Guilt is the Source of Sorrows

Thursday, August 3

         It has been a long day. I went to a therapist for the first time in my life. She kept trying to get me to talk, but I didn’t want to tell her about the accident. I don’t want even more people to know. She gave me this notebook so that I could get my feelings out without having to speak to an actual person. I am going to write as often as I can, but everything is weird now. Everything is different. Who knows what I will do?
         I was on my way to work. It was supposed to be a normal day, but I ruined everything.
         I am a murderer.
         What happened was, I was on my way to work one day. It was an ordinary day. That morning was like all of the others. I woke up, put on my suit, I made my usual breakfast of toast and eggs, made coffee, and left for work. I took the same road I always do. If anything, the only difference was that I was in a better mood than usual.
         I drove down the familiar roads, and stopped at the same crosswalk I pass every day. There was a mother and her son walking across. I smiled as she used the hand not holding her son’s hand to wave at me.
         I didn’t know her, so she must have just moved here. Here in this small town, everyone knows everyone. It isn’t common for me to see someone I don’t know.
         As they were walking, I was rear ended by a speeding car. My car went straight toward the mother, who pushed her son out of the way and took all of the force of the impact. Her body hit the hood, and crumpled to the ground. I remember hearing the bones cracking like toothpicks. They were no match for the mechanical beast. I remember the blood pooling everywhere. I remember all the gruesome details.
         The driver that rear ended me came up to my car quickly, but I was so worried about checking on the child and mother that I hit him with my car door.
         I frantically ran over to the boy to see if he was okay. He stood before his mother, terrified. I quickly picked up the boy and tried to keep him from looking at her as best as I could. I wanted to make sure he couldn’t see her there lifeless on the ground.
         I had killed a mother. A human being that had a family that she created with their own body. I killed a human being. She was gone. Her eyes had once held laughter and love. Now they were empty. They had nothing.
         It seemed like a lifetime before the ambulance and the police showed up. By then, I was cradling the boy and he was gripping onto me for dear life. His knuckles were white and his face was pressed into my shoulder. He was sobbing into my blood-stained white shirt. He had processed everything and knew exactly what happened to his mother. She joined his father in the sky among the other angels.
         Finally, the ambulance arrived. The police pulled in soon after them. The police examined the mother’s body quickly while the medics tried to pry the boy off of me. They finally got him off and helped him into the ambulance. I wasn’t sure why they took the boy. The boy was unscathed, as the mother had taken all of the heat. I guess the medics took him just to be sure that he was okay.
         The driver from behind me had to be taken to the hospital as well. He had deep cuts on his head and upper body from the glass windshield and a broken rib from me slamming him with my car door.
         Why they took me was a mystery as well. I kept telling them that I was fine but they insisted and pulled me into an ambulance. I don’t remember much about getting to the hospital or how long I was there, but I remember waking up. I was in a bright white room, a large light right above my head. I was tangled in some sort of wiring and I was alone. The large window next to me had a thick white curtain held back so that the sun was lighting up my room. I felt a pull on my forehead and reached my hand up to find the culprit. There were 6 stitches holding together a gash on my hair line. I figured I must have hit my head when I was rear-ended.
         The doctors said I had spent a few days there before I woke up. They told me that the injury and the stress of everything caused my body to shut down for a few days. They also told me that I should be fine once I got moving and got back into the swing of life.
         I don’t know how these doctors think I can get back to the swing of things. The accident was horrific. The whole scene plays through my head as I try to sleep. When I close my eyes, even for a second, I can still picture her there, lying on the ground, blood over the hood of my car and pooling around her twisted, lifeless figure. The lifeless face once smiled, laughed, cried, but then everything came crashing down. Everything that woman had worked for in her life had been taken away from her. I stole it.
         Since that day I have been having trouble internally. Everybody keeps telling me that it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t spend much time in court because the driver behind me told them the absolute truth. I can’t live with the fact that I am getting away with this. I should be locked in a cell. I shouldn’t be walking around like nothing happened, like I am innocent.
         I am afraid to go outside. I am afraid that the town will know what I did. I am afraid that it could happen again. I don’t believe I am ready to leave this house. I need some time here to think. I need to be sure about how my mind and body is going to handle the weight of the accident. So far my mind isn’t reacting very well. I can’t even get into a car without panicking.
         The big issue is that I blame myself for everything that happened to that family. It is my fault. I was the driver in the car that hit them. I am sure there was something I could have done to prevent the accident but I didn’t take every precaution I should have.

-Nicholas