
The accident
Where do I start? At the beginning of course. I was driving home from work with my usual sense of false urgency. I just wanted to get home, have a cup of tea, chill out and think about my up and coming holiday. I am a teacher and it was the last week of the school term.
I had been feeling strangely uneasy sitting in the middle of the road ready to turn for the last two weeks. Today was no different. But I had that end of term tiredness that teachers get and I couldn’t judge the gap I needed to make the turn. So rather than make a mistake I waited for a big gap that I could see coming further down the road. Well here comes a metaphor-sometimes if you wait too long and don’t take the chance to move on you get stuck and life will force you to move.
In my case a road safety truck carrying cones crashed into the back of me. There is some irony to the type of vehicle. I remember the hit from the truck and nothing else. But I was then propelled into on coming traffic and hit again.
When I came to there was a lovely first responder there who asked me who to contact. Then I just focussed on breathing. I was in the most pain I had ever been in and I needed to come to grips with this new reality. So I practised mindfulness. I took big breaths and with every out breath I said the ‘f’ word. Works well when you don’t use it too often. The smell of petrol fumes was alarming. The petrol tank had been pushed up to my seat and I was sitting in fuel. The good bugger who stopped and put his sheep skin blanket over me had that under control. Another key learning-how fortunate we can be when we have the right people at the right time. People with knowledge who stop and help at accidents are legends.
So that is how my journey to discovering a new normal begins.
