"Oh my God!" my husband yelled. In the split second before my head continued at 45 miles an hour into the back of my husbands seat, I saw bright head-lights and then heard the seemingly deafening sound of metal and glass crashing. Then it was quiet, a few moments of weird quietness before the kids starting crying and my husband started yelling to us, "Is everyone ok!?!?!" My eyes drifted to the rear-view mirror and I locked eyes with myself. "No! I'm not ok! I need to go to the hospital!" My husband and James looked at me. James immediately started dialing 911 and I looked one last time at the blood running down my face and the grotesque lump that was growing at a weird rate on my left temple.
Neighbors around the accident came running out to help. A women with a pretty and pleasant face (so pleasant, that concern didn't quite look right on it) appeared and opened my door urging me to get out of the car. I couldn't. I just couldn't move. The pain was crazy. And when I say crazy, it was the worst pain I have every felt. This is coming from someone who has had med-free child birth, 2 C-section recoveries and fought gall-bladder attacks for 5 years. The pain paralyzed me with fear and I was shaking all over. The pleasant women stayed with me until the EMT's arrived and had me in the truck. While we waited, she talked to me like we were meeting for coffee... how many kids did I have? Ages? Schools? Etc. I don't like small talk, and it seemed weird and foggy at the time. I wasn't even sure she was real, like, who has small talk with someone with a busted, bleeding face? But now I figure that she was just trying to keep me coherent and calm.
In the Ambulance the 2 EMT's were like good-cop and bad-cop. Good cop was a handsome black man, with kind eyes and long pretty dread-locks pulled back from his face, bad-cop was an angry white women with short blonde hair. Good-cop hovered over me and asked me questions and then bad cop wanted to insert a heploc. I told her "no", that I hated needles and IV's. She was adamant that I get one. I asked if we could just wait until we got to the hospital and see if I needed one or not. We went back and forth. Good-cop followed her with his eyes while he gently wiped the blood out of my eye. She was getting annoyed, I was getting nauseous... she won.
When we got to the ER and they got me out of the truck and handed me off to the hospital staff, I quietly, through the pain and nausea said, "Thanks guys." Bad-cop smiled and said, "Your welcome." All was forgiven.
A month and a half later, I followed Warren out the kitchen side door into the brilliant summer sunshine and I immediately flinched. I am currently doing concussion therapy 4 times a week and sunshine is like battery on my eyes. The air was cool for mid-July and it felt good. Warren, with his closely cropped, platinum blonde summer hair and deep brown tan (I mean honestly, the kid couldn't be any blonder or any tanner), raced to the front of the house where our neighbor Ben was having a yard sale. Warren loves yard sales. He had a Ziploc sandwich bag full of change and he quickly buzzed from table to table like a little honey bee. I paged through a thick book of herbs and asked how much it was when I noticed the big sign, "Psychic Readings $10"
Ben's girlfriend sat in front of the sign in a red sundress across from an empty chair. I don't know if it was the wad of bills stuck in her bra-strap, or the boldness of anyone with wild ginger curls and milky white skin to wear red, but I plopped myself down in the empty chair and asked, "So how does this work?" "Well" She began, "I am going to ask you to close you eyes and I will have you picture certain things in your mind and then ask questions about it." "Ok, Let's do it.", I was game.
"Okay", she began, "Close your eyes. Now imagine you're walking down a road..." Immediately into my dark mind, a road appeared. It was a dirt "wagon-wheel" road surrounded by meadow. "Are you with anyone or are you alone?" I'm alone. My hand reached out and I let the tall grass tickle my open palm. Insects buzzed, and although it was sunny, I could look everywhere clearly. The road was relatively straight but went up and down in little hills every now and then, but nothing so big that I couldn't see over it and into the distance beyond.
"Now imagine you are walking along this road and you come across a key. Where is the key? What does it look like? I find a key. It's a boring brassy little house key just floating in midair, kind of Harry Potter-ish. "What do you do with it?" I immediately reach out and take it my hand. I see it in my palm and put it in my pocket.
