Lesson learned from getting hit by a car while riding my bike and making a late night visit to the ER to make sure my internal organs weren’t damaged: I am invincible. Yes, invincible, indestructible, a force to be reckoned with–call to mind that movie with Bruce Willis in it. Bring it on world.
Just kidding. I will proceed in the world with selective caution–that is caution when needed. If I learned anything it is the truth of the fragility of my body, but even greater truths revealed themselves since that moment I was hit. But to get to that light bulb moment let me first tell you the story of my run-in with a the blue Honda Civic.
One rainy day about three days ago I was peddling along Comm Ave per my usual routine, trying to hurry home so I could go for a run. It was pouring rain, and I was loaded down with the typical camel hump of a student who has just dedicated a full day in the library—laptop, ipod, books, papers, notebooks, coffee mug, water bottle, gum, and the emergency stash of feminine products for those unexpected surprises. Little did I know that I was in for a different kind of surprise of which tampons or pads cannot fix. Cautiously and helmet securely fastened to my head I biked in the rain down Comm Ave, past the BU bridge intersection and started to go down that tiny hill where the bike lane suddenly ends. Before I had time to think or yell any exploitative as I usually do with close encounters on the jungle asphalt of cars, trucks, bikes, mopeds, and people called Commonwealth Avenue, I was made one with a blue Honda civic driven by a student who I later learned is named Brian. Hello Honda civic trunk; hello wet asphalt.
Fortunately Brian and his male posse got out of the car to check on me. There I sat on the ground shocked, utterly in disbelief trying to collect my thoughts on what just happened, and realizing that I need to get up and collect my backpack full of my very destructible-when-wet student necessities and my bike which was curiously no where in sight. The boys gathered around repetitiously asking if I was ok. I sat there silent still in disbelief. So, I stuck my index finger in the air, closed my eyes and told them to give me a minute. I needed to think. I thought, and then I got up to the horror of the driver and his crew as all insisted we needed to call 911. No. I insisted that I felt fine. It was a mere bump and I just needed to get to home and then to the track so I could run. They reminded me over and over that I had just been hit by a car, but that didn’t really mean anything to my mind or body. I could stand up and move and therefore being hit by a car didn’t seem so bad. I had survived with very minor injuries–some pain in my hips and ribs, a few cuts on my hands and elbows and two black and puffy fingers. Hardly anything really. So, at my request they finally agreed to let me go. They made me check my brakes on my bike, and then I rode off as one of the guys said, “Who are you? Ironwoman? You know normal humans get injured by cars.” Well, I know and all those who know me know that I am probably the antonym to normal, so I half-smiled and biked off in the rain on my bike that I later learned was broken. I was truly felt like Bruce Willis standing in the rain realizing my invincibility. In that adrenaline-pumped moment I felt like nothing in the world could hurt me, or even more amazing that I could do anything. What a strange and curious feeling of power. Perhaps some would say a little masochistic. Some would say just down right foolish.
I got to my coach’s office stunned, in disbelief and just matter of factly noted that I had just been hit by a car–something that for whatever reason my head could just not comprehend. It seemed so natural that I would get hit by a car. No big, right? It was the first time in three years of bravely traversing the narrow, car-jammed roads of Boston that I was hit by a car. I have had a lot of close calls, but nothing that resulted with me on the ground. The thing that concerned me most of all were my two fingers; they were swelling and blackening by the minute. I had tons of papers to type and I desperately needed my index and pointer fingers. (Such a good student, I know! I hope my professors are reading this! But let us not digress from the story on some tangent that will only inflate my head with more sick notions of invincibility or self-aggrandizement.) So, I went to my former athletic trainer who told me to immediately go to student health services, so I reluctantly followed orders and the folks over at SHS were fantastic as they speedily and tenderly cared for me. They told me to go to the hospital to get some scans and x-rays done, but by this time I was convinced of my invincibility. So, nope, forgo the visit to the hospital. Hospitals are for wimps, and I am only in minor pain—or so my body pumped with adrenaline was telling me. I went on with life like everything was normal, like getting hit by a car was commonplace in urban settings. No big deal; I took a hit by a car and walked away. How could there possibly be anything actually wrong?
I wasn’t singing the same I’m-invincible tune the next day. Pain is always worst the second day. I will testify to that truth now. As an athlete you would think that I would have known pain was lurking around the corner, but no I had continued to live the delusion of invincibility. But not on day two or three; the delusion started to fade; my notion of invincibility was cracking. I hurt. Constant pain that even 600mg of motrin could not seem to relieve. So, I agreed to a check up. Blood work, urine sample, scans and x-rays all came back negative. I had successfully and invincibly survived being hit by a car–almost because I couldn’t deny the continuing pain in my ribs, back, and abdomen. Minor bruising, no big deal so it sounded to me, but the pain suggested that I would have to lay low awhile to allow my body to heal. The risk for major injury was there, but I and my worried family can sleep well knowing that death is not looming in some overlooked broken rib fragment or punctured spleen or internal bleeding. Close call I guess, but I was lucky. Unfortunately I am sure not all cyclists along Comm Ave are so lucky.
So the personal lesson I take away from this experience is that I live in an extremely delusional world of a false sense of security where I only seem to be invincible, but clearly I am not. No one is. But doesn’t one of Erik Erikson’s stages of adolescent development include the feeling of invincibility? Clearly I need to grow out of that stage as I believe it is unbecoming of a person of 25 years of age to feel invincible–at least in the regard of surviving a bike wreck relatively unscathed and basking in that triumph. There has to be a happy middle on the spectrum of feeling invincible and fearing life so as to take no risks.
I guess this is a subject perpetually on my mind as of late. Too often I forget that I am 25, wondering where all those years have gone when I look in the mirror and see the body of a young woman and not that of one of my younger selves. Yes, there is no denying that the she I see in the mirror is aging whether I want her to or not. I don’t know why I am so surprised it’s not like I live in Never Never Land. For whatever reason I want to cling to my youth and resist growing up for fear my body will not be able to keep up with what I want it to do. But this worry has gradually trivialized as I become aware that what happens to me does not just happen to me. In that I mean that I am not an isolated being unconnected to my surroundings; I do not merely exist as an individual but I live in a community where what happens to me, my safety and life, is a concern of those who love me. My life matters to others just as the lives of those I love matter to me. So, rather than being convinced of my invincibility, I have become more aware of my vulnerability and what that means as I live in relationship with others.
