Is it 2010 yet?

2009 could not have gotten off on a worse start if it had tried. Over New Years, my cat was in the ER because of a completely blocked urinary tract. After he got home he had a reaction to the meds that he was on that resulted in two MORE trips to the ER. I got two parking tickets within a week of each other. My father lost his job. And then, the icing on the cake...

The other night, I wrecked my car. We were coming home from snowboarding, and I spun out on a patch of ice or slush or something on the NYS Thruway. I spun and spun and spun, finally controlled the car, came to a complete stop, and then was hit by a Nissan Pathfinder. No one was hurt - we spent about 5 hours in the hospital getting checked over, and after some xray's and CT scans we were discharged. We spent the night in a hotel upstate, and then got back to Brooklyn yesterday afternoon.

I am so sore, and so tired, and so...I don't even know. I keep going over it in my head, trying to figure out what I could have done differently, and why I didn't try to get the car off the highway after we stopped and once I noticed the Pathfinder closing in on us. I know that while it seemed an eternity to us, it really only happened in about 5 or 6 seconds, and the fact that I was able to control our spin and keep up on the road was really, really good. But I should have been able to maintain control and get us off the road before the Pathfinder hit us. I haven't slept well since it happened...Last night I had a couple beers and took an anti-anxiety drug that my doctor prescribed me for flying, and it basically put me into a drug-induced coma, but I don't feel like I slept.

Needless to say, I think I fell off the wagon a little bit yesterday. I ordered a small white pizza, and while I didn't eat the whole thing, I ate 3 slices. BUt that was also all that I ate all day. So maybe it wasn't that bad. I don't think I'm going to work out today because I'm so sore and tired. I think I'm still in shock. While we were in the hospital I couldn't stop shaking - it was basically full-body convulsions - and I was freezing and couldn't stop crying.

We could have been killed. We could have been seriously hurt. I could have killed someone. If he had hit my car in any other spot - engine, gas tank, etc - my car could have blown up. Luckily he hit the back on the side that the muffler was on. But still...I am still completely shaken.

My friends aren't mad at me - they say that it was a complete accident, that no one is at fault, that I need to stop apologizing because I did everything that I could have to stop our spinning, and that it was just unfortunate that we also got hit. Because if we hadn't gotten hit, everything would have been ok. I controlled the car, kept us on the road, didn't flip us over or land us in a ditch...

I'm just still really, really, really shaken up. And I probably will be for a while.