To me, getting my first car was the most important thing so far in my life.  It was the first step to becoming independent from my parents.  I had been waiting to become sixteen since I was 5.  That was around the age I realized I couldn’t handle being around my family.  I knew I had to get away and getting a car was my first step to my ultimate goal.

I drove on the streets of Texas for 8 days and then something horrible happened.

I flipped my car 4 times down a ramp.  This year marks the ten year anniversary of my accident.

I was stupid.  I think I was changing the station and not paying attention but everything else is crystal clear.  I remember looking up and seeing I was about to fall off the ramp.  It was one that didn’t have a barrier so it was a good 20 foot drop.  I panicked.  I over corrected and instead of slamming on the breaks I hit the gas.

The first flip I wasn’t really aware what was going on yet.  Everything had slowed down but I wasn’t comprehending what was happening .  On the second flip I was looking out the window and I noted that the blue sky was where the green grass should be.  It was starting to sink in now.  Oh no.  My car is flipping.  I remembered hearing reports on cars that flipped and that the chances of surviving are slim.  I’m going to die.

At this point my life didn’t flash before me eyes, I didn’t see any bright light, I wasn’t taken to another dimension.  But, I wasn’t afraid either.  I had no pain, no regrets, as I was flying through the air.  If this is dying, it isn’t so bad.  That thought went through my mind on the third flip as the windshield shattered and caved in on me.

I don’t remember the fourth flip.  All I knew was that the car had stopped moving.  So I immediately put the car in park (making a horrible noise) and turned the engine off even though it was already dead.

I moved my left arm to open the door but it wasn’t cooperating.  I was stubborn so I opened it with my right arm instead- not really thinking about it.

I got out and took in my surroundings.  My car was facing the opposite direction of traffic and I somehow made it to the bottom of the ramp.  I looked for any other cars I might have hit but I didn’t see any.  That was my biggest concern.  That my mistake would have hurt someone else.  So far, no one looked hurt.

Some men in a beat up blue truck stopped next to me and asked me if I was okay.  They weren’t looking at my eyes.  They were looking at my arm.  I followed their gaze and saw it.  My left elbow had glass, metal, and bits of concrete sticking out of it.  I looked at the rest of my body and saw it was covered in my own blood.

“No.” I breathed, “I don’t think I’m okay.”

I went back in my car and retrieved my cell phone.  Fortunately I was charging it so it was easy to find.  Just as I grabbed it, someone wrapped their arms around my waist and pulled me away.  Apparently my gas tank had ruptured and my engine was sparking.  I watched the gas slowly puddle and inch closer to the sparks.  I was still close.  So the man walked me to his jeep that was parked further away.  It didn’t have doors so it was easy for me to take a seat in the drivers seat.

I grabbed my cell and called the person physically closest to me.  The place where I just left.  I called my older brother who was visiting our Mom’s place.  He’s going to be furious.

“I just got into a wreck,” I barely chocked out.

“Where?”

“Umm…  Where am I?” I asked the group who was staring at me.  They gave each other concerned looks but they didn’t need to be.  My sense of direction was horrible and still is.

I told my brother where I was and he said he would be there right away.  I didn’t have the energy to call anyone else.  I knew he would let our parents know.  Time was starting to act funny.  I noted what vehicles arrived.  First a city truck that put some powder over the gas leaking from my car.  Then a fire truck.  I saw the ambulance on the other side of the highway on it’s way to me.  But I was starting to loose consciousness.  I would fall asleep without realizing it.  The man kept talking to me, encouraging me to stay with him.

“If you don’t stay awake I’ll make you walk to the hospital.”

Sad thing is it worked, “No, I don’t want to walk to the hospital,” and I would struggle to stay awake.

Before the ambulance or fire truck arrived there was this surreal moment.  I was sitting in his car and looking down at my legs.  Blotches of oval shaped blood was on my thighs.  It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.  My blood was glittering in the sunlight, giving off different shades of red, blue, and purple.  It was glass from the window my elbow shattered.

I woke up again and saw my brothers car near the firetruck.

I called his name, unable to see him in the mass of people that had collected.  I was crying for the first time, repeating “I’m sorry” over and over as he comes in to hug me.

