Ten Years Ago

Ten years ago, I woke up on a very ordinary Thursday. I was grumpy because some telemarketer called, and I spent the morning in a relatively bad mood, avoiding homework. I even took to my LiveJournal to complain about having been woken up, and having to read something by Henry David Thoreau. Like I said before, it was a totally ordinary Thursday.

Then a friend called and asked if I wanted to hang out. Sure, I remember saying. Let's go rent a movie, come back to my house, and just hang out. No big deal.

I remember his car. It was a recent graduation present. A Mitsubishi Diamante. Maroon, and equipped with a brand-new stereo. We popped in a Sublime cd, and rolled the windows down, because the spring air was warm and we were on Spring Break. We chose a movie; one of the Bourne trilogy, and on our way home, he asked me, "hey, have you ever gone over 100 miles an hour?"

"No," I replied. "What's it like?"

Now, I often wonder if there was any indicator, any moment in that evening that may have been warning me. I've scoured my memory for a sensation, for a tingling in my scalp, something to let me know that I was barreling toward something very, very bad. In television and movies, there's always the big clue; they drop something important, and it flutters to the ground in slow motion. There's a key word or a look that just makes you think: something big is going to happen.

But every thing about that Thursday ten years ago is totally, absolutely, ordinary. I had lived through so many Thursdays just like it before. Real life, it turns out, is completely ordinary until one, crystalline moment where it's not. And chances are, you never see it coming. I didn't, anyway.

At 16, I was full of life, excitement, and that special something that all teenagers seem to possess: the sense that they're invincible. So believe me when I say that I had no idea anything was wrong as we barreled down a quiet country street, Sublime's "Summertime," blaring from the new stereo, the warm spring wind whistling through the open windows, until I saw the stop sign blur past my window.

"Oh no," I remember thinking. And then nothing.

I should have died. No, really. Every doctor, paramedic, and cute firefighter that helped me that awful, awful day has told me that they've never seen a crash like that where people lived. Doctors since have held up those plastic heart models and told me that my aorta should have separated from my heart upon impact. I didn't have an airbag. My seat belt was torn off of the wall of the car because of the sheer force.

It's a strange thing to hear, as a 16 year-old lying in a hospital bed, that you're not supposed to be there. Aren't I invincible? The doctors kept asking if we had been drinking or doing drugs. No, I kept saying, No. We were invincible.

It was God, people would say. It was a guardian angel, or pure dumb luck or physics. It's been 10 years and still, I'm not sure why. All I know is that I'm alive, and in all reality, I shouldn't be. I feel indebted, in a way, to whatever force came to the decision that that particular Thursday wouldn't be my last. Every day since the accident I wake up and feel completely, utterly grateful for the chance to just live another day. Every day is a celebration of sorts, because I get to experience all the little things that make life wonderful, and I was so incredibly close, a breath away, from getting to experience anything ever again.

So today I am celebrating ten wonderful years of getting to live my life. I am here today, and in the last ten years, I have experienced so much. I graduated high school, college, and graduate school. I met so very many amazing people whose presence in my life just brightens it, and I met Evan, my love. And then there are the little things that also make life so worth living. To go outside, feel the grass between my toes, and watch the trees sway quietly in the wind. To wake up every morning, open my eyes, and see the love of my life sleeping peacefully next to me. To feel the sun on my face, take a deep breath, and let myself be completely overwhelmed by the absolute beauty of it all, of everything.

Ten years ago, I lost that invincible feeling, but I was rewarded with such an enormous appreciation for life, and just how much of a gift it is. Life is purely amazing, beautiful, and I am awed by the sheer wonder of it all. Thank you, God, Luck, Physics, for these last ten years. I can't wait to see what wonderful (and ordinary) things Life has in store for me in the next ten years to come.