Monday, November 19, 2007

too many things to be thankful for this thanksgiving...

normally my blogs are somewhat light hearted and humorous....

today's blog is not a normal blog....mostly because my saturday morning was not a normal morning....

....i'm at a lack of words because it seems like every word i think about writing doesn't quite do justice to my experience....thankful....shocked....surreal....lucky....blessed....terrifying....scared...nervous...and the phrase i continually go back to..."oh my god...oh my god? oh my god...did that really just happen? oh...my...god..."

saturday morning i got in a car accident....

i have never been in a car accident before...not even a fender bender....never...nothing...

i have seen car accidents before...i have seen a really bad one...about 3 years ago, on I-5 near seattle...i saw a little black car come across three lanes of traffic, clip the front end of a suburban and watched the suburban flip in mid air and land upside down...it was the scariest thing i had ever seen....

saturday morning at 5:30 am on my way to pick up 6 of my lake oswego dancers to take them to a competition (thank god it happened before they were in my car...oh the list of thankful things....its infinite..). saturday morning i was someone's scariest thing they had ever seen.

this was me...



i know right??...can you believe it? i flipped my parents tahoe....on I-205 south. it was as horrible as it looks...in fact at this point (taken with my camera phone...my camera...i don't know what happened to it, somewhere lost....) , at this point the car had already been drug by the tow truck out of the middle of the fast lane....so it actually looked worse believe it or not from its original view...that or the shock of "holy shit i just flipped this tahoe...." and looking at it for the first time seemed worse...i'm not sure...

here is the story.
i was driving at 5:30am on I-205 south to lake oswego. i was in the fast lane...it was raining...and dark...a pick-up sped past me in the middle lane and when they did they hit a huge lake size body of water and splashed water up into my windshield...i couldn't see anything...i got really scared because i knew the free way was turning up ahead and i was afraid i was going to hit the medium and flip or something crazy...so i looked in my review mirror (mind you this is all in about 2 seconds...that felt like an hour -when you can't see anything going 60 down the freeway its a little nerve racking...) no cars coming so i switched the center lane thinking if i just hold on the water will go away and i can see again....unfortunately i didn't think fast enough to anticipate hitting the lake myself...so that's exactly what i did i hit the water and started to hydroplane...the back end of my truck started spinning...out of control....and then my whole truck started to spin and i was then facing backwards on the freeway...as i continued to spin the back end of the truck came around and hit the medium and caused my truck to flip. landing on the roof...i don't exactly remember how i got out of my seat belt the next thing i remembered was crawling out of the broken windows onto the road, i stood up, it was dark and pouring rain...i was in the middle of the freeway...i remember looking at the truck looking down at my legs and looking back at the truck, i put my hands on my head and thought "holy shit...oh my god"

there were a couple cars pulled over and a guy in a pickup truck (maybe the age of my dad) yelled over and asked if i was ok, and said "yeah i'm ok i think..." he asked again if i was sure, and i said "i think so..." and he asked if i needed help, and i said, "yeah i think i need some help..." and he got out of his truck and came over...i felt in my pockets for my phone and couldn't find it (i know right? my phone, ha please...didn't seem important....but the only thing i could thing about was i need to talk to my mom) so i reached my hand back in the upside down car...dug around a little and saw my phone! grabbed it and the guy led me across the street. i called my parents, he called the cops for me and the rest was kind of a big blur....

soooo many things...soo many could have happened...and i walked away...i walked away with nothing but a sore neck and bruised up shins...that's it! sooo many things...i could drive myself crazy with "what-ifs" but mostly im too scared to even think about them...it feels like a dream...like it didn't even happen. though when i look into the garage and notice no tahoe i know it did....i try not to think about it because honestly, it was the most horrifying thing i have ever done...the noises and visions...when they replay in my head its like a movie...its like when you are watch a part of a movie when it flashes on a person...to a truck...the headlights...back to the person...those scary flashes are what it is like in my head....and it makes the hairs on the back of neck stand up and my gut twist up....nauseating....

thankful....thanksgiving...couldn't come at a better time...

in the future, i think i'll do two things, one) not driving on the freeway in pouring rain anytime soon... two) leave crazy car flipping to the nascar racers....

1 comment:

Marbles said...

I am thankful you're still here too! Love you.