"Now keep walking. Next you come across a cup. What does it look like? What's inside of it? What do you do with it?" I keep walking and come across a glass of water. The glass is crystal clear, cleaner than any glass my family has ever owned. The water sparkles in the sunshine. I am suddenly very thirsty and want to pick it up and drink it.
"Now you come across a tree. Describe the tree." My tree appears along the road. It's alone and beautiful. Like a pretty story book tree with hole in it. The wood is rough and grayish and the leaves a brilliant green. I stop and look at it. I like the contrast of the rough bark against the smooth leaves. I let my hand touch the rough bark and I briefly let a leaf slide between my fingers, but I don't dare take it. I hate pulling leaves off of trees. Then I keep walking.
"Next you come across a wall. The wall goes as a high as you can see and stretches across to the right and left completely. A giant stone wall appears. Even though it is looming and infinite, it doesn't feel foreboding. I know the stone is cool without even touching it, but I do. I feel the cool grey stones and let my fingers curl into the mortar between them. I look up into the nothingness. "What do you do?" I decide to walk alongside the wall, letting my left hand drift and drag along it. "But what if you can't find an end? What then?" I stop. I decide to turn around and find the path and head back the way I came.
So, what becomes of all of this? Well, the road has been my view of life so far, the key is how I perceive the future, the cup is my definition of love and relationships (both romantic and friendly), the tree is how I view sex and attraction, and the wall... the wall is death. She explains all of this to me and goes over what my answers mean. I actually really enjoyed it. It didn't seem as much psychic as psychological. I asked her what she did as her day job. "I'm an insurance agent" Is that what you've always done? "No, I majored in psychology."
Two themes seemed to stick out the most, simplicity and transparency. She talked about how much I hate being lied to. And yeah, everyone hates being lied to, but basically once I label someone as a liar they are as good as dead. I told her that there was no big lie told in my life but I did hate liars, and I had literally just been lied to that week. Nothing big. I mean, A friend showed a picture I posted on FB to someone. It was basically a picture of this other mom on the team being a finish judge in a skimpy bikini top and little cut-off jean shorts and drinking beer on the job. I know, I know... classy! It was a distance shot, so you couldn't see her face. She literally looked like a random wax figure of Barbie's older sister.
After the picture was shown, I was technically criminally assaulted by a 6ft tall Amazon women (I'm 5"3, I literally look like a hobbit next to her). She was in my face, tripping over Brody in his stroller and I was flooded with the smell of Corona while she screamed, "I'm going to fuck you up!" and that I should, "watch my back." (it turned out that Barbie's sister was so drunk she had to leave her car there. Who get's wasted at a children's swim meet? I mean, I know they're boring and all, but just bring a book or something) And then I asked my friend straight-out if she showed the picture and she answered "no" when she really had. This was like a back-stabber friend type lie. Those feel like you are just driving along in your car, and someone makes a random left hand turn into you and you plow right into them. It's all so very unexpected and you sit there for a minute in a dizzy fog thinking, "Did that just happen?".
I didn't want to be driven anywhere after the accident. I was scared to be a passenger. Once or twice I got so scared and anxious I cried. It was easier to be the driver, but even that was hard. I forced myself to be a passenger though. I couldn't let my anxiety grow and get out of control, so I immediately started "flooding" myself. It worked pretty well. My anxiety reached it's peak a few times and then came back down and It started to get easier.
I have a pretty strong internal locus of control, and that was shaken up a bit by the fact that you can't control what other people do and therefor your destiny isn't completely within your control. Like, for reals! There was nothing we could have done to prevent that accident. And there's nothing you can do to prevent some people from turning on you. If they are gonna turn they just will, whether they are making a left turn or making a lie.
So, I'll just continue to walk my simple path with the small hills, key in my pocket, and looking for a drink of crystal clear water in a clean glass cup.
