Oh my god - WHAT HAVE I DONE?!? (who knew this was really a thing?)

This isn't the exact concrete wall I drove into this morning, but it looks like it and the basic concept is the same.

That's right! I drove my fucking Prius V straight into the concrete barrier in a parking garage this morning. I didn't fly through it Dukes of Hazard style, but for a second, that's kind of how it felt.

But not to worry - I'm only 30 weeks pregnant! No biggie, right? I don't really believe in "baby brain," but I think that sleep-deprived/distracted-by-all-the-things-brain is a thing. There are only so many things a person can do at once. And as soon as I came to my senses, checked the car and myself for damage, I was only a couple minutes late to meet with my therapist - how convenient is that! So we got to discuss my little incident and how in the hell such things come about right on the spot.

Serendipity!

I'm fine. I was only going 8 miles an hour max, I'm sure, but I did somehow manage to truly step on the gas instead of the brake as I swung into the space with only a couple of meters to go. It's the kind of thing that stereotypically happens in movies and sitcoms - to 87 year-olds. I even felt my foot pressing on the pedal and thought, "What the fuck am I doing?" But 2 meters is not much distance to get your foot on the brake and stop. But the wall was there to help with the stopping. BANG!

The airbags didn't even open and I couldn't see any damage on the car. I felt the seatbelt tighten against my shoulder and I'm sure my neck will be a little stiff tomorrow, but the impact really wasn't much.

So, what did I learn today? That shit happens? That I could perhaps slow down a bit - part of the reason I was a little out of it was probably fatigue, but the other part was a preoccupation with being on the verge of being late to my appointment. Driving in, I felt very fidgety. I kept consciously reminding myself that I would get there when I got there and that if I didn't want to be in this position, I should leave myself more time.

I couldn't shake that antsy feeling you get when you're sitting at the intersection and you really want to look at your phone, but you know that's just a crutch because you should just chill and take the time to notice your surroundings and take a deep breath instead of feeding your restless energy with pointless garbage from Facebook. I did NOT pick up the phone. I forced myself to sit with the antsiness and I still ran into a concrete wall 5 minutes later!

There's probably some deep metaphysical interpretation to be extracted from this anecdote, but I'm too tired to do that right now.

Have you ever done a thing like this? What did you make of it?

Photo above by Alex Grodkiewicz on Unsplash