Chapter 1:
Brace for Impact!
Brace for Impact! It’s the first thing that crossed my mind when I saw how close that pickup truck was getting to my car through the rearview mirror. I was waiting for my turn in line at a traffic light to make a right into the street that takes me home. There were at least six other cars in front of me, so I had been there for at least five minutes. My instinct was to press on the brakes as hard as I could and hold the wheel tight to keep my car from moving out of the lane. A few seconds later, BANG! and then BANG! again. I waited a little to make sure I was ok and then my phone started to go off to check on me to see if I had been in an accident and thought to my self “wow that feature works super fast” the lady on the phone asked if I needed medical attention and I was like “I don’t think so but I’m just assessing the situation”. I started to get out of the car and realized the door was jammed, so I did what I could to get out and pushed myself through it. Got my phone out and started recording everything for insurance purposes. Both ends of my car were mashed, the back was worse than the front but I knew my 2008 Honda CRV was not going to cross over 200K miles as planned. The pickup truck that rear-ended me was an old Ford 150 so the frame was one of those really solid ones, his front was mashed too, that’s how hard it hit me. I had plenty of space infront of me (thanks Mom for reminding me to leave space in front of the cars) so while I hit the lady in front of me, it was barely a bump; the front of my car absorbed all the shock.
This was January 14, 2025. I ended up getting some X-rays and MRIs done to make sure my back, neck, and hips were fine since I was in pain. It turned out I was fine and just had some whiplash and muscle aches that might last a few months.
A week later, I heard back from the insurance that my car was totaled, and since I had it as collateral for a personal loan I took to replace the roof of my house, it was all going to the loan. Consequently, I had no money to put as a down payment for another car. But I thought to myself, it’s ok, before the accident, the car had about 7k worth of repairs, so I’ll just be without a car for a while. This incident was followed by a series of events that had me asking, What now? every month.
