so busy that they have no spare beds and I am offered a chair to sit on, literally in the middle of the room as beds and patients are wheeled around me. I am told there have been 5 serious road incidents that day. Somebody in A&E tells the ambulance paramedics that Libbie and my mum can’t come in but the paramedic goes and gets them anyway. It’s all a bit tearful as I insist repeatedly to them that I feel fine. I ask what the kids know and how they are. They can’t stay and have to leave. I tell them I will ring when I can go home.
I sit in the A&E ward for a while when somebody comes and tells me there is someone in the reception/waiting room looking for me. When I was at the road side somebody found my phone for me and said I should message somebody from my work, so I sent a message to our WhatsApp group chat. One of the members of my team had seen the message and had worried enough to come and check on me at the hospital. She tells me that I am acting weird and don’t seem myself. We speak for a bit and then she goes. I wait and wait for nearly two hours before a doctor can check me. He checks my stomach, chest and ribs for pain. Listens to my breathing. He tells me that tomorrow I will feel really bad but that I should consider myself lucky and to check back with them if I need anything. I can go home.
3 and a half hours ago I was hanging upside down in a smashed car with glass everywhere. Now I am just casually told that it’s over and I can go home like nothing happened. I leave the hospital and I just want to walk home. The cold air is beautiful and I don’t want to sit in a car, but I know that Libbie and my Mum will panic so I ring them and tell them I will start walking and meet them at Hunnyhill.
I crash my car everyday the same way
“Understanding in a car crash” Thursday
That night, after Libbie and the kids go to bed. I lay in bed and I replay it over and over again. The feeling when I lost control. The motion of the car rolling. Every time I get to the bit where I am suspended upside down and I feel like I could scream out.
I get a little bit of sleep. I wake up Friday morning feeling like I have been in a fucking boxing match. Every part of me aches.
And that is basically how it has been since. I’m not sleeping well. I go over it all again in my head constantly. I spend all day Friday and Saturday in bed. That isn’t like me at all. Sunday I paint for a bit. I play a little bit of Pathfinder in the evening with my friends. After that Jake and I speak about various things. Usually at this point I’d be keen to suggest a game to play together but it hurts sitting in this chair, and to be really honest I just want to be alone again.
I know how incredibly lucky I am. I could have broken something. I could have had long term injuries. I could have died. I didn’t though and that is what matters, but with no melodrama at all intended I truly feel like I might as well have done right now.
Was it my fault? I don’t think I will ever know now.
On Sunday I got a lift from my mum to Ryde and back to pick up Cormac from his dads house. It was fine on the way there, but on the return journey to Newport I start feeling travel sick. My stomach tightens up and I talk less as I begin to feel like I am going to vomit. We get home and I get out as quickly as possible. I rudely barely say goodbye. We go in the house and my heartbeat is through the roof. Libbie tells me I am having a panic attack.
As things are right now I feel scared to drive a car, but even more so I feel scared to be a passenger in a car. If I’m a passenger I have no control, I can’t slow down and take the next corner a little lighter.
I feel like I need to get a new car as soon as possible so I can just get out and face it. That is the right and rational thing to do. One thing I am great at is rationalising things. I think I have lost the ability though.
I feel so scared of cars right now. And even when I do get a new car, when I do drive it, I still know I need to leave work around the same time, drive that same route and face it. Typing that now actually made me cry. It genuinely scares me.
And what scares me more is knowing that at some point I have to take my kids out in the car again. Knowing that their safety is in my hands. The hands that I’m not sure I even trust right now.
I hate that this has pushed my mental health backwards when I was doing so well. I hate that I feel like I could have killed somebody had things gone a little differently, if I had given someone a lift that night. I hate that everything is just carrying on like normal.
I have this horrible black bruise across my stomach, but if you saw me in the street today you’d have no visual sign that anything had happened. To everybody else in the world this didn’t happen, but it did. It happened to me and it has shaken me so fucking hard.
I made the mistake of reading the comments on local news sites that reported it. All the people calling me a druggie, or a drinker, or a bad driver. I want to reply so fucking much but what’s the point.
And it’s over
“Understanding in a car crash” Thursday
In a flash
And I’ll never
Ever understand
Understanding
In a car crash
In a car crash
In a crash
I am truly not posting this for sympathy, or for empathy, or for people to even reply and say anything. Perhaps you think this is my fault and that I am a bad driver, that is fine. I am posting it in hopes that venting this and telling people how fucked up and scared I feel right now might release a little pressure in my mind and that tonight I might sleep a little better.
Tomorrow I need to cancel my old insurance policy. I need to arrange to have the old car scrapped. I have seen a new car that I like and I have had a very kind offer by an amazing person to help me buy it. Tomorrow night I am going to see Frank Turner. It is Cormac’s first ever gig. We are going there with one of my closest friends, and I know that if in the car on the way to the boat I feel something happening that I can say something to him and that he will respect that. I am lucky to have friends with whom we are able to discuss our mental health with one another. That means the world to me.
Tomorrow night I will sing like I would if I was in my car, alone, with the music turned up loud. I’m not dead yet.
We can get better, because we’re not dead yet.
“Get Better” Frank Turner
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