My Car Crash Story

Simply put, tonight is the 10 year anniversary of my car accident. I see it as one of the best things to ever happen to me. At the time, I was living in a small mountain town called Mariposa, CA. It is a famous gold rush town and the old Mariposa County took up most of California. The people who live there are hard working Republican types. God, guns, gays. I hated it. Sadly, I was stuck. I was 18, had no money, and what money I did have went to my car bills. I was working as a Front Desk Agent at a fairly large resort style hotel just outside of Yosemite National Park.

September 27th, 2003 was just a normal day. I went to work, I complained about guests, and then I left. I got off work at 11 pm. I headed home in my 97 Mitsubishi Eclipse. While I had the slowest model they made, it turned out to be fast enough. It was 140 hp, and fucking fun to drive. I had just had a custom Stabbing Westward (my all time favorite band) sticker made that stretched across the window. The charge hadn’t even cleared my account yet.

The highway that linked my place to my job was a long two lane highway. It was about an hour’s drive from my place to my job. It is the mountains, so there are lots of twists and turns. The Merced River follows the highway most of the way. Well I guess the highway follows the river, since the river was there first.

There was a straight stretch a few miles from my job. On each side of the straight stretch, there were two 45 mph turns for a total of four turns. It was just long enough to go 100+ mph and have enough time to slow down safely before the second set of turns. The trick was to go at least 60 mph through the first two turns.

I was going 80 mph.

So it would have been my fastest time yet. I made the first turn, but didn’t make the second turn. I drove straight into the mountain, ricocheted off the mountain, crossed back over the two lane highway and landed in the river. Well to be fair, the river was pretty much dry at this time of year.

I climbed out and then remembered to climb back into the car to turn the stereo off so it didn’t kill the battery. I kept the lights on, so the tow truck could find the car. So I guess you could say I wasn’t disoriented at all.

My hotel had a sister property a few miles away. It was closer to the sister property than to mine, so I started hitch hiking there. Keep in mind, this is 11:30 at night, on a two lane highway in the middle of no where. I’m not sure how long I walked. I remember quite a few cars passing me. I remember being able to see the headlights clearly. Maybe that was adrenaline. Anyway, at some point an Irish (maybe Scottish?) couple picked me up and took me to the hotel.

Even though the hotels were owned by the same company, we didn’t really know each other’s staff. I explained who I was and asked to call 911. The Night Auditor there was a nurse. Or wanted to be a nurse. Or saw a nurse on TV. I’m not sure what her qualifications really were, but she decided to help. She didn’t really clean the blood up because of reasons. I think she saw the glass and didn’t want to do anything with it. She bandaged my face so I looked like a ninja. Then the PM shift person who was on her way home, saw the car in the river, then drove back to work to call the police, offered me a ride to the hospital. Which was like 45 minutes away.

This may make some squeamish, so if you don’t like details of the body parts, skip this paragraph. As I hit the mountain, the driver’s side window imploded into the car. The airbag then conveniently pushed the glass into my face. The bandage on my eyes was too tight, so it pushed the glass further in. It punctured the cornea and the lens. It also changed the pupil from a circle to a zigzag. I guess you could say I had Harry Potter’s scar in my pupil. Even after the surgery, they couldn’t do much for the pupil other than smooth it out. So now it looks like an upside down water drop.

The closest hospital was not on my parent’s insurance. So they didn’t do much. They took some x-rays and a CT scan. I remember during the wait, a police or sheriff or whatever asked what had happened. He saw me in a wheelchair and bandaged up so he didn’t give me a ticket. Yay for pity. Then the ambulance took me to another hospital that was on my parent’s insurance. It was another hour or two away.

It took two surgeons over six hours. Maybe eight. I can’t remember. Anyway, the lens was punctured so they had to remove it. They also removed a fuckton of glass shards from my eye and face. Heh. I forgot I still have a piece of glass in my chin because they didn’t want to take it out for fear of nicking a muscle that controls my mouth. If they hit it, I would look like I had a stroke.

For the next few months I was in a lot of pain. Not the body so much. More of just a headache that never left. They gave me morphine but that didn’t work. So it was lots and lots and lots of NyQuil. I tried different headache medications, but those never worked for me. Still, I tried, and at times was taking 10000 mg every 4-6 hours. Needless to say, if I even think about Ibuprofen, I get sick. I spent a lot of time in bed. My parents agreed to take care of me, provided I go to church with them every week. I needed to go to the doctor for follow ups twice a week so I didn’t have a choice. Still, fuck them for being shitty parents and holding my healthcare hostage for their superstitions.

At first, I had like 30 stitches on my eye. The eye is really small, so that’s a lot of stitches. Imagine that feeling when you get something in your eye. Now imagine 30 of them. And you can’t get rid of them. It was infuriating. They suggested putting a contact lens on it to cover the stitches, but I still felt the contact lens so it didn’t help.

Getting used to the lack of depth perception was hard. I kept walking into walls. Finally I learned about size differentiation. For instance, you know that a key is a certain size. If it appears larger, it’s closer. If it appears smaller, it’s further away. That’s how I navigate… everything. Doors, people, those pesky kitchen cabinets that are at eye level. Fuck those cabinets doors.

My little sister, Maria, was awesome. She was… 4 at the time, I think. I had an eye patch on. Not to block the light, as much as to hold the eye lid closed. I had little Kleenex sheets in between the eye and the eye patch to add comfort and absorb the CONSTANT tearing of my eye trying to wash away the stitches. She was so excited to help change the bandages. I have no idea why. But she loved it. I remember one day, I was in an extra amount of pain. She decided to skip going out to play, just to cuddle with me. She was such an amazing nurse.

Eventually, the doctors said there was not much more they could do. My eye had healed as much as it could. I’m still blind in the at eye, and every doctor I’ve seen has refused to do a lens replacement. My aunt and uncle offered me a place to stay while I got back on my feet. I say this often, but I truly mean it. They saved my life. When I say that the car accident was the best thing to ever happen to me, what I mean is… I was stuck in life. I hated where I lived, but had no money to get anywhere. Once I lost my car, I lost my job. But I also lost my bills. I had nothing keeping me there. My aunt and uncle gave me a way out. They live in Seattle. The big city. No more hicks. No more white trash. No more painful memories. I took that life preserver and clung on for dear life and never let go. I promised myself that I would either get out of Mariposa or kill myself before I turned 20. I made it with three months to spare.

From there my life had no where to go but up. I was a born city person. I love it. I love the busyness. I love that there are people near me, even if I don’t know them. I went to school and got a degree. I turned hotels into a career that got all the way up to management. I am a self made man. I paid for school. I paid for my apartment and furniture and toys. But without my aunt and uncle, I would have killed myself. And without the car accident, I wouldn’t have had the freedom to leave.

Fun side note: While I can’t take credit on this, though I do, a few year after the accident, the part of the mountain in which I crashed collapsed, closing the highway and forcing them to move the highway across the river. You can see it on the map above.

So thank you, Aunt L and Uncle D (hidden for privacy reasons) and thank you car accident for making my life immeasurably better.