Doctors kept saying I was 'lucky to be here' — now I'm home and don't know what to do with that
I don't really know how to start this so bear with me.
About two months ago I was in a really bad intersection collision — the kind where first responders apparently made comments to each other that my family later repeated back to me. Things like "we weren't sure what we were going to find" and "you've got somebody watching over you." My sister told me the hospital called the family using the phrase "you should come now" and that's — yeah. That's a lot to sit with.
I've been home for a few weeks doing outpatient PT and mostly just... existing. Physically I'm banged up but recovering. Mentally I feel like I'm walking around inside a question mark.
Last week I finally let myself look at photos someone took of my car at the scene. I genuinely cannot reconcile what I'm looking at with the fact that I'm sitting here typing this. The passenger compartment looked — I don't have a better word — consumed. My PT actually paused when I showed her and just went quiet for a second.
I'm not super spiritual. I don't have a clean framework for processing "you probably shouldn't have made it." I'm grateful, obviously, but grateful feels weirdly small for whatever this is?
Has anyone else been through something like this — the physical recovery is sort of underway but the mental/emotional part feels like it's in a totally different timezone? How did you even start dealing with it? Did it get less strange?