Blerg.

I got into a car accident today. I was driving over to Tuacahn to pick Alec up from school, and had stopped at a traffic light. The woman behind me had stopped, as well; I was jamming out to Erasure in complete safety. Then, all of a sudden, there was an incredible amount of force -- my head slammed against the headrest, and all of the CDs in the compartment under the CD player flew, like ninja stars, into the back seat. The car had been shoved forward, but by some miracle I hadn't hit the people in front of me.

It happened right by the parking lot for The Spectrum, so I pulled in there and got out of the car. No damage to dad's back bumper (thank heavens -- the Galant is his best friend). The woman who hit me had simply pulled to the side of the road. I'd seen her hit her head against her headrest in my rear-view mirror -- she was an older lady -- so I ran over to make sure she was okay.

As it turns out, Debbie -- the woman who hit me -- had been rear-ended by a 19-year-old-ish girl who'd been trying to keep her son from crying while she was driving and didn't notice that Debbie had stopped for the traffic light. (We later learned from the guy who volunteered as a witness -- a cop from West Valley -- that this girl had been talking on her cell phone, as well.) The force with which this girl hit Debbie is what caused her to slam into me. Nobody got hurt, but the girl whose fault it was didn't have insurance, so it wasn't exactly pleasant to stand around with the police for an hour.

I've been in two other (pretty scary) car accidents -- once, I ran off the asphalt on Tuacahn Drive (don't drive angry, kids); the second time, my friend, Matt, and I were hit by a semi truck as I was taking him home from a Drama Club service project -- but for some reason, this one seriously freaked me out. As I tried to get the insurance information/registration papers out of the glove box, my hands were shaking like crazy -- I dropped everything I was holding at least six times. When I was finally able to get back on the road, I started crying.

At first, I was super confused by why I was having such an intense emotional response to what had happened, but I think I finally figured it out: So much of my life has been just like that car accident -- me, sitting in neutral, if not safe, territory, getting slammed by something I am completely unprepared for. This is especially true of Recent Events (which I have only addressed vaguely in this blog). It was a sort of symbolic car accident, in that respect, and I think that's what got me. It's not necessarily that I feel victimized, because I always turn out all right. I just feel... I don't know. Bewildered? Disoriented? Overwhelmed?

I was looking at a book today, Sun Signs, that talks about astrology stuff, and in the section titled "Recognizing Virgos," there was a neat little paragraph discussing the Virgo tendency to prepare for any and every situation. It's an innate personality trait, I guess, that's coupled with compulsive (and logically rationalized) worry. So the thing is, when I encounter something I never could have prepared for or prevented, it trips my shit. It goes against everything I believe the world should be.

I think that's going to make life kind of hard.