Letting go of the rope

I repress alot of emotions.  Emotions that lay boiling just beneath the surface sometimes waiting to explode.

Nearly 5 years ago I was a healthy, vibrant, physical, energetic and successful woman.  A woman who was sure of herself, who knew what she wanted and could obtain anything she set out to acquire.  A woman without doubts, without fears, without limitations.

At that point in time, I'd made some major changes in my life and was excited about starting over again, about still being young and healthy enough to do so.  In the blink of an eye, all that changed.
 

Nearly 5 years ago a little girl lost her life and I was left shaking my fist at the sky screaming "Why? Why?" 

Though the accident was no fault of my own, the guilt I lived with (that she died and I didn't) wounded the very soul of me.  Before, my mind was a peaceful place.  Suddenly it became tormented with nightmares.  I'd wake up screaming in the middle of the night,  reduced to a mass of helpless tears.

I'd look at my body, a body then unrecognizable to me, and I'd shudder.  And then...then  I'd remember the little girls body when rescue teams pulled her from the wreckage.  Over and over my mind  replayed the sight of paramedics gently straightening her twisted little arms and  legs, smoothing the hair back from her brow.

I'd see the tears in a rescue workers eyes as my subconscious mind registered the mechanical whine of the jaws of life working to free her mother.  I'd see the little girl's eyes slitted open but unseeing.  I knew she was gone as soon as I saw her but at the time was too numb with shock to cry... my mind recoiling from the reality of death.  That was the one and only time I would ever see her but I will never forget her.

You'd think I would have been grateful that my life was spared. Back then I wasn't able to find that place of gratitude.  I felt sorrow for a young mother who had lost her daughter and would spend the rest of her days without her.  My heart cried for that mother, knowing she would never see her little girl grow up, finish school, marry, have a family of her own.  Of holidays missed, her first kiss.

I grieved too, for the teenage boy who had just graduated high school the night before and had a promising life stretched out before him.  His life would be forever changed by one tragic moment in time. By one error in judgement. 

Such thoughts defeated me. 

Back then I raged over the fact that I'd become as helpless as a baby where before I'd never needed anybody to do anything for me. I couldn't crawl, walk or wheel myself around.  I was angry  that I couldn't turn back time and undo it all somehow.  Perhaps change my schedule, drive a different route... I was filled with "what ifs".  What if I hadn't gone to the store first thing that morning.  What if I had left a little later.  What if I'd been in the other lane.  What if....

I hated the "thing" that I'd become, because it wasn't the person I was.  And I was scared. More scared than I had ever been in my life. Scared that I might not get any better. Scared I'd be trapped in a body I no longer recognized as my own. Scared that the horror of that morning would always arise at night to fill my dreams. I was trapped in my own personal hell.

I despised the weakenesses that kept me from being able to care for myself, do my own laundry, feed my pets, clean my house, wash my clothes, run, jump and laugh. I hated the body that seemed to have betrayed me.  I detested the fact that I could no longer find peace in prayer when prayer had always been my strength. I was angry at God. 

But that was all nearly  five years ago.  To be continued....