.Anniversary.

Ten years ago I could have died. But I didn't. In the past ten years I have gone from mostly focusing on that first statement to focusing on the second statement {most of the time}. It's been a hard journey mentally and emotionally but I'm forcing myself to now close that chapter - a decade has gone by and it's time to leave it where it belongs.
Most people that know me have at some point heard "the story". In late March 2002 I took my best friend {Becky} & baby cousin {Jaquelyn, then 8 years old} to the coast for the day. Becky had spent the night with me the night before and when we woke up to sunshine and birds chirping we knew right away that it was a Coast kind of day. Jaquelyn had recently moved up to Oregon & hadn't yet been to the PNW coast and I thought it would be the cool big cousin thing to do to take her with us for a girls day. We were right, it was the perfect day for girls to go play at the beach - it wasn't cold and there was a good enough breeze that we were able to fly a kite, eat some seafood, and play in the sand dunes. As we were leaving I realized that we were running late, I had promised to be back by a certain time {5:00 or 6:00 I want to say but can't remember} because it was a big weekend, Jaquelyn, her mother, and Easter were all right around this weekend and there were lots of family get togethers to attend to.
We snapped a few last photos of our time at the beach and piled into the car.

 .These two photos were taken right before we got into the car.

At this point I would like to address the first questions that I am asked every single time I tell this story {without fail} 1. was I under the influence of drugs or alcohol? No. Absolutely, emphatically not. I was totally and completely stone sober. 2. Were we wearing seat belts? Yes, it was {and still is} a hard rule in my car, seat belts at all times no ifs, ands, or buts. 3. What in the hell was I thinking? Well, the short answer is that I wasn't. The slightly longer answer is that I was just shy of turning 20, nothing truly horrible had happened in my life and I was still basically a kid, in other words it never occurred to me that I was anything short of invincible.
Moving on with the story...To get home on time I was speeding, dangerously so. At roughly mile marker 10 I was going just short of 100 mph. I can feel you re-reading that last fact thinking perhaps you got it wrong. You did not. I did in fact have an 8 year old child in the back of my car as a sped down the Sunset Highway going roughly 100 miles per hour. Yes, I am full of self loathing as I admit to that. I noted that quite a bit ahead of me was a large oil truck, being in a ford escort and at the bottom of an incline I "knew" from experience that if I took my foot off of the accelerator that I would end up at the correct distance from him without ever having to use my breaks as my car would loose most of it's speed with the incline. At this same time I realized that Jaquelyn, who had been a ball of energy the whole day {an 8 year old on a trip with the "big girls" is going to be}, was totally quiet which made me nervous and I couldn't see her in my review mirror. I turned fully around so that I could check on her {turns out she wasn't talking because she was sound asleep} and in what felt like less than a millisecond Becky screamed at the top of her lungs "oh my God, Chole, that truck isn't moving!". I whipped around and realized that the gas truck that should have still been far-ish ahead of me was in fact JUST RIGHT THERE at a full stop waiting to turn onto a side dirt road and I was going way too fast and that our options were 1. slam into the truck, 2. veer into oncoming traffic, or 3. try to go around which I knew that I couldn't make and if that was right then it would mean going over a cliff. I slammed on the breaks as hard as a possibly could and Becky and I screamed and prepared for death. I knew, in that instant I knew that we would die, and it was horrific. The impact was so hard that it felt like nothing I've ever experienced, the airbags punched us hard in the faces and the seat belts left blood welts along our shoulders, throats and chests. I was told later by a police officer that the skid marks indicated that we were going roughly 80 miles per hour at the point of impact at mile marker 14.
Immediately after, all that I could hear was the blood rushing through my ears, thunder loud, and I was in a fog sure that I was dead. A second later sound came back in full force and now all that I could hear was Becky screaming in pain and Jaquelyn crying and I knew that I was the only one of the three of us that get us out of the car. All that I knew of car accidents of this kind I learned from action movies {ha} and all I could think was that we had just hit a giant truck full of flammable gasoline and that if there was any kind of spark from the crash we would all blow up. Yes, I thought that we were all going to be engulfed in a fireball. I opened my door with the intention of grabbing Jaquelyn first and running her over to the side of the road where she would be safe and then going back for Becky if she hadn't gotten her self out by then. But when I went to stand up I crumpled on the ground, My ankle was in pain and I didn't have the strength to stand. I remember screaming to Becky "get out get out get out, what if there's a fire, please get away from the car!" in pure hysteria and Becky kept screaming and crying "I can't move my feet, I can't get out, I can't move my feet!" and Jaquelyn was crying for her mom and it was the most horrible thing imaginable. I kind of army crawled over to the back door and dragged Jaquelyn out onto the street with me so that we wouldn't be in the car and just kept begging Becky to somehow get out.
At this time two police cars, ambulances, and extremely kind strangers were on the scene {though they didn't arrive in that order} and the chaos just seemed to get worse. We were all three in shock and shaking and shivering and I remembered that Jaquelyn suffered from asthma and I was terrified that the trauma or seat belt, or both were going to cause something horrible to happen to her. I was hysterically trying to tell the paramedics that she was only 8 and she had asthma and please please take care of her first. I was strapped onto a gurney with my head in one of those things that they use for people with possible neck injuries and put into an ambulance by myself while I heard my best friend and cousin screaming and crying in the background. We were all rushed to the nearest hospital {which isn't much when you're outside of a tiny coastal town} where xrays were taken and we were all examined. I had a broken hand, lacerations and contusions from the seat belt & airbag, and a mild ankle twist. Becky had basically crushed the bones in her feet when she braced them against the floor boards on impact, and Jaquelyn had broken vertebrata in the lumbar section of her back as well as some internal damage. While the other two were in the exam and xray rooms I was left in the dark behind a curtain alone sobbing harder than I had ever cried before or after that day as everything hit me at once.

