My First Car Accident

                 We drove down the crowded street that led home from work. I was in the passenger seat of my 97’ Geo Metro, otherwise known as the “Beanpod” and the most fragile car I had ever driven. I wasn’t driving because it was stormy. Vegas storms meant heavy unpredictable rain that you could hardly see through and nonstop lightning. I was terrified of the storm itself and especially of driving in it, so I let myself get talked into riding shotgun instead.

                  As we made our way down the road, the storm continued, maybe even worsened. The entire sky lit up with lightning I could see out any window in any direction. The lightning itself fascinated me how it flashed as far as I could see, across the sky, and to the ground. It lit up and silhouetted the surrounding clouds otherwise disguised in the dark. The loud, sudden crack of thunder vibrated through my bones and made my teeth chatter.

                  I stayed anxious as we drove, watching the lightning overhead and attempting to stay calm. The car was quiet and we didn’t speak. There might have been quiet music playing, but probably not. It was a straight shot home with no more than five minutes left to drive. We passed the gas station and approached the street with the Dottie’s on the corner; the same Dottie’s that lay on every corner like a fast food chain where people go to gamble in peace and buy cheap cigarettes. The area was dark, but the road was lit and there were no cars around us.

                  A truck pulled up perpendicular to the road we drove on. It inched forward and I watched. It inched forward again then continued into the road. I watched it with a certain curiosity, but there was no time to question it or point it out.

                 I might have let out a yell or I might have been silent, but I don't remember. Not a second later, the truck was no more than a few feet directly in front of my car. We must've been braking. I saw the wheel jerk to one side and I saw it fail to help us avoid the truck on the slippery road. It had been no more than a few seconds, yet it felt like eternity. I felt the impact, but somehow I didn’t. I saw the airbags deploy, but I didn’t see the collision. I was aware of the accident, yet unaware of my surroundings. I heard nothing and everything was still. 

                 The first thing I became aware of was the pain in my left leg, then in my chest. I looked down to ensure that my leg was still intact, which it was. There was no blood and no signs of injury. I slowly came to a clear understanding of what happened. I might have been crying. I could feel tiny shards of broken glass on my tongue. Outside was the dark road, the pouring rain, the flash of lightning, and the clash of thunder I feared. Inside the car was the pain and an overwhelming cloud of anxiety. 

                 

What Anxiety Feels Like

     I know when people hear someone say they have anxiety, it seems kind of trivial. It's like, "So you get nervous sometimes, don't we all? What's the big deal?" Sure, we all get nervous sometimes, but it's more than that. It's not just nervousness. It's a lingering, unrelenting feeling of worrying and uneasiness, sometimes for no apparent reason.

     For me, there are a lot of specific scenarios that make me anxious and that I know I'm going to be anxious in. One of the main ones is during thunderstorms. I know a lot of people love thunderstorms and say that thunder is calming, and I have never understood that. If I even see a flash of lightning through a window or hear a rumble of thunder, my heart starts beating a million miles an hour, my hands shake like crazy, I get lightheaded, and a lot of the time I get nauseous. A lot of people know I have a horrible fear of lightning but it's not just that I'm afraid of it. There's something about the flashes of light and the cracks of thunder over and over again that just makes me feel like I'm in the worst possible place I could be. No matter where I'm at, even if it's a car or a building away from windows, my anxiety overrides my reason. I can tell myself a million times that I'm perfectly safe and that the odds of being struck by lightning in a year are somewhere around 1 in 1,900,000 and the odds of being struck in your lifetime are 1 in 12,000 (I don't like these odds), but my anxiety always wins.

     There are a million and one things I could bring up that give me anxiety, but the point is, it's nearly everything. Not that everything gives me anxiety all the time, but sometimes the smallest things can make me freak out. Sometimes it's just being home alone, sometimes it's remembering something bad that's happened to me, sometimes it's driving while it's raining, sometimes I don't even know what it is. The point is that a lot of people don't understand that it's not just being a little nervous once in a while. Picture being so anxious that you're short of breath, your hands and arms are shaking, you feel like you might throw up any second, and you're lightheaded.

     The best way I can describe it is like the brief moments right before a car accident, when you know something is about to happen and you know it won't be good, but it hasn't happened yet. It's like that few seconds that go in slow motion right before the collision when you're just waiting for the impact and hoping it doesn't do too much damage, except it doesn't last just a few seconds. Sometimes that feeling lasts a few minutes and sometimes it lasts all day.

     I've figured out ways to manage it and make it a lot easier to go through my day when I'm anxious without having to take medication. There was a point when I thought I needed it, but I've learned otherwise. I don't want to be dependent on any sort of pills to make it through each day, so I've figured out that if I listen to relaxing music and visualize it that it calms me down and makes my mind a lot quieter. I've learned that if I take deep breaths and focus on one sound around me that it helps calm my nerves. Meditating helps too and I'm sure there are a million other things I could do. Anxiety isn't always debilitating but it isn't fun, especially when it progresses into an panic attack, but I sometimes have to just let myself freak out and let it out before I can feel better. In a way, I have to let go of the feeling of the few moments before the collision and let it happen.