#i already posted this on fb but i figured i should keep mutuals updated bc i care abt you guys

[knightotoc]

So last Wednesday afternoon, I got hit by a car.

I'm ok. Most of my injuries are only skin deep, except a radial head fracture in my left arm. The biggest injury is a 5-centimeter laceration on the back of my head, which got blood all over the street, me, my Totoro t-shirt, and hospital pillows across Orange County. I also got 3 large strategically misplaced abrasions on my limbs and a fucked up right thumb, which makes this a chore to type. But you should have seen the other guy. (I overheard the cop say the car was undamaged.)

The main thing I'm feeling is fear. When I think of the moments before the car hit me, I get so frightened, and when I try to remember the moment it happened (I can't), I start crying. It could have gone better, and it could have gone worse. It's all so stupid and random. So please don't comment anything too scary. And please don't comment anything about God either; I've already heard it, and it's not helpful to me.

Under the fear, I feel shock, anger, and relief. I'm angry at the stupid fuck who crashed her car into me, but not too angry. She did stop and help me. I'm angrier at our car dependent infrastructure with all its dumbass, ugly consequences. Fuck cars. See Who Framed Roger Rabbit for more information.

There is a comforting element of absurdity in this awfulness. It reminds me of how about this time last year, just as I was digging a grave for my dead cat Charlie, I got stung by a bee. Comedy = tragedy + a stupider tragedy. In this case, just as I was entering a small upswing in a lengthy emotional roller coaster -- just as I start to see a path ahead of me and really, actually want it, even without any hope or luck -- just as I go on a half-hearted run for a silly Target purchase -- I get hit by a car.

If you have ever wondered what loot you'd drop if you were a defeated NPC in a video game, getting hit by a car is a great way to find out. Here's mine: a brand new 8-pack of reusable snack bags, a 32-oz quarter-full water bottle in a pretty pink-blue gradient, and a cheap pair of black earbuds with a busted microphone. If anyone finds these things splattered across Placentia Ave, you can have them.

Of course I regret a lot of things. But the one thing I regret more than anything else -- more than my awful timing, my worse reflexes, my leaving the house at all -- is telling the beefcakes in the ambulance that I write Star Wars fanfiction. It should have been a clear sign of brain damage that I completely forgot about Rule #1: Never Talk to 35-to-40 Year-Old Men about Star Wars. Fortunately absolutely nothing happened and my self-sabotaging is completely normal; unfortunately I have to live like this for the rest of my life.

The UCI Trauma Center is a liminal juncture populated by some of the most desperate people I've ever seen receiving care from cartoonishly beautiful, overworked young professionals. I spent most of my time there stranded in a hallway awaiting discharge. Picture this: it's 1 am, and there's me, the platonic ideal of a weepy millenial snowflake with his mommy; one bed up the hall, a cardboard cutout of a TV crook with a chiseled cop who could've been grown in a vat; and one bed up from there, a grizzled rockstar with his perfect girlfriend, 5-inch heels, beat for the gods, the sexiest person in the emergency room. I would have done anything for her. Meanwhile one of my electrodes had gotten stuck in my hair and was just sort of dangling there.

Speaking of electrodes, perhaps the most absurd thing of all happened while I was still hooked up to an EKG machine. I waited in distress for results of my CT scans, but my heart rate then did not cause it to beep. I cried as the doctor stapled my wound up, but my heart rate then did not cause it to beep. But then I talked to my mom about my problems with the 2021 Pixar cartoon Luca, and THAT spike in my heart rate caused the EKG machine to beep. Enrico Casarosa can officially join Julian Fellowes on my list of nemeses. Right below cars, I guess.