Next week I have to give my depositions for the lawsuit for the 5 car accident I was involved with back in December 2007. I am supposed to make detailed notes about driving home that day, the accident, and all the doctor’s appointments, and medical issues afterwards. I have done everything for before and after the accident itself, but just couldn’t bring myself to write about the few minutes which this all revolves around.

Talking about it brings on the memories, and the memories bring on dreams. All in all it just makes me feel like a big baby because I feel like I am not able to deal with all of this like I should. I can’t stop focusing on the sights, smells, sounds.

I can recall perfectly how the air smelled and burned my throat, the scent of hot plastic from the airbag, the smoke from the fire, the chemicals from the engine of the van behind me that was practically in my backseat. I remember the lights of the cars heading at me as I tried unsuccessfully to get out of the car on the drivers side, and the shoes the girl who helped pull me from the passenger side of my car was wearing. I can still hear this poor little 1 yr old boy crying as he held onto his mom.

Talking about it brings on the memories, and the memories bring on dreams. All in all it just makes me feel like a big baby because I feel like I am not able to deal with all of this like I should.

Finally though, I knew I needed to suck it up and do it so that I could be prepared for the in depth questions I know they are going to ask me. But my bulleted and complete sentence notes quickly became a non-sensible outpouring of words and short phrases of memories and feelings. The above is written verbatim, and in the same format, from a section in the 2 pages of thoughts that flowed out through my fingers.

Now I know nothing about poetry (which I am sure is apparent – hell I didn’t even know what category to put it in), but I think the whole thing became a type of stream of consciousness exercise. Some of the words and phrases I am not even sure I remember writing. Also, I never planned on sharing this with ya’ll, or anyone for that matter, but after I went back and read through everything that I had put down I just felt so much more calm, and just better in general. I think that now that I have gotten out the more intense parts of my feelings and memories I can sit back and sift through them a bit more rationally, and finally prepare myself for the all the questions that will be thrown at me. So I figured if I could share this small bit with ya’ll I would be more able to share the experience in its entirety with a bunch of strange lawyers.

So I thank you for being me guinea pigs, and apologize for subjecting you to the weirdness that is my mind.