“I’ve been here for over 10 minutes.  You didn’t realize I was here?  I already talked to you.”

I shook my head.  He left to talk to the police officers.  The ambulance showed up and they were putting me on the stretcher and putting on the neck brace.  They put in an IV and everything was so uncomfortable, but tolerable.

I talked to them the whole way.  One of them asked the other, “Do you see that?  She has an angel on her forehead.  You must have something looking out for you.”

It was a gift from my grandmother.  She gave me something to put on my visor that said, “Never drive faster than your Guardian Angel can fly.”  It is a metal angel holding a roll of script.  My head must have hit it on one of the many flips and imprinted an angel there.

I was still going in and out and crying because I was afraid of how angry my parents were going to be with me.  My dad was at the hospital before I arrived and my mom showed up shortly after.  My brother left right away and I don’t know why.

X-rays were done, cat scans, the whole works.  I had a concussion, obviously, but no broken bones.  Not one.  My elbow was torn apart but nothing vital.  The problem was the skin I had lost.  It couldn’t just be stitched up.  I was in the ER for 8 long hours.  No food or water.  After an hour some of my friends came in- including my boyfriend at the time.

He looked at me like you would look at a body in the morgue.  He didn’t say a word, just walked around me, taking me in.  I was covered in glass that my parents were vainly trying to get rid of with tape.  But I would keep picking glass out of my skin for the next ten years.

After 3 hours the shock was wearing off, as well as my adrenaline.  The pain was excruciating.  My whole body had a dull pain in every bone, my arm didn’t feel like it was mine anymore- like it belonged to some white-hot creature.  They gave me morphine and for a moment it was worse.  I could feel it burn through my veins until it reached my heart and spread all over in an instant.  Then everything was calm.

Surgeons, one by one, came to my side, looked at the wound, and like a script every time said, “I need to go talk to someone else.”

They were afraid to touch me.  So a test was done.  A comically large syringe filled with liquid was going to have to go into my elbow joint to see if there was a leakage.  If the liquid leaked that meant other measures would have to be taken- more complicated ones.  I don’t think I’ve screamed so loud since.  Even through the morphine I could feel everything.  It didn’t leak.  And I was taken into surgery right away.

A team of surgeons had to stretch the skin of my arm so it could connect again, so they could stitch it together with 8 stitches.  I woke up in the recovery room when they took out the tubes from my throat.  I woke up again in my hospital room.  My sister-in-law kept saying she was sorry but I had to throw up.  I didn’t want to, but of course I did.  I threw up blood.

Later it was found out I swallowed quite a bit of blood, but it was from the wreck and not from something internally.

Some people came to visit me in the hospital room but I don’t remember much.  I was so heavily drugged.  But I could sense it, even under all the drugs, that something was off about them.  They were scared of me.  Everyone that talked to me was guarded, careful.  I felt like I was diseased.  Almost like I didn’t belong in this world anymore.

It fell to my mom to take care of me.  My rehab was slow.  I didn’t have control over my left hand, so one of the ways I got it back was by playing Zelda on the old Nintendo.  My mom printed out a guide to go off on since I was too drugged to connect anything together.

Most people called in once, to make sure I was indeed alive.  But one kept calling, every day.  Marcus.  We would talk about everything.  He was one of the only ones that asked for details of the wreck.  He wasn’t afraid of me.  I told him everything that happened.  We talked about life and death and what it was like to go flying through the air.

I was suffering mentally from the wreck too.  Why was I still alive?  Most people don’t survive even one flip, never mind 4.  But he talked me through it.  He helped me confront my fears of driving again and gave me some driving lessons.

Before school started again I made a promise to him.  I told him that if he ever got into any sort of car accident he could expect a call from me every day- even if he didn’t want to talk.

7 years later I get a call, telling me that Marcus had just died in a car accident where he flipped his car.  Survivors guilt?  Hell yes.  But worse than that is I will never get to keep my promise.  I should have called his family every day instead, but to be honest I was already going through a depression at that time.  I was so shocked that it took me months, years, to work out the feelings that were brewing in me.

I still don’t know why I am alive.  I don’t know why he had to die.  All I know is that he wouldn’t want me to carry this with me like I have for the past 3 years.  This unbearable guilt and sadness.  It’s time for me to let all of this go.