.The letterman jacket and child's shoe in the photo next to the crunched hood of the car are the most disturbing details of this image.

Later Becky and I were put into one ambulance while Jaquelyn was put into a second and we were rushed to Emmanuel Hospital here in Portland where they would go on to have surgeries and lengthy stays and I went from one girls room to the other in a zombie state with the only the thought "I did this to them, they are here and in pain because I was a careless asshole".
The first year was the worst {isn't it always, no matter what the case may be} with Becky being in a wheelchair for months, and Jaquelyn in a back brace for months. My birthday was a few weeks later, in the photos you don't see Becky because she didn't want to be photographed in her wheel chair, you don't see Jaquelyn because she was still bedridden, you only healing seat belt burns and forced smiles on my face as my friends try desperately to make me happy again.

I haven't been behind the wheel of a car since that day. At first it was do to legal reasons {I received a laundry list of citations}, then it was fear, then it was guilt, then it was self punishment, and then fear again...over a ten year period. It took years for me to be able to be in a car without having an anxiety attack of some kind, to this day I have an episode if I see break lights suddenly slam, or if a gas truck is in the next lane. But I'm working on it, I no longer hear those screams when I'm in a quiet room and I no longer see us as I lay on the road when I close my eyes.
Since that year we've all three moved on, Becky has a job she loves and just finished a snowshoe race on Mt Bachelor for charity. She's had numerous surgeries to try and heal her feet and has been going through pain management for most of the last ten years - it's not an easy journey but she's getting through it. Jaquelyn and her family moved away and I'm sad to say that I haven't seen her in person in about 8 or 9 years though thanks to Facebook I can share with you that she's a happy healthy teenager and an accomplished cheerleader.
There are more details to their stories but they are not mine to share and I cannot speak for them other than to say, we're all dealing with it and moving on as best as we can.
I had planned on sharing this story with my blog readers with the intent of it being a cautionary tale. Which, it is. If you have teenagers and they're soon to be behind the wheel of a car please make sure that they know how vitally important seat belts are, that even if you haven't been drinking you can still get in an accident, that the piece of machinery they have been intrusted with can take their own life or the lives of others. Talk with them about it until you're blue in the face and then talk some more. But, after typing it all out and seeing the pictures that I've spent ten years avoiding, I realize that this post is more for myself, a requiem for the emotional pain that lasted well after the physical scars had healed. I've given this story a decade of my life and now it's time to leave it in the past. It's time to forgive myself. That is my 30th birthday gift to me.