car fear

[mamajoan]

I didn't think I had suffered any major psychological effects from last Friday's car accident (or incident -- does it count as an accident when only one car was involved and it didn't crash?). I drove to work just fine yesterday morning. But then yesterday evening on the way home, I did start to get a little fearful. Especially just as we were approaching the spot where it happened, I found myself constantly glancing at the hood of my mom's car and imagining that I saw it bobbling up and down like it was about to fly up. Of course I know that the odds of the same exact thing happening in the same exact place with a different car are very slim, but emotions don't operate on logic, do they?

Anyway, I think this is all normal. Every time I've had an accident/incident in a car, I've been a bit nervous afterward, especially in situations similar to the accident. Like after we got rear-ended a few months ago, even now when I'm coming to a stop at a red light, I look in my rear-view mirror and fret over whether the car behind me is slowing down fast enough. I think it's just that an incident like that brings to the forefront the fact that you try to suppress most of the time: that your car is basically a very large, very heavy piece of metal traveling very fast, and your control of it is tenuous at best, and its potential to do damage to your soft human bits is extreme.

I wish I didn't have to drive so much every day, and could sublimate that knowledge more thoroughly. But alas.

Comments

[bodacia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that is so normal. It's like your body gets sense memory when something traumatic happens. As you know, it will pass with time...

I'm just glad you're OK!!