A few days ago, I was in a car accident. It wasn’t major but it also wasn’t minor. I was driving along a side street towards a stop sign, past which I’d be joining a road filled with morning rush hour traffic. Not certain how far I was from the stop sign when I realized I couldn’t slow down; my wheels were sliding. I began to pump my breaks but it made little difference. There was no chance of a full stop before entering the main road, where the likelihood of being t-boned was high.

Afraid of what might happen to me and whoever would hit me, I made a spilt second decision to steer my car into a recently plowed hill of ice. My car hit the snow lifting the right, front wheel. It was a matter of seconds then it was over.

I felt my nose running a bit, so I put my hand underneath it. There was blood. I hadn’t hit my head, I was certain of that, but I had felt my body jerk forward and back. It was a confusing sight but I didn’t give it much thought. A woman who was driving behind me stopped beside my car, lower her window, and was saying something. I turned to her and gave a thumbs up. “I’m okay, I’m okay” I annunciated clearly so she could read my lips through my closed window. She smiled and drove away.

Despite being in shock, I realized I wouldn’t make it to the office in time for my 9 am meeting. I messaged my assistant to cancel it. She asked about the 10 o-clock meeting; I said to leave it, one way or another I’d get there.

I pulled on the door handle and watched as the door swung open, the car being angled in such a way that the door moved on its own. I got out and walked around to the front. Pieces of my bumper were scattered in the snow with some still half attached to the frame. I messaged by cousin who lives close by for help. More cars came to stop, a pedestrian walking by offered to try to push the car back…

I won’t keep going with all the details, but with the kindness of many we managed to get the car off the hill. Being as old as it is, my car is built on a steel frame; it was this frame that prevented it from crumpling any further.

My cousin checked the car over and said it was safe to drive, so we parted ways, and I headed downtown, driving along rather slowly. My hands were trembling a bit, from the adrenaline I figured, but otherwise I felt fine. I knew my day was very full.

By the end of the day my head was pounding, I could barely stand to have my eyes open and frequently leaned over my office garbage can with nausea. Although I am generally quite stubborn and insistent that I can manage through any discomfort, I began to worry. Something wasn’t right. I called ahead to my doctor’s office and told the receptionist I needed to see him as soon as possible.

The next two days I mostly stayed in bed, blinds closed, left alone with my thoughts. The doctor said to minimize screen time, no reading, no strenuous activity. The brain had been shaken, it was likely a bit swollen, pain was to be expected but could be managed with medication. I needed to call him back if I started vomiting or experienced any blurred vision, both of which would require getting a CT scan. I did just enough to arrange for help with the kids, drop off at school, pick up at the end of the day. Dinner would be ordered in.

So I lay there in bed… alone with my thoughts…

Then it occurred to me, the doctor never said I couldn’t talk. I opened my dictation app and recorded the following…

“I wish I had more time to write. But time escapes me. I didn’t write this blog. I narrated it into a dictation app. It’s easier to release all my thoughts, speaking them out loud than it is to sit at a keyboard, my fingers struggling to keep up with my musings.

It’s been a very difficult start to the year. Yes, I’ve had moments of inspiration, hope, moments in which I was convinced anything was possible. But they were fewer. Fewer than the moments of doubt, uncertainty, sadness.

I feel as though I’m at this turning point. Like I’m racing towards this line in the sand that may or may not be real. My mother was forty-four and a half years old when she died. I’m forty and a half right now. Four years, that’s our age difference at the moment. And I know that the length of her life isn’t my destiny and yet I can’t somehow shake that feeling. Our stories in so many ways have run parallel to each other. So many similarities.

But I’m desperately trying to get off that track.

I had a thought today as I lay in bed, staring out the window, about how wonderful it would be if I could just do the things that made me happy. I know, it’s absurd. No adult gets to do the things that make them happy. Or rather JUST the things that make them happy.

But I thought… wouldn’t it be wonderful if somehow I could keep a roof over my children’s head and food on the table with writing and with painting. Maybe I could remove the carpet in one of the bedrooms and install linoleum and make it into an art studio. I’m not that good – at painting that is. I’m not good enough to have an art studio but I love painting, so why not?

And then, I would figure out how to build frames and pull canvas over them myself, because the store-bought frames are very expensive, and often the wrong shape and size. I want to make different sized paintings.

So I’d have an art studio in one room and maybe in another I would set up a desk at the height of the window and I’d write. I would write whatever thoughts come to my mind as though I’m in conversation with someone. That’s the way my grandmother and I used to write to each other, in letters, which took weeks to travel across the ocean. It was the slowest conversation imaginable, but we both loved it. We enjoyed narrating for the other ‘a day in the life of me’, touching on recent event, family gossip, the weather, unsolicited yet deeply appreciated advice. She, my grandmother, wrote advice, I had no advice to give.  

