When I close my eyes, I can feel that same sense of helplessness, knowing I had pulled out of the rest area parking lot on that all too snowy day. I knew I had made a mistake. But, I also knew I had no recourse. I had to go forward. There was no pulling off to the side of the road. I had a small child asleep in the seat next to me, depending upon me. I had to get to the next exit so we could pull out and pull aside. We never made it. Doing twenty-five miles per hour on an interstate, we hit an icy patch. The rented moving truck I was driving skidded into the middle median. I thought we’d be all right. That thought didn’t make it through my mind before we were upside down in the middle of the median and my daughter’s life was flashing through my eyes. It was so cold. The snow was coming down so thick. I climbed out of the truck, dragging my now awake and groggy child with me to check her over, nearly mad with fear and agony that she should be lost to me. I saw emergency lights a few hundred feet up the road from us. I figured they’d seen us and would be right over. I didn’t realize since we had no flashing lights they had no idea we were there. I got my daughter wrapped in her coat. I checked the bird that was traveling in the front of the truck with us. I went to check on the car we had been towing, with our dog in it. The car too was upside down. It had been thrown quite far by the accident. The dog survived. The bird survived. My daughter and I were unhurt physically. We were fine. We spent the entire day in the fire station. We were one of nearly twenty accidents that day on that one mile stretch of road.
That is not the official beginning of this story. But there is no real hard spot that I can pinpoint and say this, right here, this is where everything shifted and changed and now we started going on ahead from this point. The best I have right now is this motor vehicle accident, that day at the fire station, hundreds of miles from home, when we nearly lost everything. Without this accident, our lives may have gone down a familiar path. Maybe all those fortune tellers would have been right. Maybe some other guy would have come along to fill my days until he died in a car accident far too similar to the one we still fight to put behind us. Maybe everything would have fallen into a better place along the line financially. Maybe a lot of things would have happened. But they didn’t. This does not upset me nor does it sadden me.
Because of the accident, my best friend of eight years and I began dating. We came to find out we really were meant to be together, just like everyone had been telling us for the past eight years. Things began to come together with my writing, my art work, drawing, sculpting, doll-making. As I struggled to regain the person I was, I was also fighting to be the person I have yet to become.
The accident happened seven months ago, almost to the day today. My entire world has shifted in that time.
I feel as if I am the phoenix trapped in the flames, still buried underneath the ashes, waiting for my time to burst out and be free. This is my incubation time. This is my anthanor. I am baking and sweltering and firming up the person that I shall be when I come birthing out of my little sphere.
I am not all that special. I want to do so many things. Just cannot find the time to do it all. I want to write, to draw, to paint. I have dolls to make, bowls to throw, bread to bake, children to mold. I have gardens to grow, lawns to mow, people to love.
Far too long I have been too unsettled, to afraid, too diverse. In my little melting pot here, the womb I created and concocted for myself, I am burning away these things that hold me back. I am growing the parts I need, the ones I have been missing for so very long. I am growing a mechanism that will enable me to trust myself, one to allow me to have faith in myself, another to grant me access to my self-respect and self-esteem. I am opening my heart, widening it and allowing true love in. I am growing new flight feathers that I might soar so high before swooping down and becoming one with the Great Deep, giving up my wings for tentacles that allow me to probe unfettered and unhindered.
This is my dearest dream. I am giving birth to myself. I am creating myself in my own image. Only this time, I am free.
