It's been four whole months since The Accident. One hundred and fourteen days, and counting. I call it The Accident, yet it is anything BUT an accident. The Incident, The Attack, The Hate - it is every one of these things and more, yet i cannot bring myself to use these words in passing conversation. So it remains The Accident, forever capitalised in my mind.
The Accident stole my creativity, my innate need to express myself through words, music and love. Somehow I knew that if i faced that demon, that thing made of fear and smoke, of death and decay, I would have to fight it, and i would have to win. This was a reality i could not face, so instead, i turned away. I told myself i had done enough fighting, i had learnt about things i did not want to know, I could rest now. In doing so, i closed the lid on my soul, and MY happiness, and i began to waste away.
It has been four months since a part of me, physical and emotional, was ripped unwillingly from my white-knuckled hands. On that day, i learnt about Attempted Murder. I learnt about Kidnapping. I learnt that your hair can, and will, fall out in clumps due to stress. I learnt what a hot stretch of tar will do to your face and your feet and your sense of self when you hit it at a projected 80 kilometres an hour. Four months since i gained the only piece of knowledge i wish i never knew.
For someone who's life currency is knowledge, this is a very hard thing to admit. Does it make me weak? Probably. Weaker, perhaps, than turning away from reality, putting down my courage and giving the demons a safe passage, right into the heart of me. But i think we can overlook that, in the face of the nightmares and the paranoia that now sicken me.
It is strange what one can remember, and conversely, what one can forget in a situation like this. The obvious things were the ones that my brain did not hold onto - his face, the interior of the car, what he said to me. Instead, my prizes are the improbable purity of the whites of his eyes, the slick stick of his sweaty shirt on my front, and the rough rasp of his hands on my skin. Slamming down onto my fingers, clinging desperately to the side of his car. Their car.
I will never know if they only wanted my bag - my precious Kindle, my brand new iPhone, house and car keys, money and cigarettes, or if that was not their goal. Did they want ME? - to see me beg, to steal my flesh, to kill me? To leave me in some foreign, dirty place, broken and bleeding out? To claim me? I can never be sure, but i will always believe that. Why else would he have thrown me into that car?
Four months ago, i realised that i was stronger than i knew. I was strong enough to haul myself out of the window - out, out, and over the side of the door. I was strong enough to hold on, for hundreds of metres. I was strong enough to beg those three fully grown men to slow down so i could climb off the car, strong enough to acknowledge, to beg and to SCREAM out loud that i would die if they didn't. In the end, i was strong enough to finally realise that they didn't care, that they were swerving into oncoming traffic in an attempt to crush me on the side of a truck. And then, i was strong enough to let go, knowing full well that it would fucking hurt.
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I did not cry. My first thoughts as my face hit the gravel, as my lip split open, as i flipped over and finally came to rest on my grated, bleeding back, were of my dogs. My sweet dogs that i had left behind, that had tried to protect me. I was up and running before my body was fully immobile, executing some kind of ninja twist that left parts of my skin stuck to the road, and parts of the road embedded inside me.
I did not cry when i crumpled to the floor, clutching their panicked bodies. I felt joy, and relief, even obscene gratitude that they were OK. That they had not been hit by a car, that indirectly, those bastards had not taken more from me. I did not cry while i examined my feet and knees with a clinical detachment, picking bits of stone out of wounds that were weeping blood and plasma. I remember thinking that it was amusing that my body was crying, while i was not.
I became aware of two women running across the park towards me - a mother and daughter, i later found out. I was embarrassed to let strangers see me that way. They dropped to either side of me - "We saw the whole thing," they said. They folded me into them, and then I cried. Oh, how i cried.
That day, i learnt that my sense of self-preservation was stronger than i ever gave it credit for. That day, i learnt that i wanted to die almost as much as i wanted to live. Almost, but not quite.
Four months, and every time i see a light blue Toyota Cressida, i freeze. Every time i am alone, i worry that they are there. Every nightmare, every time i look at my feet or knees or back, every time my dogs bark, they are there.
(I know I set out to write a mostly funny blog, but I have failed in that twice now. I wanted to write but couldn’t, I had no humour left inside me. I was, for all intents and purposes, creatively brain-dead. And I missed it so much, I missed the emotion and the passion that came with it, my life-blood. I would sit on my bed, pen in hand, begging the writing gods to flow through me, and… nothing. I would find myself, somehow, hours later, lying on my bed and actively NOT thinking about The Accident. I guess the writing gods were holding out on me, until I dealt with this. I hope they’re back. I missed you. I needed you.)
