Before I launch into this almost really terrible thing, I want to announce that the winner of the $25 Amazon gift card giveaway is Katie Weinhold! Thanks Katie for participating I’ve emailed you!

Also a note on that. Did you know 82 people participated in that giveaway? With a whopping total of 377 entries! I couldn’t believe the turn out. I’m jumping for joy while sitting and typing and drinking an ice cold Fat Tire. But literally, jumping for joy. I got a few new subscribers too! So if you’ve just subscribed, it’s awesome to meet you, and just wait. You’ve got more opportunities to win gifts coming in the new year.

Now, onto the almost really terrible thing!

I may be exaggerating a tad, but it was a wake up call. Nothing very traumatic has happened to me since the loss of my dad back in early 2011, and for that I am very grateful. I’ve lived life in perfect gratitude, with an abundance of love, peace, and optimism. Regardless of what I’m occasionally ranting about here.

But last Saturday night, I was driving on the freeway and a white Mercedes in the right lane next to me swerved sharply into my lane, causing me to swerve sharply to the left and abruptly zig-zag out of control. It was by far, one of the scariest things I’ve ever gone through. I don’t know how many people have died in an abrupt car accident, but I’ll say that it has to be the quickest, most scariest fucking way to die I can ever imagine.

The steering wheel was uncontrollable. The car was uncontrollable. My front left  tire blew out when I swerved sharply to the left to avoid the accident, and it caused me to zig-zag all over the place, seeing nothing but white lights from the traffic on the other side of the freeway, and feeling in my gut that something huge was surely about to hit me, as I was still in the flow of moving traffic. I could not control the car to save my life. I gripped the steering wheel and lightly started pressing on the brakes because I had no clue what to do. The zig-zagging seemed to go on for an eternity. I couldn’t see anything, and felt my body jerking to the right, then to the left, over and over again.

Finally, when I rammed into the center divider, I screamed and covered my face for fear that the side air bag would explode and knock me unconscious.

But amazingly, shortly after I hit the divider, no air bag went off, nor did any other car hit me. My car continued to roll slowly forward, scraping the center divider. I pulled the emergency brake to stop the car, and saw that a Prius had pulled over and a man was walking towards me. I rolled down my window and waved. He asked me if I was okay and if I had a phone. I answered yes to both questions, and soon he was gone, since the shoulder we were pulled over at was nowhere near safe, and he had children in the car.

I grabbed my phone, which was now on the passenger side floor, and hurriedly called 911. I was fine, and I felt fine, but my body was shaking beyond belief. I didn’t want to give into it, because it was as though I’d had some unseen barrier wrapped around me throughout the entire spin out, and I felt miraculously fine. But I fell apart when I called Adam, the rush of the accident finally lodging itself in my throat, while tears of fear and thoughts of what ‘could have happened’ burst forth and I felt myself collapsing into the phone, sobbing hysterically.

Eventually the CHP officer came and stopped the entire freeway so I could scoot my car across to an exit. It still drove luckily, but the front wheels were basically rolling on rims.

Two hours later, I was bundled in a blanket, watching my favorite show (Parks and Rec). Adam sat with me while I cried a lot, and made me some Velveeta mac and cheese, as well as a surprise pizza pocket. I was an absolute wreck, feeling better one minute and sobbing with flashbacks the next. The past two days my entire neck and back have been sore, but I think it’s mostly from being tense throughout the whole thing.

As for the white Mercedes well, you know how these stories end. Whoever it was, wasn’t hit at all. After they swerved in front of me, and I swerved away, they likely righted their vehicle and kept speeding on towards some bright, unknown future. No, they didn’t stop, and yes, for a moment I thought that was appalling. And because I didn’t hit anyone during my zig-zag, the insurance is marking it as ‘collision with a stationary object’ or some insurance jargon of the sort. I’m driving a rental car for the moment, and will see if the damage is too extensive to fix.

The takeaway from all of this, is that you can thank God every day for every precious moment you’re alive, but you never truly understand the meaning of ‘live today like it’s your last’ until something random almost makes it your last. I mean never in a million fucking years did I think something so completely random on the freeway could happen to me. You hear about it all of the time, but you never let it really sink.

And my immediate reaction to all of this is…holy shit, everything I ever understood about life is completely wrong. All of the happy days were shit, all of the positivity was pointless, and all of the happy thoughts were for nothing because still, bad things can happen to ordinary people at ordinary times in ordinary cars.

But that’s a horrible way to think. I know that. And it’s exactly that train of thought that I’m working on NOT thinking about. But it’s positively bizarre, and I can see how tragedy can make a person feel like they’ve done something wrong to cause it, or that it doesn’t matter if you’re a good person or a bad person because bad shit can happen to anyone.

But to me, it’s like the universe is speaking to me. It’s like I’ve been floating along merrily for years and years but suddenly I’ve bumped into someone and it hurt. That’s what this was. An accidental collision with life. I think about life so frequently, it’s like it somehow talked back to me. And not because I did anything wrong. I didn’t do anything to cause this to happen, I wasn’t texting, wasn’t drunk, wasn’t distracted. I can’t blame myself or my thoughts or my way of life, because it absolutely had nothing to do with this.

This had everything to do with life, and how living life is a risk.  It’s not a sleigh ride downhill. It’s not a heap of marshmallows. (Okay it’s mostly a heap of marshmallows). But you can’t expect to live life without bad things happening to you. I’m starting to realize that once I accept that this was just a bad thing that happened me, like bad things happen to hundreds of people every day, it becomes easier to digest.

And I won’t live in fear for the rest of my life. I refuse. I won’t stop driving on the freeway forever. I won’t be paranoid every time I get behind the wheel of a car, because I feel like that will only invite more bad things to come by, hang out, and have a drink. And I don’t want to have drinks with bad things because bad things are angry drunks.

What I do realize though, is that recovering from this incident is a process. I can’t expect all of this acceptance talk to magically sink in over night. It hasn’t. I’m very much afraid when I get behind the wheel now and I’m not ready to go back on the freeway just yet. But it’s because I’m in recovery. I’m fragile as fuck, so I’m gentle with myself. I need to be. I’ve always known that life was special, but now more than ever I’m realizing how special it truly is, and that it wants me to stick around a bit longer to see what’s in store.

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Monique Muro

Monique is an exceedingly happy human from LA. She runs the blog A Novel Quest, and writes. A lot.

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