Saturday night...

So Saturday night was most probably the scariest night of my life.

FD and I had spent the evening with some of his friends – we had an early dinner at News Café and then headed back to their spot for coffee and a look at a video they had made from their holiday in France. We left at about 10ish and decided to head back to FD’s house to feed his dog before heading back to my place.

We were happily chatting, driving pretty slowly along Old Pretoria Rd when suddenly an old white Toyota swerved out of its lane, straight into oncoming traffic at full speed just metres ahead of us. FD had a split second response to try and dodge him by turning to the left – but it was too late, there was no time – and all I could think was “Oh my god – this can’t be how it ends” before feeling the shockwave of impact as the car slammed into us.

I felt strange – I realised that I felt more or less okay, and I was aware that FD was talking next to me so I realised that he was probably alright too. And then suddenly my chest felt like it was constricting and I felt a sharp pain shooting through my lower back. I leapt out of the car – and slowly my chest felt like it was beginning to ease. Then I started to panic – why was FD not out of the car? I started yelling to him and ran towards the car – and finally he climbed out. Although I could see he was walking around and talking I felt terrified that he wasn’t okay despite his best attempts to assure me he was. I then looked towards the Toyota that had slammed into us and saw that the whole front of the car was compacted and the windscreen had cracked and there was no movement from inside. I was sure that who ever was driving the car was dead. But then the door opened and out climbed a woman carrying a small child who was crying – both bleeding. They sat down on the side of the road and eventually the driver got out – his face covered in blood.

Other people had stopped and were trying to see if we were okay – everyone phoning emergency services. A few short minutes later the road was teeming with paramedics, tow truck drivers, police and even a fire truck. FD’s car (a month old) was in bad shape. And a look inside was even scarier – his entire steering wheel had bent backwards – and we still aren’t sure which part of his body caused it. The pain in my chest was simply from the seatbelt doing it’s job – which has left red, black and blue welts across my chest, stomach and hips. My only other injury is a bruised coccyx which sucks to sit on. FD just needed a couple of stitches in his arm. And that’s honestly the worst of it. I still can’t believe that we’re both almost perfectly okay.

And now I feel really strange. First of all – I feel this need to check on FD constantly. I’m sure it’ll pass, but today has been a challenge. I keep wanting to phone him to make sure that everything’s okay – but have managed to resist it with the exception of one call.

I also keep reliving the moment when we saw the car swerving towards us – the feeling of panic is inexplicable – especially with the person I care about most in the world sitting right next to me directly in the line of fire. I keep on going through the ‘what ifs’ in my head… ‘what if we had left a few minutes later’.... ‘what if FD hadn’t managed to turn a little to the left’…. ‘what if we had been going faster’…It’s the strangest mix of gratituity and anger… glad we’re both fine and then mad that it had to happen at all.

Most of all it’s the scary realisation that everything can change in a heartbeat. Lucky for us we both walked away – but so many people don’t. And FD and I had spent most of Saturday bickering about random shite – what if that had been our last day on this earth, totally wasted worrying about utter nonsense? It’s a good wake up call because as clichéd as it’s become, I really realise how important it is to let the small stuff go and focus instead on what’s positive and light.