It’s hard to explain in some ways what happens to the mind at this juncture in life. I don’t think I’m in a midlife crisis. I think I’m in a midlife awakening. I’m also realizing that I’m getting too tired to outrun all my trauma, all the painful things in my life. I’m not fast enough anymore. I don’t have the strength to bury myself in my work enough to push out those thoughts.

I imagine what it might be like to live without the weight of the past over me.

Like if I found a way to, I don’t know, to say it all, to write it all, or paint it all, and empty myself.

That I might be lighter then.

I might stop being afraid.

The truth is I’m terribly afraid. There is no safety net beneath me. And I am my children’s safety net. But I know there’s nowhere to fall back on. If I fail… how will I give them a home?

I want to protect them. I don’t want them to live the life that I’ve lived.

I see the way they move through the world. Born in this place, they are so grounded here. They know a certainty I lost long ago.

I was seven years old when I was yanked away from that feeling. The feeling of melting into everything that’s around you and everything that surrounds you melting into you.

I was seven years old when I lost it but I remember the feeling. I remember what it was like to be in a known place and among family. I remember my early childhood summers spent with my grandparents, climbing a very tall ladder into the attic to sleep in a hay bed. I wasn’t afraid of heights then. I’ve gone back there, to that little farmhouse as an adult and I’ve looked up to where that ladder stood, leading to a tiny little door.

That ladder was no less than ten feet tall. I climbed that ladder to get up there. I was not afraid of heights. I remember a time in my life when I was not afraid.

I was not afraid of going up high.

I was not afraid of losing home.

I was not afraid of losing the people that I loved.

I was not afraid of being hungry or lonely or lost.

It’s because I have that awareness, of that other life, that everything which came after, doesn’t just feel drastically different, it was different.

I remember the train.

I remember the camp.

I remember the first people who made me feel that I didn’t belong.

I remember not understanding what was being said.

I remember the trucks arriving with food in boxes.

I remember the toys I loved and I was forced to leave behind.

I remember the first winter after we arrived in Canada.

I remember the mattress on the floor in the cold house on Selkirk Avenue, where the wind blew through the corners and frost gathered along the floor.

It was so cold.

The socks were never warm enough, the boots had already been worn by multiple children before me, hand-me-downs, the insulation was packed down or missing altogether. The gloves were too thin and not waterproof. My fingers often went numb.

I didn’t like winter because I was always cold and my parents couldn’t afford to buy us the clothes we needed. They couldn’t afford much of anything.

I remember going shopping with my mom and watching her return things at the cash register because we couldn’t pay for them. She used to buy one chocolate bar for each of her five children and hide from us, so no one would eat more than their share. They were always up high in the cupboard. I would push the chair against the counter and climb up and when no one was watching, I’d eat my chocolate bar and then I would eat the chocolate bars that belonged to my two younger brothers.

When I was alone with them, I’d manage to convince them that they had already eaten theirs so they wouldn’t complain to our mom. They had already had their one treat for the week.

I’m not proud of that now, I wasn’t proud of it then either. It just always felt like there was never enough. My mom would count out the buns for the meals she had planned and set aside one per person. It didn’t even matter if you were hungry after your bun. You were just gonna have that one.

So yes, I’m afraid of being cold.

And I’m afraid of being hungry.

And of not belonging.

But how to let go of this fear?

How to let go of all of those fears?

How do you get that sense of certainty back?

After my mother died I found myself living alone. All of a sudden, I realized if I didn’t get food I wasn’t going to eat. I realized no one was coming. And if I didn’t think to go to school, no one would remember. And if I disappeared, no one would notice, at least not for a long time. I knew then what it felt like to be forgotten.

To be forgotten and to be alone.

Two years… two years before I aged out of the child welfare system. In those two years I saw Social Worker once, at intake.

I was one of the kids in high school that got to take home some of the food donated to the hamper. It made little difference. What the hell are you supposed to do with canned beans? Beans? When you’re sixteen years old, who even knows how to prepare beans?

I never had time to learn how to cook from my mother, not much at least. I was often babysitting my brothers, doing laundry, cleaning, watching my mother suffer as she slowly died.

You see…

I feel so shackled to all of this… the past.

I feel the weight of it pressing on me, refusing to leave. If I am at work and busy, the memories don’t haunt me, but now alone in this bed my mind is flooded.

Little makes it better… but writing does.

When I find time, I write. Writing takes the memories out of my mind and places them safely here.

I can write out all these thoughts and leave them.  

I want to heal from all of this.

I would like to figure out how to stop being afraid.

And I’d like to figure out how to change my life so that maybe…

I could just paint a little bit more;

write a little bit more;

live quietly a little bit more.”