January 3, 2003

I liked him.  He liked me.  Both came from Italian roots.  But something was off – I didn’t know it yet.  But what happened January 3, 2003 albeit a very scary night.  Probably stopped me from having a hard, heartbreaking life.

He asked me out on a date, but due to not having reliable transportation asked if for this one night I wouldn’t mind driving.  I kind of felt foolish – really? I have to drive us around for our date? Lame.  But since I really into this guy, I thought eh, why not.

We went out to dinner – I forget where…max and ermas I believe.  After dinner we decided to go see a movie.  Movie was sold out.  What do two 17 year olds do? Go play pool? Sounds like a good idea.  Little did we know that many pool tables were in bars.  Bars we couldn’t get into yet.  We tried 3 of them before we decided to head back to my house to watch a movie.

I was heading south on Haggerty.  It was a clear night.  No rain.  No radio on.  Just the two of us laughing and talking.  Then it went dark… piercing dark and white rang throughout my head.  My jaw clenched.  I blacked out.  I woke up.  I was facing the opposite side of traffic, I was up against the guard rail and my car was smashed to pieces.  I looked to my right and he was still unconscious.  Bleeding.  I believed him to be dead.  I began to scream.  My mom said I called her, which I don’t remember doing telling her we had been in a bad accident.  Mike wasn’t responding.  Paramedics were all around us, a man was yelling and swearing at me, and a sweet old lady put her arms through the broken window and around me and kissed me on the cheek. She said everything was going to be OK, she looked up and said “Theres yo daddy.” I looked up and saw my dad running up to my car.  I sobbed harder. I think she was my guardian angel.

The boy started grunting – still not awake – but a live.  Thank you God.  Metal crushing, neck brace being secured we were both pulled from the wreckage and into an ambulance.  I was broken.  Inside and out.  How did this happen? I heard through the radio I went through a red light.  We got T-boned.  We were lucky to be alive.

At the hospital I thought I heard him in the room next to me being worked on, I kept trying to push the curtain away to see him.  It wasn’t him.  They had to check for internal bleeding, they took x-rays and patched me up.  A couple chipped up teeth, a broken wrist and some bumps and bruises were the final prognosis.

I remember sitting in that car scared, frightened, and upset I caused this.  How could I have been so careless? But I believe in some way, it was God’s weird plan to stop up from wrapping ourselves up into each other because he went away to the Marines.  Around the world.  I would have been away from my family.  It would have been a hard life.

Everything happens for a reason.  I’m just happy we were all OK in the end.  Life’s path twists and turns and you just have to go along with it.