...and totaled my car this morning.
I've never done more than graze the occasional curb while parking before, so it was especially shocking. Not that I imagine it's ever NOT shocking to make a left turn and suddenly find your car being slammed right at forty-five mph. I still haven't figured out exactly what happened, if I thought he was stopped or going slow enough to give me time to make the turn, or if he was running a light or trying to beat a yellow or WHAT; I have no idea whose fault it was, but right now the insurance thing is for "no fault" so I'm guessing we both fucked up. I can't really imagine myself making a left turn onto a busy road if traffic was moving in both directions, which is why I wonder about him going through a light, but I couldn't really say for sure... I was very tired and stressed out (and furious at my GPS for fucking me up; if it had just said "take the next left" when it was supposed to and not "prepare to turn left in 100 yards" or whatever it did say, I wouldn't have changed lanes and missed my turn, and I wouldn't have had to turn around and pull back onto the road, and I wouldn't have been running late and anxious...), and it's entirely possible I "looked without seeing". I have no idea what happened; it was all so sudden and out of the blue.
In a weird way the scariest thing at first was not being able to find my glasses. They and my hat got knocked clear off me, probably by the air bag (suddenly finding that smoking up my car with that dentist-drilling-around-in-your-head kind of smell was a jolt too), but my gum was miraculously still in my mouth and not lodged in my throat. All I could think at first when bystanders were trying to get me out of the car was "Oh god I can't find my glasses"; all anybody could find for the first five, ten minutes were sunglasses, neither of which were my prescription ones, so not only did I total my car but I couldn't see what was going on.
Now that I have my glasses and am safely out of the hospital (mostly scrapes and bruises, no breaks or gashes, which was kind of surprising given the amount of glass I was picking out of my clothes at the hospital) what freaks me out the most is that my girlfriend hasn't been told. At the scene I only had time to call my mom and the friend who got me the job so she could tell them why I wasn't coming in today. Then at the hospital my parents persuaded me that it would be better to wait for Amanda to get here, since she's coming up tonight anyway, before telling her so that she doesn't drive worried and get herself into a crash too. Which makes sense, but I still feel awful not telling her right away. It's interesting how much things have changed since we've been dating... normally when something seriously bad happens I think "I want my mommy!". Today, even when I had my mom there holding my hand all I could think was "I want my baby!" Even if she'd been able to leave work straight away, I would have been discharged by the time she would be able to get up here, but still... I wanted her there. Now I think about how in four hours or so she's going to come up my drive and see my car's not there and she'll have no warning... but at least she won't be worrying about it during her drive, and I guess that's the important thing. But I still feel awful not calling her immediately, because I know she'd want to know.
Cars are frightening beasts. I've always felt that way. I always will. But all things considered, this could have been worse. I'm home. Bruised, scraped, aching, stiff, and abruptly car-less (which will make getting to and from my already overwhelming new job interesting), but home and relatively unharmed as far as these things go. I never managed to get a good look at the other guy, but as far as I could tell he was in roughly the same shape I was, so I'm hoping he too is safe and sound at home.
