Chapter Three

The wreck and the rut afterward

The end of October 2005 wasn't my finest hour. One night, a friend and I decided to drive to a town or two over for a big rival football game. We had stopped at Sonic and ate and I got my usual chocolate milkshake. Little did we know that I would never drink that shake.

What exactly happened is all a blur, probably because in the mix of it all I closed my eyes and prayed to God until my heart couldn't handle it anymore. But what I do remember is that it was about dusk and I was waiting to make a left hand turn down from Griffin's football stadium. While attempting to make a left hand turn I was hit by a car and my 1998 Toyota 4-Runner ran up on a curb, hit a big brick fence, and then rolled over landing on the roof. Within seconds of coming to halt upside down, I start screaming for the friend that I was with trying to make sure she was okay, and thankfully she was. Bystanders were calling 911 and were attempting to get us out. They lay us down on the curb trying to calm us down and I just couldn't shake it. I just kept staring at my upside down SUV. The SUV I had had since I was 15. The SUV I had wanted for years was now totaled. It didn't take long for my school mates a few blocks down to find out that it was me that was in the wreck down the street and quite a few of them came running. It took my parents around 30 minutes to get to Griffin and my parent's took my friend and I straight to the ER at my local hospital. Some of my high school friends came to the hospital and visited while I was being checked out. I spent a week or so with a sling on my left arm. The following day my parents and a good guy friend of mine took me to the place my SUV was held for me to get my stuff out of it and needless to say I cried the entire time. Remnants of my chocolate milkshake all over my 4-Runner. School books scattered all over the place. At the wreck site, we picked up pieces of my 4-Runner. Somewhere in my parent's house is a bag with the pieces and my hospital bracelet. For a while I kept the broken front license plate but I think by now my mom has thrown it away because I'm reminded of my wreck license plate or not. 


After my wreck, I was never quite the same. I didn't ditch my old friends, but I did gain a new crowd. A crowd that was less than mediocre. A crowd that my mom was not fond of. A crowd that my mom to this day says destroyed a part of me. There's no way to say this without sounding snotty but in all actuality, I was better than them. I had been raised better than them. I was from a different upbringing than them. The people I was so fond of all the sudden were trash. Does trash ever see themselves for what they are? No. These horrid friendships went on for months until I finally woke up and realized the crowd I had been hanging with weren't the people for me. The girl I had became besties with proceeded to hack into my MySpace and defame me and it was horrible. It was embarrassing. When things like this are done on the internet there isn't much one can do about it. We even went to the school principal in an attempt to get her in trouble but we never had the right evidence. That is in the past and honestly that whole nightmare hadn't crossed my mind until writing this chapter. 


Everyone you come in contact with can impact your life even in the slightest ways. My wreck made me a very paranoid driver and even to this day, left hand turns make my palms sweat and making those turns with oncoming traffic close by makes me tense up and very uncomfortable. Until a year or so ago, I had a breakdown every time my mom would drive through the red light where I had my wreck. She saw a red light, I saw my wreck. And afterward it would play in my head nonstop. The group of people I chose to pal around with showed me that you are known by the company you keep and that ruthless people will always be ruthless. Since then, I've been picky about the friends I've chose to be close to.

You never really know anyone. You have to trust that the people you are choosing to hang out with are good people. And sometimes, you're blinded by a "good time" that you forget about trust and the way others may perceive you.